First Veggie Box Built

The first veggie box is officially built and is looking awesome! It was quite a simple process and all of the wood slotted together really nicely. We opted for pre-treated wood so it would have no trouble with the elements when left outside. The overall size of the box is as pre-planned, 1ft (w) x 3ft (l) x 1 (h) and is large enough to grow a good selection of different plants. Of course you are never going to be able to supply a farmers market stall from a box this size or even give up on your shopping in Tesco's but what it does do is give a good insight into vegetable growing. Lessons learnt from looking after this box will hopefully inspire the participants of the program to go bigger and start to grow more of their own food.

So back to the box and a little more about the construction. After i put together the four sides and bottom, i lined the inside with polythene. The reason for this is really only to give the wood a longer life and reduce the exposure of the wood to constantly wet soil.

Of course with the box being filled with compost and plants the need for water will be and issue if the box does not have any drainage. I took a large drill bit and drilled a number of holes along the bottom of the box to let the water seep through.

When you introduce the compost be sure to give it a real good soaking. This will prepare it well for the new plant.

Taking the plants from the seedling trays is a really easy task. Just pop your finger through the bottom to release the plant and drop into the hole prepared by poking your 2 fingers into the soil. There is a ideal spacing for these plants but to maximize the space i'm just going for 9 plants per square foot.

Water again afterwards to make sure that there are no spaces around the roots. This is very important because the compost must be compact around the roots to avoid root rot etc.