Gardening in a gutter

[charles p]

Wife has a magazine that shows someone planting herbs and lettuces in a vinyl gutter.  Our home is at the coast and is raised above the FEMA flood line.  The bottom is latticed to permit flood tide to pass through.  I bought two ten foot sections of vinyl gutter and placed is about shoulder high on the south side (back) of our house.  Hope the deer do not find it.  Put lettuce seeds and spinach seeds in yesterday.  Gutter is brown so it should absorb sunshine.  Probably cools off quickly at night.  I drilled a few drain holes in the bottom.  Imagine it will require frequent watering.
Our regular garden is not very large, so if we can produce a my small plants in the gutter garden, that will free up space for larger items in the raised bed garden.
About ever other year, a hurricane brings tidal water over the top of my garden.  I have not had any ill effects, probably because our subsoil is sandy and the raised portion drains well.  I always get a soil test and I have no idea why I don't have a salt problem, just glad that I don't.  I have drip irregation to wash away the salt.

[jvs]

Where there's a will, there's a way.  Sounds like you have a plan.


Even though I have a Garden, I also use Containers to grow.   I have used Containers to grow Ghost Chili's, Grape Tomato's and Patio Tomato's for example.


I hope it works out for you.

[BUGEYE]

lay one hand on the gutter and with your other hand, rub that lucky buckeye in your pocket and you'll have a large crop.

[longwinters]

Sounds like creative gardening.  I have a cement basket ball court in our back yard.  So since it is kind of hard to till up I went with some grow boxes from The Garden Patch.  I know you can do it cheaper than this but they work great and last for years.  I grow mostly bell peppers in them as in my area red,yellow and orange bells run up to 4.00 ea. in the winter.  So I grow them and vacume seal them.
 
Long

[jvs]

Long,


Where do you buy your Sealer bag material?  I have one of those gizmo's but I figure by the time you buy the bags or rolls, which are too expensive for my taste, it doesnt pay to use it unless you have 8 kids and buy alot in big bulk, which I dont.


For Peppers I just cut them up and freeze them in just a regular one quart milk container.  Hungarian Sweet Peppers (yellow) are best suited for that.  But any pepper freezes well without getting fancy.


I have also found out that Ghost Peppers live longer than one year because of containers.  I brought a Ghost Chili Plant indoors one Autumn and it survived over the winter into the next growing season when I put it back outside and fertilized it and it produced for two years straight.  I let it go with the frost last year.  I dont know if Bell Peppers will do the same, but it is possible I think if your containers arent too big and heavy to bring indoors and you have a southern exposure window for sun. 

[longwinters]

JVS,
 
I use the regular vacume seal bags.  I buy them on line, from Food Saver, when they have sales.  They send me notices etc...via e-mail.  We use them quite a bit for venison and other meats when we buy larger quantities during sales etc...  I also use them for freezing carrots, dehydrated onions, green beans, winter and summer squash. I agree they are expensive compared to zip locks but we no longer have food loss to freezer burn.  We don't have room to store all of these things canned so this is the route we went. We also use them to freeze our homemade rav's, left over chili, goulash, red gravy etc...
 
Long

[jvs]

I used to get alot more use out of the Sealer when the kids were still home, but since there's only two of us left here it's hard to cost average the price of the plastic and have it be affordable.  Even with the higher prices of food.


We got home cooking and freezing down to a science.  The shelf-life of some things may not be as long as with the sealer, but it works with only two of us.

[longwinters]

While 2 of our 3 kids are gone/married, and the 3rd will be this summer, they still like to take part in the harvested produce etc..... Sometimes I feel like the little red hen.
 
Long

[bilmac]

Wait till it's time to learn the grandkids how to grow stuff.