I finally found a forum that I am really going to enjoy. I live in the city but am definitely a country gal. For the last three years, we have been working on getting rid of our lawn - too troublesome, wastes water and way too much energy used with no gain.

Now I have edible stuff growing in the front and back and will eventually have fences and thorny hedges all around us for privacy. I also began collecting stuff to transform into planters. We are getting older, so the idea of raised bed gardening/containers is appealing. One treasure I found but haven't yet used is a shopping cart. It's one of the small ones, wheels are busted, but once filled with soil and a plant that hangs, it should be great, I think.

Now comes the reason for posting. I had planned to line the cart with peat, fill it with soil and plant something once I decided what to plant. Well, the hubby really likes blueberries. I planted strawberries, blackberries, elderberries, grapevines, a mulberry tree and dwarf cherry trees for me. But the blueberries arrived when I was sick with pneumonia and didn't get planted. The hubby has arthritis much more advanced than I do, so I decided to plant tophat blueberries in three different planters so he can easily reach them. But, I also want to plant a different variety of blueberries in the shopping cart so I can see the berries cascading over the edge.

If I plant blueberries in the cart, then I don't want to line the cart with peat moss, do I? Won't that make the soil too alkaline? Should I consider the black landscaping plastic, with the holes for drainage before adding the soil, or use some kind of mesh fabric? I'm not fond of blueberries myself, had an overdose of them as a teenager; muffins, waffles, pancakes, etc. But, I really think I'll change my mind with our own homegrown berries. (I don't know yet what elderberries and mulberries taste like but I've been drooling over photos while waiting to see the fruit ripen - this is the first year we have fruits! Meanwhile I'm addicted to taking photos of all my fruit endeavors while eating handfuls of my strawberries each day.) We also have a couple coral berry bushes and a washington hawthorn hedge growing that we hope the birds will get their fill of and leave more of the other berries to us.

So, what do you suggest I line the cart with to hold in the soil and which variety of blueberries will spread and cascade over the edge of the cart. (I can post a picture of the cart if needed. I didn't post in the fruit forum because I don't want to get laughed at for all the materials I've collected. The hubby calls me a hillbilly farmer - the cart I salvaged is just the beginning.) I'm zone 5 Denver, Colorado and heavily mulch our edibles in late fall. Even after our two blizzards this year, everything is looking great - I think the berries actually thrived under several feet of snow for weeks!