Building a fence

So instead of a driveway, the last 3 or 4 houses on the block (ours included) have an alley that runs behind the houses. We used to have a garage and a full privacy fence that separated our yard from the alley, but the garage was torn down before we moved in and the renovators didn't bother to fix the fence in the back, just the one separating us from our eastern neighbors.

Last year in May we nearly had a home invasion incident and I'm not interested in having that happen ever again. So I'm building a new fence across the back of the lot to keep people from wandering out of the alley and into our yard. It's a private alley, so you wouldn't expect people to generally just end up going down there, but you'd be surprised.

I bought cedar fence planks from our local big box home improvement place as well as 4x4 posts, cement and 12' 1x6 planks as well. I'm using two 1x6 boards to hold the cedar together and then once I have the panels built, I will hang them from the posts. Here are some preliminary images of how the project is going.

From Stuff I Made

From Stuff I Made

As you can see, I leveled the posts and cemented them in. I have a bit of digging to do since the middle posts are in an area that rises up. I was going to build sections of fencing to fit each space, but now I'm thinking about just doing 2 pieces, one 12' long and one 8'. The cedar planks I bought won't fit perfectly within an 8' section and I've already set my posts. If I have to overlap using one plank and nailing it after the whole fence is hung, I think that would be easier than splitting those planks to fit or trying to piece something together.

I've never built a fence before so I'll be honest for anyone in my position. It wasn't easy, by any means. I used the 12' long 1x6s to attempt to get them all the same height. They aren't, by the way. The bubble on my level is within the lines on all of them, but there is one that is slightly higher than the others.

The hardest part was getting them all lined up straight. In the end I had to simply eye it to make sure all the 4x4s matched up. Then the leveling from the sides and the cementing went quick. I chose to ignore the instructions on the bag and only dump about 1/2 a bag of cement per post. This worked well since I also didn't dig my holes 3 times the diameter of the post. They will set for 24 hours and then I can hang the fence. You can sort of see the panels I'm lining up all the way to the right of the second picture. This project will be totally worth the effort as long as I get the fence up straight. I'll post new pictures as I finish.

Grow Lights and Seedlings: A Love Story

This post might be educational for some people. I know this information wasn't common knowledge to me before I discovered it.

I guess I should start with my conundrum. I started much of my garden from seed last summer. I didn't have a grow system, I barely had a starter kit. I didn't have any other place to keep the tray of seedlings so I let them grow on my kitchen table surrounded by windows.

The problem that I had with this method was that the seedlings would grow and the stems would get too long to support the weight of the leaf at the top. It made it difficult to transplant them when the time was right. Now, obviously I can't bring the sun closer to the plants, so this season I bought a couple of cheap shop lights (about $12 each at my home improvement store) and I plan on building a shelving unit to make this work eventually. In the meantime, I have set up a small table using plywood and sawhorses. I then hung the shop light from a pulley in order to raise and lower the light.

Here is the enlightening part. I originally went to my local garden supply store to look at grow lamps. They run about $80 for a small fixture, big enough to light a single planting tray. For almost a tenth of the price, I bought a stoplight, which I have read on many blogs will work just as well during the initial stages of growth as an expensive grow lamp will. You keep it close to the top of the tray and slowly move it up as the plants grow to keep the stems from getting too long. You also get the desired effect of having your plants grow directly upright instead of leaning toward the sunlight.

Here are a couple of pictures of the system I have implemented right now. I bought a jumpstart kit from the garden supply store and I hung the lamp with jute from an antique pulley I had lying around. Obviously, this is temporary until I can afford both the money and the time to build a shelving unit.

From Stuff I Made

From Stuff I Made

Project Update

I finished the indoor hanging planter made from mason jars. It looks pretty good. The final touch was to add a couple of picture hangers to the back of it and find the studs behind all the plaster to get the screws to hold. We already have a few little sprouts coming up and I'm sure there will be more soon. Here are a couple of finished pictures.

From Stuff I Made

From Stuff I Made

Another Beautiful Winter Day

So it has become apparent that Winter is passing us Michiganders by this year. I couldn't ask for anything more. With all the work I have to do before munchkin number 2 arrives, I need all the good weather and time that I can get.

I wasn't going to get started on anything important yet, since there is a high probability that we will get hit with snow in mid May! Instead, I let my anxious nature get the best of me and I got the backyard seeded. I also began working on my flower bed in the front of the house. As long as it isn't raining, tomorrow I plan on going to get a load of compost from the city yards to finish it off.

I think I need to make a checklist of the projects that I am planning to work on this summer. I need some sort of hierarchy of priority to get these things done, otherwise I'll be stuck with more than a few half finished jobs by the end of the season.

In the meantime, here are two more books I recently grabbed to help me out this summer.

From

This is how I plan to organize my raised beds this year. If it works, I'll keep doing it from now on.

From

This book has tons of amazing designs and projects in it as well. More structural stuff than gardening, but I think I have found at least 3 designs I want to make so far.

I recently came across a periodical that I am now subscribed to. I love print and I really love getting magazines in the mail. Since Readymade folded in June of last year, I've been looking for something new to fill the DIY void and this one really hits the spot for the moment. It also happens to (coincidentally) fall within the realm of everything I'm working on right now.

From Stuff I Found

It's called Urban Farm and it basically guides a person like me through all the best ways to grow a large garden in an urban environment, keep bees, raise chickens and just generally follow a sustainable farming model. While I have many of my implements already accounted for, this magazine has given me some new insights into things I might not have considered before. For instance, this summer I am going to plant all of my root vegetables in pots instead of in the garden. Not only will this save me space, but apparently roots grow tremendously well in pots.

This magazine started in 2009 and is circulated bimonthly, which is a little bit disappointing because I hate waiting, but it is worth it's weight in gold as far as I'm concerned.

I'm still looking for a really good DIY replacement for Readymade. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm open.

Chicken update

During the first council meeting, the Ferndale city council voted unanimously to approve an amendment to the ordinance banning chickens. Ferndale residents are now allowed to build a chicken coop in their back yard as long as it is at least 10 feet away from any residential structure.

I plan on getting my permit to build my coop and get it done before the end of the summer, but I think that getting the animals will wait until next summer. Between having a new baby in the house, getting the garden in order, taking care of my 2 year old son and working full time, I don't know that I'll have time to get started taking care of these high-maintanence animals. I doubt I'll want to even consider trying!

So, my plan is to have everything built and in order and then I'll see about getting some full grown hens or some pullets in the Spring of 2013. Building the coop will be a fun project for a few hot summer days when I'm not doing other things around the urban farm. And of course, I'll post pictures and instructions as I'm completing it.

Spring is here...maybe (part 2 of 2)

My indoor projects, which (in contrast to my gardening) are coming to fruition, are all relatively small and easy to do. I haven't fully determined how I'm going to build my indoor grow shelving, but I have purchased my lighting and timers to get it started. I hope to get everything in the dirt by the end of March so that it has all of April to grow and, weather permitting, I can begin transferring my starts into the garden by the second week of May.

Aside from the grow shelves and lighting system, I'm also working on finishing my pantry this weekend. It has been a long time in both planning and execution, but I should be able to make some real progress on it soon. After I'm done with the pantry, I plan on putting another built-in cupboard and shelf unit in my nook for all of my tea and kombucha storage as well as for displaying dishes.

Now, here is the part where I get to teach. I hope to use this blog as a teaching tool from now on, posting small, easy projects step by step that others can copy. My wife found this one online somewhere and pinned it in her Pinterest account.

From Stuff I Made

She wanted me to make one for her craft room, but the one I made had to be painted. So I got the pipe clamps from Home Depot. the mason jars I had were about 4" in diameter, but I wanted to make sure that the clamps would fit so I bought the 3"-5" clamps. I had plenty of room, but I am glad I played it safe.

From Stuff I Made

I used a piece of 1x6 from the planter boxes from last year. I cut it 18" long and got everything ready to assemble. The only major prep work I did was to drill one hole about 11/32" in each pipe clamp to get a screw through and into the board.

I painted the board and got my jars set into place. I then drilled pilot holes for the screws that hold the clamps to the board. I attached the clamps nice and tight and then slipped the jars through each and tightened them down. This is the final product:

From Stuff I Made

The color matches some Ikea shelves that hang in the craft room. When completely done, and hung, these will have a thin layer of gravel in the bottom, followed by a layer of peat or crumbled leaves for moisture retention. The top 2/3 of the jar will have potting soil added and we bought some short stemmed flower seeds (about 3"-4") to grow in these jars. 

And there you have it! The longest part of this project was waiting for the paint to dry. I used two coats to get it nice and covered, but one coat would have worked. In total, this project took me about 3 hours. Very simple and pretty cool looking. This is also a very inexpensive way to keep plants in the house all year long.

Spring is here...maybe (part 1 of 2)

So our lovely state of Michigan has graced us with a zero winter. We have had about 3 or 4 days of actual snow so far this season. The worst storm that we had lasted for about one day and then within two more days all of the snow had melted away because of a warm up. It is March 8th and we have 46 degree weather. Yesterday it reached 67.

All of this warm weather has been bugging me because I feel like I should be out prepping my garden, but I just know that we are going to get a late cold snap that will kill anything I have planted. So instead of getting things ready outside, I'm working on prep projects and other fun things inside.

My lettuce boxes were a miserable failure last year. They grew everything perfectly well, but the design was flawed. The side warped because of the moisture and the ends cracked because I didn't pre-drill for the screws. I also didn't plan the boxes properly to make sure they drained well. I drilled holes, but the ends were constantly dumping water. The other major issue I had was the fact that I never bothered to get the 2x4s hung on my posts so that the boxes could be elevated away from the garden. Basically, I never finished the garden plan.

This season, I'm building new boxes, reclaiming some of the lumber from the old ones and using some new. I plan to line the insides with 4 mil clear plastic to prevent warping and I'm redesigning the rest of the boxes so that there will be no structural failure. I'm also thinking about building 4-two foot boxes instead of 2-four foot ones. I still have to determine which would work better.

This season I also plan to expand from 2-4'x6' raised beds:

From Stuff I Made

to include 2 more 4'x5' raised beds that will lie perpendicular to the existing ones on each end. The 4x4 post in the picture is one of two that serve as the structure to hold up the lettuce boxes.

Wow, this update is already getting long and I have so much more to say. Maybe I'll split it into 2 entries for organizational purposes. See part two for the indoor projects I'm working on currently.