Capitol Tilth

I meant to start writing about my garden plans right from the very beginning. But I've been so busy with the gardening that I just haven't gotten around to it until now. So I have a lot to write about. I want to write about my motivation for creating this garden, and this blog. And I will. But for now, I just want to get into the first project.

This project was inspired by the idea of a circular planter (from Gaia's Garden and probably elsewhere) and my lack of space. The goal was to make up for what I couldn't have in square footage in verticality and smart design.

I was doodling designs and almost immediately the idea of a planter based on overlapping octagons came to me. So I drew it up in Inkscape so I could go get the lumber and get started. This is the inkscape version of the final design, the initial design was a bit different - the numbers are so I can keep track of what's planted where.

One of the hardest parts of implementing the design was choosing what to make it out of. I settled on ACQ pressure treated 2x8's, which may or may not be a controversial design for an 'organic' garden, but I'll write more about that later. I borrowed my friend's compound mitre saw, and got chopping.

There were a lot of missteps making the first two layers - I assembled them completely by my garage, only to need to dissassemble them in order to move them to my parking strip. But I learned a lot and the rest of the layers went much more smoothly.

Upon seeing the partially completed first 3 layers, one of my friends excellently suggested that I might as well add another, and the result is the 4 layer design pictured at the start of the blog.

I initially assembled only the exterior portions of the planter, which left the entire inside open to the public. Some of my neighbors thought it was a burning man project. Neighborhood kids were looking at it, puzzled, before deciding to dance around in the middle of it. My roommate was utterly confused.



At this point, I realized I had positioned the planter the wrong direction for the light, and that really, I should be digging down a bit for added structural stability. So I dug a hole where the planter would eventually go, and then talked my room mate into helping me move and rotate the planter into place. Now all I had to do was cut the rest of the pieces for the interior and assemble them. This turned out to be about as much work as the outside, but I was much better at doing it by this point, so it went pretty fast. Here it is done (you can see part of the second planter in this photo, oops...):



So, I apologize for the lack of attention to storytelling or even an attempt at creating an interesting narrative. I'll try to do better with that next time. For now, I'm glad just to have gotten this up!