week nine: planting in dresser drawers

ok, so it's not really "week nine." i'm a whole month behind on my weekly blogging project, so i'm playing catch up here with some projects i did a while ago but that never made an appearance on the blog.
when we first moved into our little studio we weren't entirely sure how long we'd be staying in the place. we have a nice little backyard space, and i was itching to grow things, but i didn't want to plant a bunch of stuff only to move out before we could harvest. so we came up with a compromise: planting in recycled dresser drawers. they provide us a sort of grab-and-go garden, able to pick up and take them with us if needed.

the neighborhood we live near, moiliili, always has a reliable supply of unwanted furniture on the roadside, so we drove around and collected old dresser drawers - ones with solid wood or metal bottoms. we turned these old drawers into planter boxes by drilling holes in the bottom - thanks to popsie's tools.

 we bought some potting soil - which i discovered is not, in fact, soil - but a mixture of peat moss, perlite, and composted material that drains better than regular soil and is good for container gardening. that being said, it's expensive to buy soil - potting or otherwise - so on popsie's recommendation i mixed the potting soil with regular soil we dug from our backyard.

we planted all kinds of stuff in the drawers: taro, kale, collards, chili peppers, yerba buena, okra, mustard cabbage, green onions, thyme, tomatoes, basil, sweet potatoes, and some other things that didn't make it like lettuce, cucumbers, and cilantro.

it was a while ago that we made the planter drawers, so things are growing nicely now. we even harvested our first taro this weekend - more on that in a future post. we also decided to stay a while in our little studio, so we've started planting in the ground, too.