Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Construction


With the mental hurdles largely cleared, it was time to get down to business.  Getting the wood home was no small task, but thankfully my compact car didn't get the memo that it's not a truck.  All this wood in the car proved irresistable to this particular small.  Can you blame him really?



After debating cedar or redwood or reclaimed or cinderblocks or..., I settled on inexpensive 2x6 douglas fir.  Each bed would be 4 ft by 8ft and I could add 6 beds total.  I've read on the interwebs that douglas fir will not last as long and isn't as rot resistant, but it will suffice and allow us to give this gardening project a go.  To secure the beds, we used corner metal brackers and screws.  Both the kids took great delight in trying their hands at construction.


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Once we got into the swing of it, they came together fairly quickly.  As soon as we placed them in the front yard it was apparent I had underestmated the severity of the slope of our front yard.  I'll leave it to a a mathemetician to figure out the degree of it, but one end of the 8 foot bed was 10 inches lower than than the other.  It was tempting to just leave it, but a closer to level bed, would give the yard a better look and our plants better conditions to grow in.

The solution to this involed another trip to the lumber yard, diagagnal cuts, additional supports and the dissasmlbing and rebuilding of the already complete beds.  These missteps and the trial and error nature of this project have invited me to slow down and remain steadfast, without an immediate reward.  It's not been perfect.  I've made errors and had to redo the work.  Honestly, if it weren't for the piles of wood in the yard and the insatiable desire of the smalls of my home to build our garden beds, I might have become discouraged and found a reason to let the project go.  Instead, we made it work and two months after my initial wood purchase, we had beds that were ready for planting.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

I suck at blogging

When I set out on this little urban homesteading adventure, I had no idea how hard it would be.  Sadly, I am not talking about the physical work.  That's hard, but I do it, and then it is done.  The hard part is embarking into territory in which is way outside my area of expertise, then standing like a deer in the headlights for fear of making the wrong choice.

We wanted to make raised beds in the front, but that begged the question of what to use.  I could use reclaimed wood if I could find it, but that's not uniform and not always available.  According to many books and internet sources, redwood or cedar are the best bets for applications like raised garden beds.  So I trotted down to the local lumber yard to price them out.  While I am sure redwood is awesome, 6 raised beds would set us back a pretty penny.  I'm optimistic our beds will work out well, but I can't justify spending a ton of money for something I'm just learning.  Thankfully a helpful young salesmen saw the panic and sticker shock in my eyes and suggested I give douglas fir a try.  It doesn't have the same lifespan, but it will do the job and let me try my hand at this without sinking too much money in it.

With that decision made, I had to think about how to fill said beds with dirt.  There are many different schools of thought on this, all firmly convicted that one way is right and another wrong.  You should use dirt, or compost and mix in vermicilite and peat moss.  Others think peat moss is an absolute no no.  Then at the garden store, there are another half dozen selections with such a wide range it price it was hard to know what to do.  I could have spent anywhere from $40-$140 to fill a bed, depending on what I used.  At one point I panicked and just left the store with nothing.  I was convinced if I came home and did more research or went to another store I'd be sure to find just the RIGHT answer.  Eventually I just went and bought a combination of garden soil, compost, manure, and peat moss.

At this point, I had yet to make decisions about what to plant, how close to plant it, when to plant it, etc.  I had a stack of wood,bags of dirt and an impending sense of doom that this was all a very silly idea.  I was really struggling with this, like losing sleep over why I found it so hard to just put stuff in dirt.  I was so caught up in doing everything just right, in doing it perfectly that I wouldn't do anything at all.

This little voice that says "only perfect or not at all" stands in my way all the time.  I think about getting out a blog post, but then stop because I think "oh I should have pictures, but the lighting is bad so I can't take pictures."  Or then I think, "It's been so long since I blogged, that I better make it masterpiece if I'm going to bother at all."  The end result is the same; I get nothing done.

So I finally decided I just needed to build some beds, add some dirt, throw in some seeds and watch magic happen.  I did just that, it was cathartic, and our winter garden is sprouting.

More to come, as soon as the lighting is perfect, the yard picked up, the camera battery charged...

In the meantime, I am going to continue on my journey to suck at blogging, but at least I'm doing it!