Plans to Build a Garden Box and Fall Gardens

I have plans.  I always have plans.  But one of my plans this fall is to build a raised gar­den box the size of a table I have on the deck of my apart­ment.  It is wor­thy invest­ment, assum­ing I am going to stay in this spot for the next cou­ple of years so I can reap the reward of fresh veg­eta­bles, and even can or dehy­drate some of them depend­ing on what I plant.  What I am find­ing is that it is going to be quite the lit­tle project how­ev­er, because not only does it need some depth for any rea­son­able sized veg­eta­bles, the water sup­port sys­tem and drainage sys­tem that I am going to have to design needs to account for where the water will go, whether or not I should hold it in a tank so that it can be recir­cu­lat­ed to the gar­den, and where am I going to drain it to since I am on a sec­ond floor apart­ment… A few good ques­tions.

I only thought of this, because I had plans to build a gar­den box ear­li­er this sum­mer so I could plant a fall gar­den.  Did you know that the fol­low­ing plants thrive in cool­er weath­er:  car­rots, broc­coli, cau­li­flower, Brus­sels sprouts, turnips, lettuce(s), cab­bage, beets, cucum­bers, kale, mus­tard, onions, radish­es, and spinach?  I thought this was inter­est­ing.  In fact they say that spinach that grows in the extreme heat gets a very bit­ter taste to it.  I won­der if this is why dan­de­lion is so bit­ter, as it grows all sum­mer long in the heat.  Now some of those veg­eta­bles (based on my research) must be plant­ed in July or August where I live, because they need the heat to sprout, but once they do, they will thrive in the cool­er weath­er, less a frost mind you.  To pro­tect from frost a can­vas or burlap blan­ket should be used at night to help insu­late from the cold air.

Liv­ing in an apart­ment makes it hard to have your own gar­den and fresh veg­eta­bles.  Even when I go to the farm­ers mar­ket here in NJ (there are two of them with­in two miles of my place) the veg­eta­bles have come from some whole­saler some­where, and not local grow­ers.  Not a true farm­ers mar­ket.  There’s noth­ing like bit­ing into one of your own home grown toma­toes, corn, radish­es, car­rots, etc.  The fla­vors are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent from the cor­po­rate farm har­vest garbage they put out at the gro­cery stores or the real fake farm­ers mar­kets here.  That is one thing I miss about rur­al  Penn­syl­va­nia, where I am from.  Home grown veg­eta­bles, and grass fed buf­fa­lo and beef.  Sor­ry, had to get the meat ref­er­ence in there.  Hope you don’t mind…

Once I have the mate­ri­als for the raised gar­den box, I may video record it as I go along and YouTube it for every­one to see…