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Re: Drainage and soil for patio beds

I did something like this once. My biggest concern was to keep the plywood
bottom from rotting. Where I put it there was no way to repair it if it dropped
it's bottom out. 
	I cut a 1 inch hole every foot, put a hardware cloth teepee over each one then
polyutethaned the whole thing. I careully piled large stones around the teepees
and put gravel on top, then more hardware cloth over the whole bottom, mulch,
then my soil.
	This gave me almost three inches of airy space between my soil and the plywood.
Drainage was good, and the sides didn't dry out the soil nearly as much as, say,
a clay pot does.
	It lasted 10 years that I know of, but was very expensive. I am sure that you
can do something similar with less effort that will preserve your bottom while
not drying it out too much.

Andy Gray wrote:
> 
> We've built two simple redwood boxes (2' x 4' x 8", with a sheet of
> plywood on the bottom) to do a little square foot gardening on our small
> concrete patio.  I was planning to drill some holes in the plywood and
> elevate the box on some 2x4s for drainage.  However, I've read that the
> soil tends to dry out in containers and needs to be watered more
> frequently, so I was wondering if it would actually be better not to
> drill holes in the bottom.  Any thoughts on this?  If holes are a good
> idea, how many and how large holes would you recommend?
> 
> Also, we've been planning to use Mel's 1981 container soil recipe (1 pail
> each vermiculite, peat moss, compost, and topsoil, 1 cup lime, 2 cups
> fertilizer, 1/2 pail charcoal) to fill these beds.  I noticed yesterday's
> soil recipe discussion with interest: any other (perhaps more economical
> than vermiculite) suggestions for container soil for beds like this?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
>  -- Andy
> 
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