Garden Update
We built a new framed bed on Sunday. It was a man’s day in the garden. J and I started out the morning by loading up the oversize pallets used to transport stone counter tops onto the trailer to haul out to the “country house”. Once there we made sure to ice up the Coronas and place them in the shade and opened up a couple of cold, less than top of the line cans of brew. On days like this this cold and cheap beats warm no matter the quality.
We tossed the pallets onto the ground, and I grabbed the wrecking bar to pull the 2×4 pieces apart. Since they were built to carry counter tops, they each consisted of something like seven 12′ 2x4s, eight or ten 31″ 2x4s and the cheap planks secured to the top of the upper 12′ 2x4s. The planks are not salvageable and will become fuel for the fire pit that we have only thought about. The 2x4s became a single framed bed, 48″ wide, 12′ long and 14″ deep. Assembling the frames took only a short amount of time. Tearing the pallets down, drinking beer, and eating pizza took most of our day. Of course with the sun beating down on us we were required to consume large amounts of water as well.
Once the frame was built up, we carried a bale of straw over and dumped it into the frame. I used the garden fork to break off “flakes” of straw about an inch or so thick each which we used to line the bottom of the frame to smother the weeds that the frame was placed over. A couple of days ago we got 25 gallons of sheep manure to add a layer over the top of the straw. I’m thinking that we will want another 25 – 50 gallons of sheep manure, then we’ll layer loose straw. We’ll start another one or two of these frames over the next month or so and that might be enough for now. This will give us three raised/mounded rows and three frames – all about the same size. The frames are much more uniform than the double dug beds we prepared in the spring. And we might just be able to build a hoop house over the top of two of these new frames – we’re still a little slow on deciding to do that or not.
In the meantime, we have bid on a pickup truck and pickup bed water tanks for use on “the farm”. It’s a sealed bid that closes in about a week. If we don’t get the truck or the water tanks we still can borrow the truck we’ve been borrowing and there are other water tanks for sale around. It would be nice to have our own for use whenever we want instead of having to schedule it, but beggars can’t be choosers.
