A Second Trellis

I got the second trellis in. The bed still has a few onions from over winter (what do I do about their eagerness to flower?), and a leek.

This one may get cucumbers and tomatoes and beans, and maybe a few nasturtiums.I'll probably add some carrots (proximity to tomatoes is supposed to give them excellent flavor, but small size), some leeks & onions, some lettuce & herbs.

The other one is destined for squashes, maybe a melon, and some more nasturtiums. I might throw some sunflowers, lettuces, maybe a bit of corn into that bed also.

A tentative goal is to have lots of sage scattered around, maybe some thyme and marigolds.

New Old Shovels

I rebuilt a couple of shovel handles this weekend. I really like how they turned out.

The top shovel was cut down from a regular, $10 variety, garden shovel. The shovel blade is now about ⅓ smaller than a "normal" shovel, and it's Milady's favorite gardening shovel. 

Unfortunately, she used it for prying last fall, and broke the shovel handle, right at the base of the blade.

The second blade came without a handle from a relative's estate. I had another busted shovel handle. 

So I put a new belt on my 6" belt sander, and took up the foreshortened shovel handles. I tapered them down to fit the blades, riveted them on with framing nails, and then sharpened them on the grinder. Not quite sharp enough to shave with. Then I sanded the handles down (they were old and splintery).

Both shovels are about 4' long now. That is actually a pretty good length for our raised beds and our modest size flower beds. And both shovels are not not-quite-razor-sharp, though that won't last real long.

Milady loves her smaller bladed shovel in the flower beds, and I like the long blade of the square one for turning the soil in the raised beds. It digs deeper and brings up more from the depths, and I think I end up with a better garden bed; certainly it's tilled deeper than with a regular, full-size shovel.

 

A New Compost Bin

 
So we've had these two tiny compost bins. They're tidy, and they're cute, but they're small! They've  been full since the middle of summer, and we're just getting into the heart of the compost season.

And now we have chickens!

Chickens generate a really substantial amount of compost. We use pine shavings in the coop and the nest boxes themselves, and we put straw on the ground of the run underneath.

And chickens poop all over the place, so we change the pine shavings out weekly, and the straw out pretty consistently.

Our tidy, tiny, cute little compost bins have been completely overwhelmed by the amount of compost from the garden and the lawn and the chickens and the landscape trimmings and whatever else we've thrown at them.

So we have started another compost bin. You can see that it's not the least "cute" and while it's tiny by the standards of some farmers I have known, it's big enough to handle what we're going to throw at it.

Yep, it's just three pallets screwed together. I've been adding (and will continue to add) some better siding where it's kind of thin, but we're excited about the increased capacity.

And it will be so much easier to turn the compost as it ripens. That will be really nice.

As it fills up, we'll add something across the front if it turns out we need it: cedar fence boards are cheap and probably sufficient. Or a piece of another pallet. 

And we're expecting a whole lot more compost to be ready for the gardens come spring!

Hanging Pots, an Old Fashioned Way

I have discovered several advantages to hanging plants, instead of setting them on a shelf.

• Hooks in the ceiling are cheaper than new shelves. 
• They block the sun way less for the plants beneath them.
• You can push them out of the way to reach the ones beyond them. 
• I've got hooks set up along the edge of my garage: lots of free room. 

But buying store-bought hanging planters is expensive, so I make my own. Here's how I go about it.

I start with a heavy duty plant pot (which I get free by scavenging behind Home Depot [I have permission] during the gardening season). I buy bulk chain from inside Home Depot and I cut it to length.

Punch holes in the perimeter of the pot, and work a cut chain link through. Use pliers to close the link.

Hook the other ends to the end of a short length of chain. I usually use around 18 inches for this piece: I want it to hang down from the ceiling far enough to be able to water it & admire the growing plants.

(This one has nasturtium seeds in it: it'll go outside once it starts blooming, to attract bees.)

The other end of the chain has another cut link (that's how you cut the chain into shorter pieces). Hook it into the eye in the ceiling.


 

I made a special tool for reaching the hooks in the ceiling when I can't reach them.

It's just a re-shaped L-hook (or any hook), attached to the end of a handy stick. This one's about 4' long. I glued it in, and I wrapped the end of the stick in wire to keep it tight.

Oh, I also put up a piece of rebar, specifically to hang a lot of pots from. 

Some Custom Garden Tools

I guess I'm just one of those guys that likes tools. If I can't find the one I want (or if I don't want to buy it), I may make my own. 

These are some of my greenhouse tools:

I cut down a shovel (we had too many) for use as a scoop for the soil bin. Best for filling the large plant pots.

I made a weeding tool out of a large fork from Goodwill (35ȼ). Most useful in the herb gardens and the very largest potted plants.

I added a longer handle to an old weeding trowel too. Makes a nice tiny shovel, and it's the perfect size for filling the start pots, or for transplanting those starts into the garden.

That top tool is a tiny hoe for potted plants: a piece of scrap steel and a dowel, attached with boy-scout lashing skills, and cleaned up with some shrink tube.  Best tool I've ever had for weeding potted plants, and the dowel works great for poking holes in soil to put onion starts or large seeds into, also.

And underneath is a bench brush. We get dirt all over the potting bench fairly often. This fixes that. It's actually the tool I use more than any other inside the greenhouse. I think that's funny.

I made a larger scoop from another busted shovel too. (We had an excess of shovels from a couple of estates this last year or two. Expensive shovels, but we want to use them somehow.)

The larger one hasn't been nearly as handy as the smaller one, but it's been good for mixing soils in the wheelbarrow and for scooping compost onto the garden.  

In the garden, there's nothing as useful as a shovel. But sometimes a more modest shovel  is more useful. 

The green one on the right is a child's shovel. Nice & small, but too light-duty to do any real work. So I took yet another spare full-size shovel and cut it down for the center one, and then I sharpened it (it isn't quite sharp enough to shave with). It fits my sweetie's daintier hands really nicely, and it has all the strength of the full-size shovel from whence it was made. They were so helpful, I ended up making two of them.





 

Tenga Hoe!

I just love saying, "Tenga Hoe!" But it's not really a greeting, it's a tool.

Specifically, it's a tool from a gardening friend who has forgotten more than I know. It's a great tool for potted plants: cleaning them, weeding in them, breaking up soil in them, fighting off both spiders and hungry children!

It's been a freakin' godsend for potted plants. And it's amazing for weeding the raised beds outside too!

An Appealing Tool

OK, that was a cheap attempt at a pun: an aPEELing tool. Yeah. I know. Kinda lame.

This is an apple peeler. Actually,it's an apple Peeler, Slicer and Corer, all in one.

Application is really easy: stick the apple on the tines on the end of the spiral, and begin turning the handle.

The apple rotates against the peeling blade (which is adjustable: thin or thick), and then through a coring piece with a slicing blade.

Pull the spiral-cut apple off and slice through it, top to bottom, and lay the slices into your apple pie or (even better), your dehydrator!

How does it work? Splendidly!

Plus you get some really good food for your worm box! Woohoo!

Coping With Aggressive Mints

It's relatively common knowledge that if we give it the chance, mint will take over the world.

I don't particularly want the mint to take over my world. So I contain it. This is the part of the herb garden that contains the mints. (This is early March.)

You can't see it real clearly, but the mints are planted in what appear to be planter pots submerged beneath the surface of the soil.

This is the peppermint, with a closeup of the "pot" it's planted in. Those are not planter pots. Planter pots would be too small for healthy growth, and since all planter pots have drain holes in the bottom, the mint roots would easily escape through those holes to take over the world.

These are 30" sections of PVC water pipe. They were left over from a development in the area a few years ago, and I was given them for this purpose. I cut them into reasonable lengths and buried them in the soil. Thirty inches is deeper than even mint roots are able to go, so we're safe from the mint apocalypse, at least for now.

To help them drain, I filled the bottom foot or so with 1" drain rock, with a foot of good soil, and another foot of good compost over that. The area between the pipes is mulched to help keep other weeds and things down.

I'm not pleased with the spacing, so I put other things (including chives) in between, often just setting a planter (tarragon? savory? oregano?) on top of the mulch between them.

The red door greenhouse is new, but this herb garden has been in place for a few years (even if the mint is kind of weird this year!). It works well.

Trays for Plant Pots.

I needed to make some trays for holding all of these planter pots I'm filling with starts. So I looked around for some building materials.

I've collected a few old license plates over the years. It turns out they're good for something: making cool looking trays out of!

Method: make a frame (out of an old 1x1 bean pole). Be sure to overlap the corners. Then attach the plates to the back. I used a staple gun - the variety that is powered by an air compressor. Screws would also work nicely.