Written by Caleb on June 13, 2011
Katelyn and I, against our better judgment, decided that we might need to add some mulch to our front-yard beds. It needed to be done. Actually, it should have been done some time ago, perhaps when the average temperature was only hot instead of irresponsibly hot. We didn’t, though, and as a result, spent two consecutive weekend mornings on the verge of heat stroke, lugging 30-pound bags of wood chips all over the yard, scouting for patches of un-mulched dirt.
Did I mention it was hot?
Mulching, itself, wasn’t such a chore. It was almost fun. Having to weed beforehand was terrible. First, I just weeded all of this a couple of months ago. Second, we don’t just have weeds. We have prehistoric megaflora from a long-forgotten land. I don’t know where this stuff comes from, but it’s pretty impressive. Katelyn pulled a weed not much shorter than she is.
After the weedstravaganza, we started spreading much. 20 bags of mulch. 600 pounds of mulch. That’s 272 kg if you’re not from the US. 2667 Newtons if you’re a scientist. Either way, it’s a lot of mulch.
Written by Caleb on June 1, 2011
With summer on the horizon, most of our garden excitement is being curtailed by the prevailing heat and otherwise unpleasant conditions for which Arkansas summers are famous. Some of our plants are already complaining, which will certainly lead to a frantic watering regimen in the near future. Somehow, we’re managing to stay outside a fair amount, dodging sunburn, heat stroke, and swarms of gnats, mosquitoes, and 13-year cicadas.
I have a bad feeling about this summer.
The Vegetable Garden
This year’s spring crop did not perform too well. Homer’s infrequent romps through the vegetable bed kept delicate vegetables pretty well trampled. Also, the month of constant and heavy rainfall we received this year caused the vegetables to skip over being edible and go straight to blooming. The grand total of our spring vegetable harvest was about three bites of broccoli. We also harvested a head of lettuce that was so tiny we didn’t feel it was worth the 12 steps to the kitchen to wash it.
On a brighter note, we cleared out all of the spring vegetables to make way for summer vegetables. We planted cucumbers, orange bell peppers and a Juliet roma grape tomato plant, and with its three tiny tomatoes, it is already producing more than our entire spring crop.
New Maple
This year, we had a literal shower of seeds pouring from our maple tree. For months, it seemed, the sky was full of tiny helicopters. Despite the number of seeds raining from the heavens, I was surprised to find a tiny maple seedling in a bucket of daffodils. I have tried a few times to grow a maple tree from a seed with absolutely no success, so of course, when I’m not trying to grow a maple tree, one sprouts on its own. Hopefully, I can keep it alive long enough to plant it in the yard.
Written by Caleb on May 23, 2011
Recently, Katelyn found a set of Penguin book cover postcards at Anthropologie. Always on the hunt for reasonably priced and/or creative ideas for the house, she thought they might work as an interesting decoration for the dining room. They are all bright, beautiful, well-designed, and charmingly British, and the titles range from well-known works like Catcher in the Rye to obscure handbooks about art, Socialism, and poetry.
This weekend, we finally got a start on buying all of the frames for the postcards. The plan is to buy additional frames from time to time to expand our wall of book covers. Before long, our dining room will be a library of frames. Or a framed library. It depends on how you look at it.
Written by Caleb on May 10, 2011
I love the idea of wedging plants into vessels that aren’t traditionally used as containers. I call these ‘found containers’. Instead of going to the local garden center and picking out any old container (and paying dearly for it), I go hunting at thrift shops, garage sales, estate sales, and anywhere else that has old, cheap, second-hand goods.
All you really need is an eye for potential. A quick buff with Barkeeper’s Friend will rejuvenate most metal surfaces, glass can be always be scrubbed, and when all else fails, the right sandpaper can make any surface paintable.
Planting in Metal Containers
First, if you want your pots looking pretty, you’ll probably need to clean them up. Second-hand metal containers are usually rusty and tarnished. Since I was going to keep my pots outside, I didn’t spend a lot of time cleaning them. Chances are that they’ll be rusty again in a couple of weeks. At some point, I’ll start calling them rustic.
Next, since your containers aren’t necessarily meant for plants, you’ll need to add drainage. Doing this for metal containers is pretty simple. Grab a hammer and a screwdriver (the pointier, the better). Turn the pot upside-down and hammer the screwdriver into the pot. Wiggle the screwdriver to widen the hole, and slide it right out. Repeat until you have enough holes to provide adequate drainage.
Now, you’re ready to plant. I planted Bonnie Plants Provence Lavender and Proven Winners® Superbells Saffron in mine for fragrance and color, respectively.
Have you potted your own metal containers? Be sure to let us know. Send your photos to the Plank&Plow Facebook page or my Tumblr feed.
Written by Caleb on May 2, 2011
Last week was a busy week, and this weekend was even busier. Here are all of the reasons why I didn’t do any projects this weekend:
Garden2Blog
Tuesday and Wednesday, P. Allen Smith invited bloggers from all over the country to tour some local gardens and spend some time at the Garden Home Retreat. I got to tag along on Wednesday, hence the adorable lamb photo. Garden2Blog has nothing to do with us not getting anything done this weekend, but it does allow me to post cute pictures of animals.
The Decemberists
Katelyn and I really like The Decemberists. We like them enough to miss a day of work to drive 6 hours to Dallas to see them at the House of Blues. This is mostly why we didn’t do any projects this weekend. We were in another town.
Arcade Fire
Coincidentally, Arcade Fire was playing on the other side of town the next night, so we stayed in Dallas Saturday night, too.
Rain
We got home Sunday with plenty of time to unpack and get out in the garden. However, it was raining. In fact, it’s still raining. Actually, it’s been raining for pretty much all of April.
Written by Caleb on April 25, 2011
We decided to keep our projects light this weekend. Thanks to Easter, the accompanying candy-induced headaches, lack of sleep, and general weariness from the 37 eternities of dreary weather we’ve been having, we were both pretty drained most of the weekend. In search of an easy project, Katelyn thought she might like to plant some hanging baskets for the front porch. Here’s the recipe:
- 2 hanging baskets
- 4 bright green sweet potato vines
- 4-6 red impatiens
- 4-6 pink impatiens
Plant two sweet potato vines on opposite sides of the basket. Mix up the two colors of impatiens and plant them in the remaining space. Simple enough, right?
In other news…
The Plank&Plow Facebook page is live.
Yes, there is now a Plank&Plow Facebook page. There will be updates from all of us (including Homer), photos, tips, questions, discussions, and plenty more. Go like us here to join the fun.
Written by Caleb on April 18, 2011
Friday evening, Katelyn and I went to a charity dinner at Immaculate Conception Church. There was a silent auction happening as well, and believe it or not, one of the items was a homebrew kit. I bid without even thinking.
I’ve been interested in brewing my own beer for awhile now. I’ve been meaning to give it a try, but I keep putting it off for various reasons. Mostly, I had envisioned this lengthy, complicated process with scales and measuring and thermometers and fermenting and who knows what else. What if I botch one of steps and end up with a skunky, IPA/dunkel hybrid? I’d rather not know what disappointment tastes like.
My skepticism is rooted in the fact that I can be a beer snob. My favorites include pale ales, brown ales, tripels, real German kristallweizen and hefeweizen, and lambics. However, these beers, with the exception of the first two, are generally harder to find in my area. When you do find them, it’s usually at a bar, and it’s usually pretty pricey. Hopefully I’ll be able to brew a slew of eccentric beers someday.
For now, I’ll just stick to pale ale. That’s what came with my kit. I’ll post updates as things unfold. In the meantime, my concoction will be living the in the closet waiting for alcohol to happen.
Written by Caleb on April 11, 2011
The beds in my front yard were in need of a little spruce-up. Out of pure laziness, I have been continually putting off mulching them for some time, and as a result, the weed situation was getting a little out of hand. While I had all of my tools, I thought it would be a good time to clean up the edging along all of the beds.
My preferred method for edging is spade-cut edging. It provides a classy, clean look and it doesn’t cost a dime as long as you have a good flat garden spade. It’s not for everyone, though, as it does require a bit of hard labor to get everything just right. Also, spade-cut edging will lose its definition over time, so it will need to re-cut everything so often.
Here’s how I do it, which is probably “wrong”, but it works well for me. First I go around edge of the bed with my flat spade, cutting straight down a few inches. Next, I use a hoe to scrape out a trench along the inside of the bed working against the cut that I just made. Then, I use the spade to clean up the edge and grade the soil back toward the middle of the bed.
As long I touch up the edge with a string trimmer every now and then, the edge should hold its shape for several months.
Written by Caleb on April 4, 2011
A while ago, we purchased a fire pit to be able to enjoy being outside in chillier weather. Also, we like s’mores. Now that the temperatures are rising, we don’t necessarily need the fire pit. I thought about filling the basin with petunias, but really, we needed a table. Instead of purchasing a table, I thought I might try to build a tabletop for the firepit. For less than $30 in materials, I greatly increased the usefulness of this piece of outdoor furniture.
Here’s what you need, more or less. Be sure to measure to make sure that you have enough. For the screws, I used 2-inch, 1 1/4-inch, and some from a grab-bag of leftovers in the bottom of my tool bag. Measure the thickness of your wood to see how long your screws should be.
- 5 6-foot cedar fence pickets ($1.50 each)
- 4 balusters, pressure-treated ($1.00 each)
- A variety of different sized screws
First, remove the middle pieces of the fire pit.
Cut the balusters and attach them together to form a square. The square should fit easily inside the lip that holds the pit’s basin.
Next, cut the pickets. Measure your table and add a couple of inches to the measurement. I was able to get two slats per picket. Rearrange the pickets to create the least amount of gaps between the pickets. Think of it like a puzzle. If your slats overhang the width of the table, you may need to cut some of the width off of the outer two slats.
Now you want to split the leftover picket into four pieces to go around the outside edge of the tabletop. See the photos for a better explanation. You should end up with two long pieces and two shorter pieces, making an even square.
Attach one of the longer pieces to one end of the slats using a screw for each slat. Be sure to align each slat as you work your way across, making sure that everything is square.
The other end of the table should be really jagged and uneven at this point. Mark a line all the way across all of the slats and make one long, even cut across them all. Attach your other long trim piece to this end.
Attach the shorter trim pieces to the sides.
Now, place the square that you made earlier in position in the lip of the fire pit. Place the tabletop on top and align everything. Reach under the table and mark where the square is touching the tabletop.
Flip the table top and the square over. Align the square to the marks that you made and attach it with screws.
Flip everything back over and position the top so that the square fits in the lip of fire pit.
Now you have a table.
Written by Caleb on March 28, 2011
First, I have an update on Homer and the vegetables. Our little mischief maker has discovered that he has the gusto and the vertical leap required to bound over the rose bushes and into the vegetables. So far, he has left the vegetables alone. However, when he sees me sprinting toward him red-faced and wielding a blunt object, he tends to uproot a few plants on his way out of the bed. It looks like we’re going to have to spring for another section of fencing to seal off the sides of the bed and save our vegetables from further havoc.
This weekend was a dreary one. We did, however, make a list of all of the projects we want to complete in the near future. This includes things like covering the exposed ductwork upstairs and tiling the backsplash in the kitchen. Shortly after making the list, we had the bright idea to actually complete two of them in one afternoon. We painted two rooms in our house in an afternoon. Two rooms. One afternoon.
We were impressed with ourselves. We were also very exhausted.
I was impressed not just because we painted two rooms in an afternoon, but also because we painted samples and made a decision in less than 20 minutes. Usually, it takes us a month and several trips to the paint counter to even come close to a decision.
On a separate note, I just opened up my Tumblr page to accept submissions. If you want to share a good idea, a project, a DIY problem, or anything else under the sun, feel free to send it to my Tumblr. If I like it, and if I think other people will like it, your idea will get published. And if I think it’s really great, I might try out your idea in my own house and publish the results here.
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