This past week marked a year since I moved to Ithaca from NYC, and has left me thinking about the ways that I’ve kept myself busy. Pretty shortly after returning I was baking bread and sprouting seeds; living the newly minted quarantine tendencies. For whatever reason, when the question of where I would plant my seedlings arose, I became really intent on building a raised planter bed for them— maybe my newly invoked domestic spirit; I wanted to build my plants a home. It’s become clearer to me since then that this was a crude kind of systems thinking as a play for some feeling of control during what felt like the end times. I wanted to make a plant system.
During the time I was researching the design, trying to suss how much weight in wet dirt it would need to hold, and how it would drain, I came across the british “Veg Trug” line of planters. They’re pretty much just what I was imagining, I could even picture them working as repeatable modules. A perfect garden system building block, but for the cost of two ($400 before shipping) I knew I could make my own.
I was almost right: I managed to get my lumber and a Bosch router for less than the cost of two new trugs but I had to renew my sketchup subscription in the midst of designing a trug built of the lumber sizing available to me. I also remember the galvanized shoes I added where the legs meet the ground being rather pricey for twelve, but by the time I had arrived at protecting the end grain I had become pretty attached to my trugs. Reverse engineering was easy, I just watched official videos instructing the user on how to assemble their flat-packed pieces.
Once I had a good enough handle on the design I bought my lumber and stacked it to dry for a week or so since it was fairly wet, I think it must have been rained on in the loading bay or something.
I laugh thinking back to then, at how slow and clumsy I had been, laying out my cut angles by carefully checking the my model for the board lengths on each side of the slope, and using a little speed framing triangle. At this time, about a year ago, I was borrowing tools from a good friend and was able to use his miter saw and drills, as well as a countersink set. I’ve come to appreciate a few very helpful tools in the time since then, which have helped me work faster and more accurately, but I knew I liked the router as soon as I used it. My first passes were thrilling but pretty rough, with a lot of gouging and streaks. The inside face of a lap joint on outdoor furniture is about as good a place as any to start practicing free hand routing I think. I began using a very simple rail, offset from my red pencil line in a very crude manner. It did give me straight although far from square edges. I don’t think I would call it a solution today, but at the time I felt pretty crafty.
The shop had been formerly well equipped but was being emptied out when I got access, so I had an abundance of scrap wood and loose c-clamps, and tables I could drill into for quickly mounting jigs, but not much organization to work with. I was working very fast and loose— it should be said that by the time I was able to use this space, the growing season had been underway for a few weeks and my seedlings had been quickly exceeding their potted halfway homes. I really wanted to get them into at least the first planter before it was stupidly late in the early season.
I stained the outside faces to match the conditions of my mothers stone patio. I just love greys of all kinds and didn’t mind the natural wood showing through a bit. That warmth intensified with the addition of a spar varnish top coat. They’ve been in the sun and snow for an entire year now and still look in pretty good cosmetic shape. The task of covering the entire set on both top and bottom with that marine seal was truly a torture on my back, but also helped me to straighten out some agonizing kinks, lol. It was memorably straining, in the future I would definitely take the time to build a raised dolly.
The inside of the trugs are lined with a weed barrier, which I believe is intended for use under patios and sidewalks, but worked just fine for keeping the roots of my plants from accidentally poking through, as well as for soil and water retention. It may have provided some filtration too, but the runoff was black to brown in decreasing intensity all season. All the drainage seems to meet at the center of each cross member, combining to form stable little spouts. I kept pots under the drip spots that would fill over the day after morning watering.
Once my seedlings were in the planter they took off growing at a remarkable rate! The second trug went together much faster too, as if spurred on by their success.
In the first planter, from left to right, I planted Russian red kale, cubanelle peppers, bell peppers, an Heirloom tomato, frilly kale, and dinosaur kale. In the Second I planted cherry tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, pickling cucumbers, more scattered kale, a Roma tomato and some Cayenne peppers. Some of the plants flourished in the raised planters, like the kale and the peppers, which consistently produced ever bigger fruits and leaves at a useful rate. The tomatoes took the entire season to produce only a few fruits, but I think I take the blame for planting them both late and crowded. The rightmost corner kale, although the runt of the garden, remained alive and fresh all through the winter under a drift of snow.
I enjoyed all my miniature produce from my fairly miniature garden but my thoughts remained on my first inspiration: a plant system. I had first imagined a built-in trench drain irrigation system, integrating the garden hose, and some kind of consideration of beneficial plant adjacency. I wanted to like, program a garden. As this next Spring emerges I’m busily preparing what I might try out in the next planting~
