As many of you remember, Rose and I built and beautiful 800 sq ft vegetable garden in Virginia. You can see some of it under the "Virginia" Tab above.
We'll we don't have a lot of garden space in our new house, so as Cougar said to his rear in the movie Top Gun, "Their going vertical and so are we".
Rose showed me some pictures of Gutter Gardens and I thought they were a great idea. We'll have three. One to form a bit of a wall at the end of the porch and to block out the view of the neighbors, #2 (using the left over 4' of gutters) between the windows, and #3 (not show in pictures yet) will be 10ft. at the far end of the house. They are spaced out enough from the house to provide good air ventilation for the house, a walkway behind them, and room to swing in the wind a bit so as to not hit the house.
Rose showed me some pictures of Gutter Gardens and I thought they were a great idea. We'll have three. One to form a bit of a wall at the end of the porch and to block out the view of the neighbors, #2 (using the left over 4' of gutters) between the windows, and #3 (not show in pictures yet) will be 10ft. at the far end of the house. They are spaced out enough from the house to provide good air ventilation for the house, a walkway behind them, and room to swing in the wind a bit so as to not hit the house.
So, I got to looking online at what other peeps have done, drew up the plans, got the material list, and got the stuff - all complete for $102. Cheap enough for me. Gutters come in 10ft lengths which worked out perfectly by cutting them into 6' lengths and using the extra the 2nd spot.
Once again, I had the pick up truck guys at the hardware store looking funny at me with 10ft gutters hanging out of a SmarCar, safety flags flapping, driving along in the poring rain. I love to freak those guys out!
Once again, I had the pick up truck guys at the hardware store looking funny at me with 10ft gutters hanging out of a SmarCar, safety flags flapping, driving along in the poring rain. I love to freak those guys out!
The small 4ft gutters will be all strawberries. The 6ft gutters on the porch will be hanging flowers the top two rows to block out the view, then lettuce the bottom two rows.
They look a bit WHITE at the moment, but do a search on the Internet for Gutter Gardens and you'll see how great they look with mature plants in them.
They look a bit WHITE at the moment, but do a search on the Internet for Gutter Gardens and you'll see how great they look with mature plants in them.
Here are some pictures and I'll keep adding to them. The captions of what they are seen under the photo.
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| Here I started using ropes to get the measurements right before cutting the chain to length. Rose was supervising, as expected. We settled on 18 inches between the bottom of one gutter to the top of the other. |
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| Another view of using ropes to figure out the spacing before cutting the chain. |
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| Chain added between the gutters. This seems to be the most often used system for hanging gutter gardens. It is strong, adjustable and easily replaceable, and cheap. Cheap, you getting this theme by now... |
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| #2 Gutter Garden. 4ft gutters fit between the two windows exactly. Far enough from the house for good ventilation, space to walk behind, and far enough out to not bang the house in a high wind. We may take them down and store them in the winter. #3 gutter garden will be along that far side of the window. 4 x 10 ft gutters. |
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| Outside view of gutter garden with chains. |
