• Allison Miles •
• Originally published April 25, 2011 at 10:36 p.m., updated April 25, 2011 at 10:36 p.m.

• MORE INFO
  
  Looking for advice when it comes to starting a garden of your own? The Victoria County Master Gardener Association might be able to help. For more information, visit www.vcmga.org or call 361-575-4581.

TELFERNER - An aluminum boat sat behind Leon Mozisek's Telferner home, its silver exterior gleaming in the afternoon sun. But it didn't hold fishing supplies or evidence of the day's big catch.

Instead, it was host to red potato plants.

The boat is the newest addition to an organic garden Mozisek created with out-of-the-ordinary items such as dredging pipes and cattle wire.

"So many people just plant gardens in wooden containers," he said, explaining a friend got him thinking about gardening to begin with. "I thought, 'Why not use things that have some longevity?' That's how it got started."

Mozisek began his project last year with long plastic dredging pipes that, as an oil company employee, were readily available. After cutting the discarded pipes open, installing soaker hoses and filling the pipes with a special blend of soil, he was ready to go.

Today, tomatoes, squash peppers and other veggies grow in rows while climbing beans work their way up cattle wire.

The best news? Mozisek said upkeep is relatively simple.

The pipes' curved sides mean moisture stays inside, he said, and plants only require about 15 minutes of watering at a time. They also remain weed-free and require no tilling.

The boat, which washed ashore at Galveston's Bolivar Peninsula after Hurricane Ike, provided another worry-free planting zone.

"You don't even have to have a green thumb to garden like this," he said. "Really, anybody could do it."

Mozisek doesn't do it alone.

He maintains a busy work schedule, never knowing where he'll end up throughout the day or when he'll return home, so his wife, Frances Mozisek, helps where she can.

Her main job is watering but she wraps plants and even switches on the electrified fence, which her husband powers with the tractor motor, when necessary to keep deer and other wildlife out of the garden.

A fan of home remedies such as Vaseline and sugar to cure a cough and bacon slices to heal a cut, Frances Mozisek said she also employed that logic in the garden. She gave light bulbs a spritz of red spray paint in hopes birds would confuse them for tomatoes and leave the plants alone.

"I never thought that would work," she said, explaining the tip came from a friend. "But they really haven't touched them."

Regardless of her help, she passed credit for the garden on to her better half.

"This is his baby," she said. "He's the one who knows what he's doing."

Although Leon Mozisek said he's pleased with the project, he said he doesn't expect to add anything new in 2012.

Last year's crop was so big, he gave vegetables away, he explained, and he added even more this time around.

"I think I'm good," he said with a laugh. "I like what I'm doing, but we don't need to go any bigger."

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