Wood Garden Boxes in our Permaculture Urban Farm

As we lay our garden boxes in place our urban farm is coming together nicely, but I thought to explain why we are putting garden boxes in this area of our farm.

Our farm "Finca Rossi Naturals" (Finca is Spanish for farm) is located in Rio Grande by the Yunque National Rainforest.  It rains a lot in this area which is awesome for us, but it's not so good for wooden garden boxes, specially for untreated wood like the ones we use.

When designing the layout of our farm, I had to consider the terrain incline, soil type & other variables.  The area we are putting our garden boxes in happens to consist of muddy red clay soil which doesn't drain well, it's hard for a lot veggies to grow well there and very little air penetrates this muddy soil.  So our plan is very simple for this area:

1. Build wooden boxes with untreated wood
2. Fill boxes with good soil & leave a 2 feet walking path between boxes
3. Plan all the good veggies we want to grow
4. Years later (4-5 years I estimate) when the boxes begin to rot, start removing the boxes and let the good soil spill over the walk ways.  
5. Level the ground with this good soil and keep on growing veggies

In other areas of our property we have build garden boxes out of concrete which will last forever & more importantly will withstand tough tropical weather.  The garden boxes are simply in place to help us grow right away & later on help up level the  area with the soil within the boxes.  

Other benefits of the garden boxes are:

1. Slow down soil erosion
2. Concentration of fertile & nutrient filled soil
3. Easy to manage & catalog what we are growing
4. Easy on the eyes

All the products we sell (seeds, leaves, slips, plants, roots) are grown and harvested in our own permaculture farm in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico.  We do not purchase anything from other farms or vendors, you can be assured anything you buy from us comes from our very property.

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Below is a video we shot today showing the boxes as we finished the last box we had wood for, we just need to fill them up with compost & soil, enjoy.