Cluttered CorkBoard

I decided to try something different for my garden this year.
It is going to be a 'testing it out project' for me.

In the past I have had a decent size garden area and
planted several things, usually around 16-20 tomato plants, and so on.
I certainly cannot say that I am fond of all the maintenance it required.
 (crabgrass anyone?)  

So I decided to look into raised beds or planters this year, hoping for less pulling crabgrass maintenance.

I considered building them, and have looked at different idea's in regards to that,
but I have several other projects going on and happened across these planters and
after reading reviews at different website's and searching for the food safety info on them,
I decided to go ahead and try these self watering planters out this year.

( I would recommend anyone looking for a raised planter, or interested in 
these, or something similar that would be used for gardening to definitely
research the food safety aspect of it)

I went ahead and purchased 2 of them so I can get an idea of how I like the raised garden bed idea,
and I chose the blue color.
(they come in several colors)




They are not huge, but I actually like the size for our deck, plus it will give me an idea on sizing
for building permanent raised beds in the future.

I chose to use Organic Raised Bed Garden Soil and have planted one with zucchini
and the other with Tomato Plants. (3 varieties)



I have not actually used a self watering container until purchasing these so I wasn't sure what
to expect.
They have a black tube that sticks up from the bottom of the planter, and that is where I fill it with water. Once the bottom water reservoir is full it has a drain hole on the side that water comes out of to let me know it is full. (Which is also nice if you get lots of rain so the plants don't sit in water)  so basically I watered them a few times at the top until the plant was established, and now I do not
have to water these very often and so my opinion so far is:
 I am a kind of a fan of self watering containers.



I also purchased these Large size grow domes/garden cloches..  I don't ever want to be without them.
(I think I may order a Medium size as well.)
They work like a greenhouse, have air holes at the top that can be opened or closed and also come
with stakes to hold it down.  Although I prefer landscape stakes personally.
I am very impressed at how my starter plants have grown, in fact the plants under the domes
were only planted a very short time before I took that photo.



To try to put that in better perspective, the 2 tomato plants that you can see in the second planter I actually planted the one under the dome a couple weeks after the one that didn't have a dome.
The one with the dome has outgrown the dome quickly, is a much sturdier plant, and
actually already has small tomato's growing.
So am I impressed? Yes..... yes I am.

In fact I have had to remove the domes,  and have also staked my tomato plants.



Because I am so happy with how these are going,
(no crabgrass)  I am definitely wanting to do raised beds.
So it has been added to my to do list and I am debating where I want to put it,
and how I want to build them, design the area and so on.
Hopefully I can get to that soon.

For now I am really liking these and thinking about ordering another
until I get my permanent raised beds figured out.  Small Herb garden perhaps.

Do you have a raised garden bed? If so, how do you like it?
What did you use for the structure, and how they are holding up?

Thanks for stopping by, have a great weekend.