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plant box border
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Posted by trevor777 6 (My Page) on Tue, Sep 2, 08 at 23:20
| Hey, I live in the city and have a cinder block walled back yard with a concrete floor. I would like to build a large plant box around the parimiter of the yards 3 walls and grow bamboo. It would be a large C being 14'/16'/14'. I was thinking of making it 12" wide and 12" deep, using the concrete wall as one side and pressure treated wood screwed together and calked to the ground as the other wall. I would like the bamboo to grow dense enough to cover the blandness of the wall and give some more visual security where the wall ends (about 7'). Will my design work? Is it beep and wide enough? I am in zone 6, what kind of bamboo should I get (<15' high)? What king of soil should I use? How much drainage do I need? Sorry about all the questions, but I would appreciate any help I can get. |
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RE: plant box border
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Assuming you're aiming for bamboo about 10-12 ft high, a 12"x12" planter seems a bit small - it might be OK, but I'd give it some more width if you can, maybe 18" wide or more. You don't give details about the wood front, but if you make it out of 3 or 4 stacked 4x4's, you need to make it *very* strong to resist the eventual pressure of the bamboo rhizomes. You can attach the 4x4's to each other with big lag screws, but the biggest problem is attaching the botom 4x4 to the concrete slab. Caulk isn't nearly strong enough. Construction adhesive might be strong enough, but it would be better to drill holes into the conrete under where the 4x4's will be, and epoxy big bolts into the holes to attach the bottom 4x4's to. Drainage is important too. You could make 1/2" - 1" holes every foot or so near the bottom of the bottom 4x4's, but you'll probably get some staining of the adjacent concrete from the soil runoff.
You might also check on the "Container Gardening" forum here. |
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