Falling short – empty spaces in the garden, boo

Posted by louisa on Friday 1 July 2011 in growing | 9 comments

I’ve spent most of this afternoon pottering in the garden and as time went on, I had a strange realisation: I’ve actually fallen short in what I’ve sown this year.

I have everything planted in final positions now and I’ve still got a bed, two wooden troughs and some containers empty. Well, the bed’s not empty, it’s full of self-seeded borage (pictured above – which I was happy to let grow until I needed the space for something else) but the wooden troughs are empty-empty — and annoyingly, it’s the nice ones I made at the start of the year. I’ve been using them as extra temporary staging in the greenhouse so all the others were filled up first, and here I am now with nothing to put in them. Boo.

I had problems with damping off at the start of the year and some stuff went to seed because I didn’t pot it on soon enough during the warm (and chaotic here) spring – if those problems hadn’t happened, I’d probably have actually sown about the right amount of stuff this year (amazingly!) but since they did, I’m left with some empty spots. Shockingly bad behaviour, isn’t it?

So now I’m wondering what, if anything, I could put in them. Any suggestions?

I’m going to see my mum & dad tomorrow* so my dad might have some spare things he could give me in exchange for the eggs and courgettes I’ll be taking. (*Mum, if I haven’t called you by the time you’re reading this, we’re coming tomorrow. Hope you’re not working all day or out. Also if you’ve been shopping today, I hope you didn’t buy lots of eggs and courgettes. ;) )

My beloved Hessayon book tells me I could plant some late peas for autumn sowing — and actually I’ve already got some seedlings that we were going to eat as pea shoots. I do though have issues with growing peas so maybe we should just eat them in their childhood form as planned.

I think we’ve got just about enough salad leaves in containers dotted around the place – although if I can’t think about anything else, I’ll grow some more lettuce.

I *could* just leave them empty, but where would the fun be in that? ;)

Have you got any empty spots this year or are you filled to the proverbial rafters? What would you plant if you had an empty bed/some empty containers at this time of year?

More scrap wood planters

Posted by louisa on Monday 4 April 2011 in growing, making, wood stuff | 6 comments

These are WIPs rather than finished articles but I wanted to mention them anyway because it’s pretty much all I achieved over the weekend – I had a nice quiet weekend, just not as productive as normal.

On Friday afternoon, I had that “I must make!!” craving so I went to hunt around in the (supposedly for burning) wood store for scraps to planters – I found 30 plank offcuts, roughly the same length (about 25cm/10ins) and width (13cm/5ins) and 12 batten offcuts, about 15mmx30mm. I’d intended to make another long trough but I realised those pieces would make three 25cm/10inch-cubed planters without having to saw anything at all – win!

(I don’t mind sawing now that we have a decent saw that treats everything like butter – but I like to avoid it whenever I can because I’m lazy and always end up with wonky cuts :) )

As with the other planters I’ve made, these aren’t exactly working examples of right angles or beautiful to look at but they’ll do. They’re finished in terms of building but the planks were all untreated and while I’ll line the inside anyway, I think I’m going to have to treat or paint the outside to make them more weather resistant. As we’re painting the bathroom soon, we should have some paint leftover from that which I can use.

The other planter I started yesterday afternoon before I had to rush off to a not-great dress rehearsal. I went down to the bottom of the garden to look for pallets (to make a vertical planter like the one Emma suggested) but the only ones down there are too big/heavy – but I did find some old, weathered fence boards/paling, which John’s dad had salvaged & brought over at some point, so I decided to make another long trough planter from them. I’ve made up the long sides – using a salvaged/scrap 2by4 cut into quarters for the corner supports/feet – but haven’t attached the short sides or base yet. It’s going to be 120cm/4ft by 60cm/2ft when it’s finished so I might end up removing the feet and resting the base on the floor so it doesn’t have to be strong enough to support all that weight. I’m going to enlist John’s help with fixing on the sides – I’m hoping that two of us working together can actually get the angles square for a change!

While I was doing that yesterday, John was at his mum and dad’s house for lunch and his dad excitedly told him about his latest find for us — apparently the sawmill/joinery place he gets a lot of offcuts from had some 5m (16ft) lengths of decking going begging this week – salvaged from a replacement job or something. According to John, his dad now has a crazy idea for us to make some 5m long planters – that might be a little nuts! Perhaps I should work on my sawing skills after all…

Wooden planters made from scrap wood

Posted by louisa on Monday 31 January 2011 in growing, making, wood stuff | 6 comments

Last week, I got the cravings – the “I NEED to make something out of wood” cravings – so I set Saturday aside for playing.

I actually set out into the garden to make one thing but found some planks (the long bits in the picture) that would be much more appropriate for something else on my to-do list – wooden planters. John’s dad had brought them for us last week – he regularly collects scraps of wood from a joiners’ yard for firewood and when he visited that day, they gave him these salvaged planks too – but he thought they were too good for firewood so they ended up in our general scrap lumber pile instead. The shorter bits in the picture are also scrap wood from the same source – all roughly about the same size so almost no sawing required!

With that scrap, and five 6ft long battens (leftover from when I built removable shelves in our airing cupboard), I made two planters – each about 4ft long by 1ft, by about 9ins deep.

The bases are different because each batten made exactly one long length and two shorter lengths – I was delighted to find it was pretty much exact, again minimal sawing! – and that was the most efficient way to make use of the wood.

I’ll use a liner of some sort in the planters and puncture that between the slats of the base for drainage. I added little feet to the bottom (in a way appropriate to the base) to raise the slats off the ground too. The whole thing will need treating with some veg-safe preservative too, to maximise it’s usefulness.

Neither planter would get me a job as an artisan woodworker or would be used as a practical example to teach even spacing or the concept of right angles – but they’ll grow salad (or similar) as well as planters that would cost me £50 each from a garden centre. Plus I had loads of fun making them :)

I think these will go in the front garden – we have some dead space out there which I’d like to make useful this year. Not sure exactly what we’ll plant in them yet – I really need to get on with planning where everything is going to go this year!