[tinyallotment]

Thank you for Part II , Paul.

I have a question about the worms: do you collect brandlings from somewhere for this?

I am not a worm expert but "Brandlings" AKA "Tiger Worms" are perfect for your barrel garden. I don't know where to find them locally but I will have a search.

I will fill the barrel with growing medium and start putting kitchen waste in the tube for a couple of weeks before introducing the worms

paul

[Plot46]

Thanks Paul for jogging the old gray matter  I happened on a Youtube vid last year about making these large barrel planters and promptly forgot all about them until your thread. I can get the blue type from work, in fact I've a couple that I've cut in half to use for my carrots this year, that way the fly can't get at them 

I did pop "tiger worms" into uncle gargle and he came up with the good old Flebay Here

[sunshineband]

Thank you for Part II , Paul.

I have a question about the worms: do you collect brandlings from somewhere for this?

I am not a worm expert but "Brandlings" AKA "Tiger Worms" are perfect for your barrel garden. I don't know where to find them locally but I will have a search.

I will fill the barrel with growing medium and start putting kitchen waste in the tube for a couple of weeks before introducing the worms

paul

Thanks Paul. I am thinking that Springtime might be better this time in the year for introducing worms? Do you use  a soil based growing medium like JI2 or multipurpose compost?

and Plot46, good ole Flebay comes to the rescue again-- thanks 

[tinyallotment]

Thank you for Part II , Paul.

I have a question about the worms: do you collect brandlings from somewhere for this?

I am not a worm expert but "Brandlings" AKA "Tiger Worms" are perfect for your barrel garden. I don't know where to find them locally but I will have a search.

I will fill the barrel with growing medium and start putting kitchen waste in the tube for a couple of weeks before introducing the worms

paul

Thanks Paul. I am thinking that Springtime might be better this time in the year for introducing worms? Do you use  a soil based growing medium like JI2 or multipurpose compost?

and Plot46, good ole Flebay comes to the rescue again-- thanks 

I will use a mixture of whatever I can get for free. I am collecting tons on leaves at the moment but I do have a load of composted leaves from the last couple of years plus well rotted manure and home made compost.

I have a few bags of expanded clay pebbles so I will put a cople of inches of these in the bottom to aid drainage

I don't buy anything if I can help it

paul

[Dantheman]

Great stuff.

[tinyallotment]

I make these mistakes so you don’t have to.
I decided to fit the legs today and then fill it up with growing medium to await planting but as with all things DIY things don’t always go to plan.
I thought it was going to be a simple matter to drill the holes in the legs, then drill the holes in the barrel and then just bolt the legs on. I thought it would take a hour, tops. Oh dear. I drilled the holes for the first leg and pushed the bolt through the leg and into the barrel but then I hit upon the first problem. I could not reach down far enough into the barrel to do the nuts up because I had already fitted the compost tube. I tried and tried but in the end I had to drill out the pop rivets and remove the compost tube.
This meant I could access the nuts through the hole in the bottom of the barrel but still working blind with my arm in the hole I scuffed my knuckles on pretty much every turn of the spanner so I think it might be a good idea to fit the legs after you have marked out and cut the grow pockets but before actually forming them. You live and learn.
Here are the legs bolted on at last.



I used nice big washers on the inside of the barrel



I used 40mm M8 bolts with big penny washers



The next problem was getting the compost tube back in the hole which is a very tight fit because the flange at the bottom of the barrel had been heated and then shrunk around the tube. After a bit of chamfering of the tube I managed to get the tube back in but I couldn’t line up the original holes for the pop rivets so I had to drill new holes all of which took time.
All of this took at least a couple of hours and what with the idiotic concept of putting the clocks back I ran out of daylight before I could fill the barrel with soil.
I don’t know how true this is but apparently when an old native American  was told about daylight saving he said ‘Only a white man would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket and sew it to the bottom of a blanket and have a longer blanket.’ I really hope that was true.
So here is the finished barrel garden in it’s final resting place.



I have a few bags of expanded clay pebbles that I am going to use in my future aquaponics system but I am going to use a few handfuls in the bottom of the barrel to stop the soil getting waterlogged.





I have started filling the barrel with soil but I ran out of light so had to knock it on the head for today but for all intent and purposes the project is finished.
The next instalment will consist of filling the barrel with soil and planting it up.
paul

[adri]

I'm going to make several of these for strawberry plants.  Might put them on wheels so I can take the strawbs out of the PT to vernalise.

[tinyallotment]

Good idea

I am going to make a special trolley (modify a sack trolley) to move them around

paul

[sunshineband]

That looks great Paul.

Thanks for sharing your issues with the legs. I can see that is indeed the sort of thing I would so too... and now I won't 

All in all it looks manageable thanks to your very informative photos, and it is certainly on my list as I can get a barrel from where Mr Sunny works I hope 

[grendel]

one tip with bolts etc down barrels drill a clearance hole for the bolt through a long piece of wood, then drill a hole a fraction smaller than the nut in the end, hammer the nut into the wood (this creates the long handle on your spanner, hold the nut in position and tighten the bolt (note this wouldn't have helped you much as you used coach bolts I notice))
alternatively duct tape a socket wrench to a long stick and use the ratchet to tighten it a bit at a time.
Grendel

[tinyallotment]

Creating soil for the barrel garden

As you well know, I hate spending money so just popping off to the garden centre for some compost is not really an option. Last year some kind sole -who’s identity seems to have been lost – dumped about 10 tons of well rotted manure at the allotment for anyone to use. This was great and it allowed me to fill my raised beds without having to worry were I was going to get materials from. This manure pile has now all gone so now I will have to be a little more inventive.
I went up to where the manure had been and noticed that the earth was very dark, almost black but it was full of hard dun dried lumps of manure, rocks, sticks, bits of plastic etc but there was a good couple of inches of nice soil
I filled a wheel barrow with this mixture and took it back to the plot. This is what it looked like.



I decided to sieve this stuff to see what I ended up with and the results were great.



Nice rich dark and crumbly. Lovely.
As I sieved the mixture I took all the plastic and stones out and what I was left with was lumps of dried manue, twigs and leaves etc. I put this in the compost.



I wanted to add some more organic matter to the soil so I turned to the composted leaves from last year. These have really broken down nicely and was full of worms.



This is natures gold. People rake their leaves off the lawn and the drive and take them to the dump and then drive to the garden centre and buy compost. Leaves are the best thing you can compost. It is the what nature makes nice new topsoil. Everybody should compost their leaves each year. I am now composting other peoples leaves as well.
This stuff really hold onto water so the barrel will not dry out even if I don’t water it for a week or so.
I mixed the composted leaves and the sieved manure together in a roughly 50/50 ratio before putting it into the barrel
It really does look like a fantastic growing medium but time will tell.



Next I have to decide what I am going to grow in the barrel garden. I think I will put some of my onions on the sunny side of the barrel and we do have a lot of strawberry plants that need putting somewhere. I really want it to be a random mix of plants.

More soon

paul

[adri123]

Local farmer has offered me some blue barrels so I'll start when they arrive.

Many thanks to the thread starter for the inspiration!!!

Adri

[sunshineband]

To be really honest Paul, that compost you have created yourself from old manure and leaf mould looks 100% better quality than a lot of the stuff you can  buy 

Leaf mould is just brilliant stuff and all for free too 

[Mogman]

Great stuff! At the moment I have less of a veg plot than I'd like so it could well be the answer to my prayers...at least until I convince the long-haired one that we need less lawn! Looking forward to playing with this!
Jon