Another Banner Day, the Garden Construction is Done!

It is a fact, everything is done on the block raised bed garden with a roof and wind break! I am so very happy to have it done. I think Caroline is happy to have it done and me happy!

Ain’t it a beauty?

Here is a photo of the person who did most of its construction.

The roof and the windbreak let in all day sunshine but keep the wind and rain at bay. The wire fence keeps the chickens and turkeys out of the garden, we will make them a good place for dust baths where the ol’ banana trees were (more info about such stuff to follow). I will be keeping records and posting same as to what was planted, when and the success. I will also post what problems I have and how it was resolved (IF). BTW, the wood slats I had Juan use over the Poly sheets have already begun to prove no self destructing vibrations up and down which would destroy the poly sheets due to wind. A strong gusty wind didn't bother a thing, nice, very nice. 

Caroline showing our neighbor, Linda, the start of horseradish root we received for Linda McEnery. Thank you Linda. Maybe I should have zoomed on them but it was so bright I had a hard time seeing the LCD viewfinder.

The white material will break the wind while still allowing the afternoon sun into the garden. I’m hoping that the clear poly roof and the “al malla antitrips blanco” material will let in all the sun light necessary to grow tomatoes, okra, BELL peppers, bock choy, lettuce, carrots, radishes, beets and whatever we can get to grow along with marigolds and herbs to help deter bad insects. That woven material came from ferreteria Agroservicios Cafeteros Occidente S.A. San Ramon 2447-4534 for C1,261.00/running meter. Normal 5% discount, perhaps cash has something to do with the discount. The material is 3 meters wide, the ferreteria that I had bought from before, they were out, only had material 2 meters wide which was what I had expected so the extra meter wide was a surprise but we just folded it back from the bottom up and left it like that. I think it was very close to the price per running meter that I had paid for the 2 meter material.

I thank all of you for your critique, encouragement and just making such grand comments on our endeavor. That makes things soooo good, thank you!

Much, much more to come. . . . . . .

Roof, Roof, Roof!

Hooray! We have a roof over the garden!!!!

Ain’t it great? Notice the wood strips we used to keep the screw heads from pulling thru the poly sheets. Back behind us is a chicken farm, last year they had several sheets of metal roofing blow off the chicken building. I thought for some time about that and the fact that I didn’t want that problem with the poly sheets, they aren’t cheap. Tomorrow I will install the chicken wire and maybe the windbreak cloth. Next week, the planting of the first seeds (well maybe a little before that, after all this time who can wait???? Of course I’ll post more photos of the chicken fencing and the wind break. I did look very close at the amount of sun light getting thru the poly sheeting compared to the amount with no poly. That was a major concern. So many folks told me that it wouldn’t work that there wouldn’t be enough sunlight getting thru to grow veggies, well I now am sure they were wrong. Of course the proof will be in what does or doesn’t grow but that is the case with any endeavor to do with gardening. Soon I’ll take photos of a sun rise thru the garden area to give you an idea of the orientation of the garden. Next week will begin the starting of seeds in the window greenhouse.

The greenhouse faces east-southeast, it will get great morning sun and as the sun gets hot it will be filtered thru the tree outside the greenhouse. With the tree and the back open it never gets super hot, there is now a water spigot next to the greenhouse on the left.

Can you find all six of the chompipes in the two photos?

They almost disappear don’t they?

And of course one of our helpers, what would be a day without our furry friends. Samonia is a good helper but she keeps dropping her hammer J. Others have come out and gone back in, too much work for them (they know where the food dish is)!

More update and photos tomorrow.

Sorry about this but my internet provider has been messed up and my blog wouldn’t load, so I hope you enjoy this as late as it is, hopefully my next posting will be on time. Art

Back working on the garden after a log wait.

A new chapter in the garden blog.

It has been a long time coming but the garden will get it’s roof this week.  Yep, the corrugated poly sheets got here Thursday. I have been painting the wood strips that we will use over the poly sheets to keep the strong gusty winds from pulling the screw heads thru the poly. Last year the strong gusty winds blew several sheets of corrugated sheet roofing off of the chicken farm behind us. I don’t want to chase $16.00 sheets (replacement costs for one sheet) of roofing down the road, besides the sheets bang up and down all the time without the wood strips holding them down.

Does that look like $240.00 (20 sheets)???? Well, no matter, it will give me the kind of roof needed to keep the rain off and still let the sun light thru. I’ll sort of have a green house without walls. This poly is supposed to last a life time, now whose life time they are using for a scale is the big question (of course it should last as long as I do).

Juan did manage to get the gate put up already, you can’t see the green fencing to keep the chickens out of the garden but it goes up to the middle cross brace on the gate. We may have to clip one wing of the chickens to keep them from flying over the fence.

Oh yeah, the mutts are growing!

They are now the Hounds of Baskerville!!!! Nothing is safe from the jaws of steel, they’ll chew anything even with us buying soup bones from the market for them they aren’t satisfied.

Oh yeah, we added some poults (turkeys) to the flock.

This was them when we got them at 3 weeks, cute huh?

You don’t see how much they have grown but here they are 4 ½ weeks. To us it seems like they have doubled in size. Caroline had said some time back that she would like to have turkeys. About 2 weeks ago Lorraine’s brother had to show me all of his animals which included 17 young poults. I had asked him if he would like a couple of silkie chickens so after he said yes I asked if his momma sold the poults. I said I would like to get 2 for us to raise for the table, it was to be a surprise for Caroline. Well I couldn’t get them for another week at which time I took Caroline along. Boy did she get excited about the poults. What I didn’t know was she planned to keep the 2 for raising our own stock. After that was disclosed I went back to see if I could purchase 2 more for this year’s holiday meals. I also picked up 2 poults for our neighbor and will hold them till she gets her coop finished.

Well it is back out to finished painting the wood strips so we can work non-stop tomorrow. I’m hoping that we can get the whole roof on tomorrow, if it is up to Juan we will. He is a real go-getter!!!! For sure there will be an update tomorrow.

Well the internet was acting up so this didn't get posted when I tried. Actually that worked out OK as the wind was so strong we didn't even try to work on the roof. the wind is supposed to drop so we may try tomorrow, Wednesday the 16th.