Category Archives: Garden Construction

Building Garden Accessories, Garden Construction, Landscaping

Pathways are complete

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Last night (Friday), my neighbor was getting ready to pull out of his driveway and told me he was getting a large pickup on Saturday to pick up some granite for his side walkway. He asked if I wanted to grab some for my garden as well – of course I said yes. (Saved me about $70 bucks in delivery fees.)

My wife and I had gotten out early and finished up the barrier cloth and some moving around of some items before it was time to pick up the crushed granite. You can see below what the pathways looked like before the rock – this was with partial barrier down.

Pathways Before

So, we went down to Whittlesey Landscape Supplies (http://www.989rock.com/) – my favorite place for bulk supplies – and picked up half a yard for him. After we came back and unloaded it, we went back and picked up two yards for me and unloaded it in our driveway. We spent about three hours moving it to the back and spreading it evenly around. (There are still a couple of piles in certain areas as we have some things to move out of the way.)

Pretty satisfied with the results – see below.

Pathways After
Building Garden Accessories, Garden Construction, Landscaping

Irrigation is Complete!

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This weekend’s agenda was to complete the irrigation and test for leaks. Friday evening, I spent drilling the hose pathways through the boxes and managed to complete them all while I still had some light left. Saturday morning, we started pretty early, putting together the remainder of the connector segments so that we could assemble everything pretty quickly.

Once those segments were installed, the home stretch was merely measuring and running the drip lines, which went very fast. Here is a picture of the northern three beds of our garden with the irrigation in place.

North section of irrigation

After finishing the drip lines, we attached the hose line adapter, hooked up the pressure regulator and then flushed the lines. Then, we capped the ends and turned that sucker on. We only found two leaks, one due to a badly seated section and the other due to a split “L” connector. Luckily, I had some duct tape handy – have I ever told you that duct tape can fix anything? Anyhow, the split “L” will be replaced next weekend and the duct tape will hold the leak for the time being.

Was a productive weekend!

Garden Construction, Landscaping

Pathway Preview

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This last weekend, I wanted to lay down a sample pathway so I could visually see what my overall plan would look like when finished. So I chose a small section with which to work. Here is a picture of the section I chose for a mock-up.

Path Before

Above, I’ve already leveled out the ground and raked smooth any chunks and such so I’d have an even space where I could lay down the barrier cloth. My path cover of choice is decomposed granite, which I plan to buy from a local supplier named Whittlesey Landscape Supplies. http://www.989rock.com/ They have some decent prices, great customer service and their deliveries always seems to be on time – makes scheduling a job very handy. If you have a truck you don’t mind getting dirty or scratching the bed (isn’t that what a truck is for?), they’ll also load you up right there.

Anyhow, here is the result of my small sample – this is pretty much what I envisioned when I layed down the plans last year.

Path After

Cheers!

Garden Construction, Landscaping

Garden Planning

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Garden Planner Snip

One of the more important aspects of gardening (in my opinion), is the planning phase. What are you going to plant? How are you going to line everything up? What is the right rotation? When do I plant and how? Many people love the idea of gardening, but because they don’t spend the proper time planning, get discouraged because their plants do not do as well as they saw “in the picture.”

Enter the Territorial Seed Company and their Garden Planter web application. Am I selling something? No. Do I think you should subscribe to it? Yes.

I was able to layout my entire plan in little under a day and then was pleasantly suprised that I was also provided with a seasonal planting guide based on my zip code. You can also get a 30-day trial for the app.

Here are a few of the features:
– drag and drop or drag and drag virtual planting
– automatic plant spacing calculations
– seeding, transplant and harvest guides
– links to purchase seeds right from your guide
– printable documents

Go out and give it a try: (follow the link below and click on the “start Garden Planner” button)

http://gardenplanner.territorialseed.com/

Enjoy!