I’m working on a more substantive post about my efforts to change my personal food culture which I had hoped to post today, but it’s just not going to happen. I’m too tired to focus well on that sort of writing. Why am I tired? Well since one of my goals with this blog is to share the various projects I’m trying around the homestead it seems appropriate to throw together this post about the reworking of one of my garden beds which has been today’s prime task.
I made raised beds several years ago using wood to form the edges of the beds. No big surprise that over time that wood has started to rot and lose its structural integrity. So about two years ago when I was getting a delivery of stuff for building my greenhouse I realized for no additional charge I could add on 6 pallets of cinder blocks, with the thought in mind of redoing some of my garden beds with them. I used these blocks for the beds in the greenhouse, and for the base of my rebuilt well house, however I never quite got around to remaking the outdoor garden beds as first planned. Today, was a gloriously warm spring day and so I decided to start tackling that project.
I chose to redo the two long beds in front of the greenhouse as they are probably in the worst shape. You can see in this photo what they’re starting out as this year. My supports for pole beans or snow peas finally gave way and collapsed over the winter. So my initial task was to remove the old rotten wood sides.
I wasn’t quite sure just how wide the revised beds would be. Since I was going to be using cinder blocks they more or less force me to work in 8 inch increments. I laid out one end to figure this out. My desire was to keep the beds about the same width. It turned out that 3.5 blocks wide was just about perfect. The downside is that my aisle space between these two beds is going to get considerably narrower, but I should be able to deal with that.
Most of the day’s work was spent getting the first layer of blocks put in place. My goal here is to get them at least relatively level, fitting snug up next to each other. The bed is about 25 feet long, and I’m doing this all by hand with a simple shovel so I’m not going to concern myself with fluctuations happening over the whole length. So long as each block is fairly level compared to the ones immediately on each side I’m good with it. Still, even this meant I had to build up some areas with a bit more dirt to get this rough level.
Once the first layer was laid down it was easy in one sense to just start laying down the next two layers of blocks to build up the height. This part went quicker. Though it was not as easy in that it was much more of a workout! I was constantly walking back and forth across my property hauling a dolly load of cinder blocks at a time, setting them in place, and going back for more. Basically I was lifting a lot of weights today, and that is why I’m too tired to tackle more substantive writing for the post I had planned to do today. I’m just exhausted. Clearly I need to do more of this to get in better shape!
I still need to repeat today’s labors on the second bed. Then I’ll need to get both beds filled up with more soil. I believe this latter task will also require another truck load of topsoil being delivered. I’ve still got some to use left over from the greenhouse project, but I don’t think it will be enough.
I’m not sure how these cinder blocks will work out for the raised beds. My thinking was that they are relatively cheap, costing me less than $1 each with delivery. They won’t rot like the wood does and so should last a much longer time. I’m sure that over time the ground will shift and the sides might begin falling, but I don’t see any reason why I couldn’t just take them apart, level the base and stack them up again. I’m also hoping the added height will provide a bit of discouragement for bunnies in the sense that they’ll have to make an active effort to see what’s growing up there. Right now they just trip over the tender new plants while casually hopping about. The openings along the top of the blocks should work well for putting poles in to offer supports for climbing plants, yet also allow me to easily reconfigure where these poles are each year. Finally, I’m thinking the extra height will be good for drainage for the plants. This area is known to flood, esp. in the spring when the water level is just a bit below the surface of the ground you see.
I expect I’ll post update shots as I finish up and plant out these beds. We’ll see how they do over time.
Another little tidbit I thought I’d quickly share here today is how the mass bench of my rocket mass heater has worked beautifully as a warming bench for starting seeds! I thought this would happen, but wasn’t sure until I tried it. My seeds have thus far germinated WAY faster and better than they have in the past when I didn’t have any sort of warming bench. Frankly I’m shocked at how quickly the lettuce and tomatoes sprouted. I swear it was only a few days!
I should probably note that this might not work on every rocket mass heater. There is a risk that the bench could get too hot for the plastic seed starting trays I’m using. However, I had enough data on specifically how my heater has performed to know my bench top doesn’t get that hot. I have the heat exchange pipes buried far enough down in the mass to avoid serious hot spots.
As these sprout I’m going to move them out to the greenhouse. Out there they will get much better sun, and be exposed to wider swings in temperature. My hope is that this will let them grow better, be less leggy than my starts normally are, and help to harden them off a bit more initially than keeping them inside my home does. We’ll see. I just moved these ones out to the greenhouse today. If they can’t take that shock then they might all be dead tomorrow! Should that happen I do at least know I can get more started quickly on the heated mass bench.
Studio Snippet
Since I’ve been sharing the slow progress on this piece in other posts here I figured I should let you all see where it has developed to. I chased in the layer of design I had worked out in the last studio snippet. Now in this photo you can see where I’ve begun adding texture to what I envisioned as a background area. This is to help establish a strong foreground to background relationship.
In this next shot you can see the piece after I’ve finished all the chasing work. Once I was done with the background texture I sat with the piece for a bit and came to the conclusion that I wanted a more deliberate texture on the foreground elements. So I spent a few more hours going over it all with a wide “dot” tool to gently stipple the surface.
Before the week is done I hope to have this piece fully complete, along with a small batch of others I’m finishing up. I’ll share a completed photo in a future studio snippet.
I’m happy to have a site where I can again allow comments. (I had to shut them off on my main website because the spam was simply uncontrollable!) So please I encourage you to share thoughts of your own. My general rule about comments though is just to play nice. Differing views are fine, but I’m not interested in engaging in or moderating verbal fights. If I feel things get out of hand, by whatever criteria I decide, I’ll just start blocking or deleting things.