Kerry’s Garden

Make a hose container of course.

This cast off redwood planter (actually 2 of them stuck together) was destined for the dump had it not been picked up by T. last fall. It wasn’t bottomless at the time but I could tell that the bottom wasn’t long for this world. I set it aside, figuring I could at least set a 5 gallon bucket inside to dress it up a bit. Fast forward to last week. I pulled out the planter and the bottom fell right out. Well I wasn’t too worried, the bucket won’t care.

We don’t have water to the garden and the garden is about 125′ from the house. Whenever I want to water it entails dragging out the 100′ hose and the 75′ hose wrestling to get them together. I always seem to end up with more water on me than on the plants by the time all is said and done. It is such a pain that I often just leave the hose on the ground out to the garden for weeks at a time. This would be fine except for two things. We have to mow and it is easy to trip over. Last weekend I had reached my threshold. I was looking at the hose laying there and it hit me. Why not take my edger (not the motorized kind) and dig a small trench alongside the sidewalk from the house to the end of the sidewalk which is about 25′ from the garden. At least that way I wouldn’t be so apt to trip over the hose. About an hour’s worth of work and it was all set. You could barely see the hose when I was done. It was low enough so you could mow over it and walk without getting you feet tangled up in it. I did have to coil it up at the end of the sidewalk but that wasn’t so bad I guess…

I was laying in bed this morning planning my day and it hit me. Why not use this bottomless planter as a hose holder? I could set the planter on a couple of concrete blocks and thread the hose up through the bottom. When I was finished I could coil it back into the planter and it wouldn’t look nearly as tacky plus it would be totally out of the way.

In addition… I also got a grape trellis up by putting 3 t-posts into the ground and strung several wires for the two grapes at the edge of the old strawberry bed. I didn’t get the wooden kiwi trellis done today but I got about half of the slats sawed out of the cedar siding K. gave me. My arm gave out on me so rather than push it I decided to let it wait till next weekend.