The Cost from the Bottom Up

I had a bit of criteria for my attempt at this garden for the summer of 2011. The previous year, I had three buckets for a garden, and it didn't leave me a lot of room for variety. With this new garden layout, I had a lot more room to play with. I wasn't going to be too picky though. Mostly, I wanted it to be 1) under $100 to build and 2) not permanent. I don't want to live in the apartment forever, so I want to be ready to leave if the opportunity presents itself. But, if I'm going to put a lot of time into something like gardening, I don't want to have to walk off and leave it all behind. I decided the first priority for my garden was to make it easy to deconstruct and transport if necessary.

The pieces to my puzzle

Originally I wanted 5 gallon buckets to hold cement around my posts. However, to keep it even easier to disassemble, I settled on cinder blocks, one for each of my two posts, and I set them on the ground with the extra hole in opposing directions. I put the pole into a hole and braced it with 2x4 blocks we had laying around from previous projects and tightened the hold with shims (also spares) to keep the poles braced upright.

• Two cinder blocks $1.58 each - $3.16 total

 I didn't want a huge garden. Davis (in my first blog post) had three posts with four pipes hanging, two on either side, and that looked too big to me. I decided on a shorter set-up, so I purchased two 4x4x6 weather treated poles to hang my pipes on.

• Two 4x4 poles $6.50 each - $13.00 total

PVC comes in 10' sections, so with the shorter length, I figured I could buy two pipes and cut them in half. My husband's grandpa offered to let me look through his scrap pile and see if there were any pieces I could salvage. I decided to see if I could add the three extra pieces (one full, one half-length pipe) I took from him and add it to the two full pipes to give me more growing room.

• Two 4"x10' PVC pipes $10.68 each - $21.36 total

I was fortunate to have gotten the drill we used the year before to put up my flag, so that didn't count in our purchasing costs. Neither did the 2" hole bit we borrowed from Grandpa. 

To fasten the pipes to the poles, I used galvanized hanger tape and 8 x 1 - 1/4" lath screws.

• 25' roll of galvanized hanger tape $4.08
• box of lath screws $5.24

For the ends of the pipes, I needed something that would let air in and keep water in as well. I picked fiberglass screen as my material of choice and cut squares that would cover the ends of each pipe. To hold it on, I used two black 18" cable ties; one before the screen went on to create some resistance, and one after, placed inside the first, to hold the screen onto the pipe.

• 36"x84" fiberglass screen $5.98
• Two packages (15 each) of 18" black cable ties $5.75 each - $11.50 total

I didn't want to have to worry about the nutrients in the soil, so I bought a bag of Miracle Grow (2 cu. ft.) and used less than half the bag to fill all seven pipes. I might have gotten a deal, but I didn't record the price because I purchased it before deciding to plant the pipe garden.

• 2 cu. ft. Miracle Grow Potting Soil (averages around $11)

With tax, that came in right around $80 for materials. Different locations, previously owned or donated materials, timing, sales, etc. will make that number vary, but that was my material cost that summer.

The finished product, with plants already installed!