Off to the races
Last weekend I set up bed for a no-dig “box”.
I put this in an otherwise not very useful area… mostly under the shade of our lemon tree at the top of the photo and near the side and back property fence. The neighbor has a tree on the other side and there’s a structure on the lot behind… basically, Mr. sun doesn’t break through much to this corner. So it has been heretofore not used as garden area.
We’re just putting some potatoes in it. They do require sun but we’re going to see if they’ll produce in this little sunned corner.
The grey pipe with white and black end you see popping up there is a capped off irrigation line. We did have a box over there, but moved it a couple years ago… that sun issue.
I’m purposely trying to do this on the cheap.
What I did here was take chicken wire – which I already had around and rebar stakes which were also around from who remembers what.
Chicken wire typically comes in 3′ (36 inch) width.
I cut it in thirds for a 12″ height.
The bed measures about 2′ x 7′… 14 square feet of growing space.
(18 linear feet of 12″ chicken wire… 6′ of a roll.)
I set the bed up last weekend. I think it took about an hour.
Today we got a bale of alfalfa and a bale of straw. Judy, the very nice owner of a local pet store – Rabbit Ears, on Colusa in Kensington – told us we could go to the race track during the week and buy bales of stuff from a vendor there.
(Judy also gave us a few bags of rabbit bedding and poo which we’re mixing in with our compost).
So Sandy and I went to the race track – in our hatchback passenger car. We found the bale vendor who was kind enough to stuff the two bales in the car for us. Back on the freeway in a car with alfalfa and straw.
The race track is only about 10 minutes away which was good and bad… Good that is close – less gas, less time. Not so good in that wow, that stuff smells great!
I suppose I could have sat in the driveway with it for a few hours.
On the way back we did stop to pick up one thing…
We already had bone meal, but we needed blood meal. So we grabbed a box at the local Longs Drug.
All set to assemble the box which I will do over the weekend.
So far:
I spent about an hour to construct the box and used material on hand.
-> Chicken wire is about $19 for a 25′ roll. I used 6′… about 1/4 roll – $4.75
-> The stakes are about $1.50 each. I used 6 – $4.50
-> Blood Meal was $9.50. I’ll use about 1/2 – $4.75
-> Bone Meal is about $6.00. I’ll use 1/2 – $3.00
-> Bale of Alfalfa – $17. I’ll use 1/2 – $8.50
-> Bale of straw – $7.00. I’ll use 1/2 – $3.50
So I’m up to $29.00 and about 2 hours of time.
I’ll post again about the “assembleage”.
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