Starting at the beginning, we used to have chickens. We loved them lots and while they were with us they destroyed my garden whilst giving us eggs. They were also a bit too much for the space we had so when they reached the natural conclusion of their lives I didn't replace them. This left me with a substantial homemade chicken hutch that I was loath to just get rid of or destroy that was leading me gently towards an idea. In truth it was a kind of convergent thinking really, as other people had clearly come to the same conclusions as I had, just I started off kindof from the other end.
So I stripped the hutch down until it was a table with a framework for putting a cover on later. And Tadah! I had a salad table.
These guys got there first http://www.growit.umd.edu/SaladTablesandSaladBoxes/ but mine was cheaper LOL.
I first set it up on 7th May this year
So Far So Good!
and things started germinating just 6 days later!
The nearest section contains spring onions, radishes and carrots, the middle is all salad leaves and peas (for leaves) and I just had some other stuff on the end.
I was frankly astonished at how well it was going. So I eventually sorted the other end out and planted up the summer cabbages, curly kale some more carrots (round this time) and threw some seeds at the leftover space - coriander and rocket. Again germination was swift and viola!
This is what it looks like now. We've been cropping from it lightly for a week or so already and I'm liking this idea a lot. It's giving me about 10sq ft extra to plant and the slugs haven't yet found it!