Garden in a Box: 7 Easy Steps to Making Something Out of Nothing

(CLICK PICTURES TO ENLARGE AND ENJOY)

Are you tired of buying all your fruits, vegetables and herbs, but don't have much arable land?  Is your rocky, clay-filled soil getting you down?  Well have I got a deal for you...

It's shit in a box!  Fun for the whole family and NO chemical pesticides OR fertilizers needed.  Come on down and make all your problems go away with these 7 easy steps to your very own food producing...Garden in a Box!  Not to be confused with Meat in a can.  On some level I can see the similarities, but unfortunately, the Garden in a Box is only as good as the real thing.

(New Improved Texture is one of the greatest things I've ever seen)

These boxes come in all different shapes and sizes, but for today we're just going to stick with the age old favorite, the square.

Let's break it down...First grab a clean hoe.

Dig out a square the size of your box so that it will fit evenly without any space for pests to easily access.

Place the box snugly over the outlined earth.  For this example, the box is 25 cm tall, so all measurements are relative to that size.

Place cardboard about 5 cm thick evenly within the border (exact measurements aren't necessary, a best estimate works fine).

Lie about 10 cm of a dried hay/manure blend

The hay tends to puff out like my hair if left unattended for too long, so you want to walk on it to press it down.

Place a nice 20 cm thick layer of manure/soil blend on top of the dried hay.

Follow up with 20 cm of straw

You want to step on this too, to bring down the straw-fro.

Then another great big pile of shit(20 cm)!

Finally, you want to add about a 10 cm layer of compost and your done.  Sow some seeds and you've got your very own farmers market.

Although the most sustainable way to grow food is directly in the ground, different adverse conditions call for different adjustments and there are tons of theories on what works best.  On my trip to Italy, I experienced food grown out of a box of manure and as per our last discussion, food grown in a mixture of raw garbage, soil and compost.  That's a lot of shit to remember, but it seems you can never have too much.  Spring is here and the warmth is coming, it's time to get growing.