Raised Bed Gardens and Lumber Shortages

Sunday, May 24, 2020

Wednesday evening when Jared got off work, we drove up the road a ways and bought three food safe barrels for $15 each. We're planning on using them to build some raised bed gardens. We liked the below plans best:

Oklahoma Gardening by OSU

Thursday we went and bought mulch. 

Friday after we built our compost bin, Jared cut our barrels in half.

Saturday he went to buy lumber, screws and washers. He only got the screws and washers. Lowe's was out of 4x4's again. The effects of Covid-19 seem to be far reaching at times. His first lay-off week we finished the chicken pen and when he went to buy lumber they were out then too. He then went to Anderson's to buy our lumber. That didn't work this time though because he didn't get there until 12:30 and they as well as TH Rogers both close at noon on weekends. 

I decided to use the day making a little flower box from the few good planks left over from the unused quarter of privacy fence from our compost bin. 

A little paint really made it look much better. I added some dirt and a few seeds I had collected last year; Black-eyed Susan's and Zinnias. I can't wait for them to grow and bloom.

That brings us to today...

We woke up later than usual and it was HOT and HUMID. We did not want to work outside. Ashley and I made a batch of soap. And Jared did some organizing around his desk. Then it started to cloud over and cool off (barely). He headed out to straighten up the shed and I met him later to use what lumber we had to make a little progress on our project. 

We measured and cut three 2x4s per barrel. We clamped them in place, drilled pilot holes, and attached them using screws and washers. The video recommends three per side. We used five.

We were dripping wet and pretty tired so we called it quits after assembling two. We'll get the last one next weekend. 

Jared plans to try Anderson's lumber Tuesday after work to buy 4x4s and a few more pieces of lumber. 

Wish us luck.

Until next time,

Becky

Check Lists

Jared has been "laid off" the last two days of the work week for the past three weeks due to the effects of Covid-19 on production lines across the world. He has chosen to spend these long weekends working on my honey-do-lists and a few projects of his own. 

Today we tackled taking our old back fence from Park Drive that was damaged during a storm and turned it into a compost bin for me.

 

We started by cutting it in half....

And then we cut each half in half again. We had three good quarters and we didn't need to use the damaged quarter. 

We then took one of the many old 2x6s that were piled up in the woods of our property when we bought the place and ripped them making 2x3s. We then screwed those together to make corner posts. 

We used some of the 1xs that I had salvaged from the house when it was shipped here. They were used to hold the plastic sheeting on that protected the interior of each half. Anyway, Jared used those to stiffen up the bottoms where the planks had been cut in half. 

Then all that was left was to screw the three sides together. 

There was a lot of hoarded piles around this place when we bought it. One was a pile of bricks. I used a few of those to keep the bin from being directly on the ground  to hopefully prolong the life of my bin. They also promote air flow. 

I placed our bin between my two wildflower patches. I am so excited to have this done!

Until next time,

Becky

Something to Scratch

Today Jared and I purchased a load of mulch from the city. It was only $15 for them to load our pickup full. We were honestly shocked at how full they filled it. Three huge loader buckets full and pressed down between. 

Their three buckets equalled close to 15 of our little tractor buckets if not more. I meant to count but I didn't think of it. Jared shoveled each bucket full all on his own while I dumped each load into the chicken pen. 

Our poor chickens only have rocks and hard compacted clay ground to spend their cooped up days in. They desperately needed this mulch. It also will help with health problems from them walking, pecking and scratching around in their own poop all the time. 

I think they're going to be much happier. 

Here's a picture of what they did have. I think two more truckloads will cover the whole area but that's a whole lot of work for poor Jared. 

Tommorow we have plans for building a compost bin. Severe weather is in the forecast so we'll see how much that hinders us. 

Yesterday I cleaned out the nesting boxes to mulch my garden. While doing that I found this little fairy egg burried in the straw. 

Until next time,

Becky

Garden -- And New Habits

I am terrible about keeping detailed, organized records and even keeping up with records most of the time. I am more of a do-er and it always feels like record keeping is a waste of time. I know that's not true and it's something I want to work on.

Genealogy is one of my many hobbies. While sharing with Jared some of the local news from where my family is from during the early 1900's -- one article mentioned it was a great huckleberry year. My husband remarked that that's something our generation won't have; print snippets of the little mundane things that go on in our lives. That's where the idea to start back on this blog came from. Last year (2019) was a great huckleberry year for us too! This year, not so much. I'm hoping it will be a good year for blackberries though.

With the theme of good harvests I figured I'd start by blogging a little bit about this years' garden. I'm a little late to the game as far as exactly what I planted and when. But there are a few things I can remember, or look back on the seed packets for specific varieties.

Here's the layout of our Garden so far. After the peas, beets, and spinach are done for the season, I plan to plant squash and zucchini in that bed.

This garden sits inside of a 10' x 10' dog kennel we had purchased for our dogs when we first moved out here. Patrick and I lived in the RV while waiting on our manufactured home to arrive and that was a small space for us plus 4 dogs. The kennel also let me leave the property and leave the dogs behind.  Once we had a house we no longer needed the kennel. The wildlife proved a menace as far as growing edible things so I decided to have Jared build me raised beds inside the kennel. It has worked perfectly. The vine crops can climb the chain-link fencing making more room for other crops in our small space. 

This weekend we have more garden plans but more on that when it happens.

Below are a few pictures of our garden.

Peas, beets and spinach

Tomatoes, pole beans, marigolds and basil

Strawberries

Cucumbers and bush beans. 

Future Plans

I have had two bad years health wise --- two surgeries during the summer months of 2018 and 2019. I'm also noticing that my botox for my cervical dystonia is either losing it's effectiveness or causing muscle weakness in my neck which is proving to be just as debilitating, if not more so. I literally cannot support the weight of my own head for very long at all. This is causing me to re-evaluate many goals I had for gardens out here. It's all I can do to keep up with mowing, and weeding is nearly impossible because it requires me to look down, when looking forward is already a struggle. Maybe instead of vegetable gardening I can create natural habitat gardens. Honestly, my family doesn't really love garden fresh veggies anyway. Or when they do, their cravings are short lived.

Years ago I saw a magazine that had a butterfly garden feature. I would love to incorporate something like this out here. Since moving out here, I've noticed a decline in certain creatures and I don't want that.

We have lots of cedar trees out here, maybe this can be my plan for our circle. I have put away seeds for purple coneflower, I have wild yarrow growing already, I wonder how hard that would be to transplant, or maybe I should just plant more.

I have my eye on a large hollowed out tree trunk that I want to ask the hubs to cut in half length way to make two troughs for planting in. The ground out here is terribly rocky making container gardening my best option.

I wish I could remember the magazine that I took these pictures from so I could credit them. 

Here's a few butterflies I've already captured out here:

Spicebush Swallowtail (?) on my sedum.

Fritillary on my Zinnia

Monarch on Cosmos