Salvage Gardening

This summer we've been working hard on a project at the local high school that involves refurbishing an old, unused greenhouse as well as providing space for a "community" garden for students and staff to have full access to for growing food.

I took on the task of building the garden during the grueling Florida summer months, with no budget and very few people willing to spend hours out in the mosquito infested, high humidity, fire ant covered garden area. The temperatures average about 95* this time of year with a feels-like estimate of 105 or so.

It's not for the faint of heart, but when you make a promise... you follow through! SO, that said and out of the way. I had a task at hand.

How was I going to fill this empty area with raised beds, few helping hands and zero budget?








Well, fortunately I'm a picker. I'm a dumpster diving, trash loving, roadside warrior!
So, just about the time we had finished tilling up the area, laying down cardboard as a mulch (more trash to treasure) I was really starting to sweat over how we were going to pull off making a field full of raised beds in time for the start of the school year.

Then on my way home ...I saw THIS





Beautiful, right?



Perfectly good, beautifully weathered wood painted white on one side with latex paint. Some may argue that there's a risk of chemical leech from fencing lumber, but I'm not one of those people. I'm just not concerned with it, the wood is significantly weathered and half painted. It's PERFECT for the project!
So I called up a friend to rush over with her trailer in tow and we loaded up the 8 panels. .

We utilized as much of the existing structure as possible, to save on screws. SO we made cuts with a hand held circular saw down the three horizontal beams that hold the slats together, creating panels that were each two slats wide. Creating a board for the bed wall that was about 8 inches in depth. We also cut off the dog eared top piece of each slat to make the beds a bit smaller.

They come together at about 5.5" x 5.5" squares.Plenty large enough for a decent sized plot, 8 inches is a good depth too! So at this point, when we made out first bed... I was stoked! This was going to work!

And here it is! Our first raised bed made from roadside treasure! The muddy ground underneath covered up with some trash picked cardboard to help keep the weeds from reclaiming the area.

Add caption

We quickly got busy making more. 11 more in fact! 10 stayed at the school garden and two came home with us , as a self appointed reward for our hard work :)

We've been busy the last few days filling the whole area with mulch that we had delivered from a local tree trimming company. MORE material that would otherwise have ended up in a landfill, being put to very good use in food production. If this doesn't warm a heart, nothing will!



Next week we'll have a delivery of soil to fill the beds and they'll be ready for planting when the weather finally simmers down a bit.






 This is where the two extra beds found a home, at my new house and in the beginning stages of my personal garden.
You can also see the third salvage creation in the back of the photo. Palate compost bins! We've made three sets of these this summer! One for the school, one for a community demonstration garden we worked on and one for our home garden.

 We used large palates for the schools garden. Food scraps and garden waste will be dumped here and turned regularly. The composting process is pretty speedy when you tend to it and keep turning the material. We lucked out and scored some smaller, hard wood pallets for our home garden so they don't take up as much space.

And here he is, my lovely assistant Warren. He built these compost bins for me and I love him so much for it (among other things).







I'm pretty proud of the progress we've made. No money has been spent on this portion of the garden. Everything was salvaged and we already had the screws. It just goes to show that a nice garden space can be created on any budget! It just takes a sharp eye and the ability to think outside of the box. Pay close attention to the garbage you pass by every day!
You may find your new garden in there someday!