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After a lot of hard work digging up a chunk of my lawn to make a veggie and herb garden it rained and the whole thing flooded really badly and stayed flooed for ages after the rain stopped. We get a fair bit of rain all year round here so I figure there would be problems with rotting. I can't raise the garden because I'm only renting. So I figure containers it is probably buckets.

What a shame -just make sure you drill good drainage holes in those buckets though!

And add some broken pots and stuff at the bottom to help drainage too.

I've got some tubs that flood every year, so i keep strawberries in them - i can tip the tubs when they're flooded for a while and the strawberries appreciate all the extra water.

What about growing rice?!

Hi,

What a pain - at least you have found out now, before you had planted everything. How about those plastic clip-together raised beds (not very high) which you can take with you when you go? I think there is an advert on this site for them. If they are not very full you could probably get away with raking the contents over the lawn until flat and taking the bed frames with you when you leave.

Having said that I grew veg in pots for ages - I found that the black stacking rectangular storage boxes (£1 for 5 in the pound shop) worked well with holes in - containers with narrower bottoms don't seem to work as well.

I am sure you have already thought of this. Good luck.

my uncle once grew a massive parsnip in a brewer's bucket. the bucket was about 2.5ft tall. the parsnip got to just under 2ft. my mum has a photo somewhere.

the.fee.fairy wrote: What about growing rice?!

Too flippin' cold lol.

The other day I thought 'stuff it!' I worked hard to prep this garden and I had all these plants waiting to go in. So I downsized the garden and piled on the compost so it was mounded roughly 20cm (8") above the surrounding ground. In went strawberries, peas, celery, silverbeet, parsley, broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage.

The strawberries were placed onto of the compost then had more mounded up around them. I'm free cycling some old net curtains to protect them from the birds. And hoping to get some straw from a farming friend.

It's still quite windy here at the moment and still quite cold at night so the other plants have 3litre fruit juice bottles (with the bottoms cut off) over them.

I'm planning to put in some carrots, onions and basil in when I get a chance.

Oh and i scattered organic fertiliser everywhere. Gonna pick up some beer for bug traps too .

Certain things we don't have room for in the garden, like Sweet Million tomatoes and herbs,we grow in 5 gallon pails

I'll be doing a lot more container gardening next year, because though I have an acre, I've only got 1 spot left to make a new plot

Good Luck
Lois