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My wife asked me to put up a gutter garden. This picture only represents half of the garden (two sections of fence / gutter). The garden provides fresh pesticide-free lettuce and other vegtables for our turtle as well as some herbs and things for us.

The gutter garden is less than $20 to make and everything is available at your local home improvement center. You'll need: a rain gutter, two end caps, a few brackets, a bag of dirt, and some seeds. Hang the gutter, drill some small holes every few inches for drainage, fill with dirt, and plant.

Most shallow rooting vegetables do very well in the gutter garden. Lettuces, radishes, parmex carrots, herbs, strawberries, etc.

thats a cool idea! thanks for sharing very innovative

thats awesome!

Thanks! My wife got the idea from her cousin who in turn found the idea online. Our turtle loves the fresh veggies.

I would love to do that.. but there is nothing green about my thumb . I tried to grow green beans, tomatoes, and cucumbers and it didnt go so well. I got one two tiny tomatoes (that got eaten by birds! They needed more sun but we have too many trees!) and one serving of beans. Then all my water sprite died. Sigh. I am just as good at cooking!

Lettuce is surprisingly easy to grow. It loves water.

just be aware that most lettuces are cool-weather crops. They hate direct sun, (unlike, say, tomatoes) Do they have a little shade respite from the hot sun? Some gardeners cover them with garden cloth. So they're mostly planted in early spring, or fall.
Good luck- Looks great! I want to try this idea...

http://www.gardeners.com/Row-Covers/511 ... lt,pg.html

yeah I have no idea. My wife takes care of that. I was responsible for hanging the gutter, filling it with dirt and posting the picture on this thread.

We tried lettuce but it didnt work out. We have a TON of wildlife in our yard. Lettuce got dug up 12 hours after we planted it lol

well hey at least you have lots of trees and wildlife in your yard that sounds cool! i think id rather have that than a garden anyway
maybe you could cover your garden with chicken wire to keep the critters out?

Yeah, I am in WV.. we have all sorts of stuff in the yard. Tons of squirrels, moles, bunnies, possums, raccoons, and chipmunks. And also the occasional deer. I have a very active yard lol. We will probably do that next yet. We want to do something that looks nice though.

(BTW my mom and I are neighbors in case you are wondering)

sflemin2 wrote:Yeah, I am in WV.. we have all sorts of stuff in the yard. Tons of squirrels, moles, bunnies, possums, raccoons, and chipmunks. And also the occasional deer. I have a very active yard lol. We will probably do that next yet. We want to do something that looks nice though.

(BTW my mom and I are neighbors in case you are wondering)

We have a bunch in our yard also. That's why the gutter garden is nice.. it's elevated. The squirrels and racoons leave it alone somehow.

We have more squirrels than anything. My office has a porch right outside the window and theres always 3 or 4 chasing each other on the chairs. Bird feeders are now officially squirrel feeders haha