Planted!

[solarbird]

I got the bed planted - an assortment of cold-weather greens and some sugar peas. Hopefully they'll come up well! I also have enough seeds left over for replanting if need be, or fall planting for a second crop if things go particularly well.

I've further cut back another many feet of blackberries, tho' I didn't get much into digging out the rootballs. I've left stalks up so it'll be easy to find them again to pull. But with that one dead tree coming down on its own, and another, smaller dead tree also having come down (onto a still-living tree), I really need to get on this creekside knoll and get it cleaned up, planted, and stablised by something other than blackberries and horsetail.

I'm considering a little bit of a wall, to build up an ornamental area and keep an easier path clear to the garden bed. I'm not sure about that yet. But I think it could be done, would be a reasonably small project, and would look nice. But I don't know how to build the kind of wall I'd want.

And now it's raining, which is good, because it's watering in the seeds.

I sat for a while in the reading nook facing the back of the house (and, accordingly, the retaining wall), and it's much brighter there now. So that's good for the apple tree and the roses, too. Yay!

Comments

[epawtows.livejournal.com]

Wooden walls (pressure-treated) are quite easy for a DIYer, so long as they aren't too tall. I've done two, both less than 24". Not difficult at all. Used a DIY book as a reference.

Some tips that I found that were not in the book: use a mixture of 8' and 10' timbers. That makes it easier to stagger the locations of the ends. I did not use singles, only screws. That way, when I realied I'd made a mistake, it was a simple matter to dis-assemble things. I also think of screws as less work than nails. Why swing a hammer when you can let an electric motor do the work? Screws take longer than nails, though. Especially if you pre-drill the holes.

If at all practical, buy PT wood at least a month before you need it, and leave it someplace to dry (needs to be covered against rain, but with air circulation). The timbers get significantly lighter when dry, and are much easier to carry and handle.

Modern PT-wood is copper-based. The old-style wood used arsenic. The new stuff is less toxic, but you need to be careful to use the right sort of fasteners. Copper-based PT wood corrodes plain steel and ordinary "outdoor-rated" galvanized steel quickly. I used stainless steel screws, but that's the expensive way around the problem. There are cheaper screws and nails with special coatings, as well as "hot dipped" galvanized fasteners, that are supposed to work, but I've never tried them.

[epawtows.livejournal.com]

Editing mistake on last comment: In second paragraph, replace word "singles" with "nails".