Our Life Together

Yard Fun: Below the Deck.

We posted last week about our first recent yard project: Project Rain Barrel.

Now for Project #2: Tackling everything below the deck.

Beneath our deck is a small space, that had hitherto been a simple hodge-podge of concrete pavers with weeds growing between, and a catch-all for things not in current use. Our goal was to make the space more functional and organized. This really became Trevor’s project, as he spent the most time making it look fabulous.

Step 1: remove existing pavers and put down landscaping fabric. Landscaping fabric will deter weeds from sprouting up between the cracks of the pavers. This plus a hefty spread of mulch around them and pea gravel in between will hopefully stave off weeds for more than one season.

Step 2: move compost bins. We have now had two bins in use for a while. They had been sitting side-by-side in the location of last year’s vegetable garden, but this created three problems. One, they got a lot of sun. Sun dries out the compost and when this happens, ants move in. By moving the compost bins under the deck where they only receive occasional filtered sunlight, they can maintain moisture longer and hopefully the ants will stay away. (Our temporary solution to getting rid of ants: pouring a kettle of boiling water into the infested bin.) The second problem was cosmetic. It just wasn’t all that attractive to have two black plastic bins being the first thing you see when you look over the deck into the yard. The third problem was a space issue: we needed to reclaim one of the sunnier spots in the yard for a new addition to the garden. (“What addition?” you may ask. Well, we’ll have to leave you in suspense a little longer about that, but you might infer the answer from a previous blog post.)

The composters now have a home on a bed of mulch behind the concrete pavers under our deck. The pavers provide an easy-access walkway when we need to add food and yard scraps to the bins or need to spin them periodically to help in the decomposition.

Step 3: add some greenery. We’ve had the idea for a while to spruce up our under-deck area, and what better way than with plants? The space under our deck stairs is, for the most part, completely useless. However, we’re trying to infuse the space with some greenery by planting 5 small, shade-loving ferns. The hope is that the ferns will love the shade under the deck stairs, grow and create a nice green bed rather than an eye sore of dirt and scrappy crab grass. Let’s hope they survive – and thrive – in this environment.

Spring Project.

With the typical “last frost date” behind us here in KY, it was time to tackle making a bed for all our seedlings already sprouting away inside. We decided to do a raised bed about 1 foot high, 5′ x 3′ in size. The day began with a shopping list and a trip to the big blue store. (by which we do NOT mean a UK Wildcat Fan store…)

We had the debate of whether we needed to bring two cars or not. I convinced Trevor we could manage with one. This was, however, assuming the supply store would cut our lumber down to Smokey’s size… But we were surprised to find that their saw was broken and we were out of luck. The shortest cedar boards they had were 8′ long. We took a gamble that we could make it work… 8′ lumber, PLUS 10 bags of soil and 8 bags of mulch and some flowers to boot.

Note the impressive amount of stuff we jammed into Smokey… and Trevor’s look of amazement that we made it back home with everything inside. Keep in mind that these shots were AFTER the 8′ lumber had been cut down to 5′ and 3′ sections. (We had popped over to Kristi’s dad’s house to use his radial saw… thanks Dad!)

Step 1, buying materials, was done. It was on to Step 2, clearing the sod.

Digging up sod was hard work. Especially when digging around concrete bases of our deck posts and hitting numerous rocks buried in the ground.

Step 3, assemble the raised bed frame. We used untreated cedar. Treated woods leak harmful chemicals into the soil and should be avoided when growing edibles. This created a problem for us when we were unable to find untreated posts. We improvised by screwing two 1-bys together to make a workable post, albeit smaller than traditional 4×4 posts. We also chose cedar, as redwood was unavailable and cedar will hold up under the elements better than the alternatives (pine, etc).

Unfortunately there are no pictures of the bed being screwed together, but it was the most time-consuming piece of the puzzle.

But here is the finished product – the built bed frame! Landscaping fabric was positioned underneath to deter weeds. The job of making it level was tedious and the end result was imperfect, but close enough for our purposes. With the bed in position, all that was left was filling it with our soil mix.

Success! Filled with 10 cubic feet of soil and the contents of 1 compost bin. It felt great to finally have some payoff from our compost bins for the garden… the best natural fertilizer you can come by!

Now all we need is to transplant our seedlings…