Recycling for Food

Last weekend I built the first raised bed of the season - a very HIGH raised bed, as it turns out. Since I'm enthusiastically embarking on growing a lot of food this summer (documented thoroughly at http://www.reclaimingdinnerproject.blogspot.com/) I'm going to have to create a lot of growing space.

I am fortunate in that we have a lot of space that is available for growing: part of the backyard near the garage (out of reach of our leaching bed), "The Back 40", our deck, and I suppose even parts of the front yard. In an effort to not bite off more than I can chew (or plant more than I can weed), I'm starting off reasonably slow: raised beds this year behind the garage and containers on the deck.

Since it doesn't make sense to me that I go out and spend tons of money on things to build my beds (apart from better soil and some hay), I've been trying to figure out ways to create sturdy beds with what I have. So, bed #1 was constructed using some old cinder blocks (leftovers, I think, from building the garage) and old 2x4's that we had lying around (not pressure treated so no doubt they'll disintegrate!).

I'm planning on building some additional ones this week, and have started to amass more wood. My sister is 'donating' old bricks for the cause. I'm also saving up liquor and wine bottles because I thought that somewhere down the road they would make a great border for a little garden (and an excuse to have people over for drinks!)

I've also started looking out for other interesting things to make containers and beds out of. I read an article in "Permaculture" about a girl that planted marigolds in an old pair of Doc Marten boots, which I thought was a tremendously fun and inventive way to reduce reuse recycle. Plus, they looked lovely on her balcony. I was thinking of making a raised bed using wine and liquor bottles, but then I realized that might really say something about me....

It would be an excellent way to live - repurposing things again and again so that the concept of 'garbage' changed entirely. But of course we would have to start to manufacture things that could actually be repurposed, as opposed to being created with built-in obsolescence. Can you imagine the 'antiques' from our generation, being sought out by collectors in the future? Plastic water bottles, cellphone shells, styrofoam packing peanuts. Nothing else that we manufacture is built to last, it's all now disposable, cheap to manufacture and thus cheap to throw out and replace with something newer and more exciting. Which leaves very little for a permanent raised bed to be built from.

Perhaps those non-decomposing plastic water bottles could be filled with sand and turned into an attractive perennial garden border....