Spiral Herb Garden at Pasadena City College

With the help and supplies from Cal-Earth the students from Pasadena City College Seeds of Change Club (my son is the president of the club) began to building the spiral herb planter. This is a very interesting project and a way to build up a garden vertically. See pictures below:



They first faced a slope that had to be smoothed out, therefore they got some shovels and moved some dirt.



The earth bags require clean dirt, so they cleared out an area free of compost and debris. The dirt is mixed with other components to form their mixture.



Sharon showed them how to use nails to close the side of the earth bags, so that the content would not come out once they compressed the mixture inside the bags.




They laid out the earth bags before we filled them up.




They used a hoe and a wheelbarrow to mix the dirt and water.They used a 10-1-1 mixture, which is 10 parts dirt to one part water, but they didn’t add the one part concrete.

The mixture would compress but not crumble and not wring like a sponge. Usually, a lower mix of soil is used to water, but their soil mixture required more dirt.





They used coffee cans to fill up the bags with our mixture.




After compressing the bags with the mixture, they finalized the earth bag placement.



They were able to get up to two levels, before calling it a day.

They will work more on the spiral herb garden.