Lettuce Gutters

I got this idea from a gardening forum I belong to.  Someone had posted a picture of gutters that had been mounted on the side of a house and were being used to grow lettuces and other shallow-rooting plants.  I thought it was a great idea that would fill a blank spot on the front wall of our house.  We modified it to look a bit more decorative and keep the gutters from touching the house itself and therefore trapping water against the house and possibly causing a problem. 

Here is the wall we wanted to put the gutters on.




Dave started by mounting two 4x4 posts to the wall.




Then put 2x4s going across to support the gutters.




Attached the gutters to the 2x4s.




We didn't put a gutter on the top row because it would have been too high to comfortably plant, water, and harvest.  We didn't put holes in the bottom for drainage because we thought that it would dry out too much in the hot weather we get here but we should have.  The first planting, things didn't sprout because underneath the very top layer of soil, the dirt stayed too wet.  I will be planting pictures again once it is all sprouting but that will have to wait until fall since it is too hot to try and plant lettuce now.