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Finally found some cedar at a local lumber store. $48 for a 2x6x12' I still picked up a few, but definitely scaling back my plans for building raised terraced beds this year. The aluminum ones I have will be fine for a year.
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Jan 21, 2021 02:20
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| # ? May 18, 2024 16:39 |
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Seems about similar to what I paid for my cedar. About $30 for 2x8x8’. I paid about $95 for 2x8x20’ and that worked out well.
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Jan 21, 2021 13:08
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All the wood is insanely expensive right now.
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Jan 21, 2021 23:25
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Cedar is simply not cheap in my experience unless you know a dutch guy who buys a bunch to make a deck and then decides to move back overseas to the netherlands in the middle of a global pandemic and just wants to get a few hundred dollars for the contents of his garage. You can try looking for that.
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Jan 21, 2021 23:32
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CommonShore posted:Cedar is simply not cheap in my experience unless you know a dutch guy who buys a bunch to make a deck and then decides to move back overseas to the netherlands in the middle of a global pandemic and just wants to get a few hundred dollars for the contents of his garage. You can try looking for that. lol that sounds like somebody got insanely lucky.
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Jan 22, 2021 00:04
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CommonShore posted:Cedar is simply not cheap in my experience unless you know a dutch guy who buys a bunch to make a deck and then decides to move back overseas to the netherlands in the middle of a global pandemic and just wants to get a few hundred dollars for the contents of his garage. You can try looking for that. Cedar has never been cheap. I built some raised beds before pandemic and it was similar costs to what it cost me to build for what I built upthread. I don't think the cedar saw as big a price increase as other wood. The difference this time is I bought everything via Menards when they were having the 11% rebates and that made it so it was more affordable. I get the wood, and am able to use the rebates for more stuff the next year. We ended up with about $160 in rebates from the wood. That'll pay for some nice bagged compost for next year.
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Jan 22, 2021 02:55
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CommonShore posted:Cedar is simply not cheap in my experience unless you know a dutch guy who buys a bunch to make a deck and then decides to move back overseas to the netherlands in the middle of a global pandemic and just wants to get a few hundred dollars for the contents of his garage. You can try looking for that. brb going to post a WTB dutch guy's cedar on NextDoor
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Jan 22, 2021 02:59
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Motronic posted:lol that sounds like somebody got insanely lucky. He was going to burn it! I had to talk him into taking my money! Chad Sexington posted:brb going to post a WTB dutch guy's cedar on NextDoor 
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Jan 22, 2021 05:27
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Earth posted:Cedar has never been cheap. Yeah, this isn't some pandemic thing. If anything relative to PT cedar is probably cheaper than it used to be because PT has gone up so much.
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Jan 22, 2021 14:36
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I was in one of the local garden centres last week picking up some crushed limestone for the fruit trees, noticed they already had their main seed rack set up. Picked up a few packets I knew I needed, went home and prepared the rest of my list for this year. Went back on Thursday and it looked like moths had had a go at the rack, holes everywhere. Tried mail order, many items out of stock. Finally got everything I needed by visiting every seed rack in town, something I was not planning on doing during a pandemic. Apparently interest in gardening remains high and the seed companies are working 3 shifts trying to keep up with the orders and running out of envelopes and other shipping supplies like they did last spring. And it's still January. More people gardening is good, just don't wait too long to get your orders in.
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Jan 25, 2021 02:12
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Yard stuff in general here seems to be getting dunked on again. All the municipal compost/topsoil facilities are running wide open, all the mulch yards are adding loaders, etc. I've yet to see any real run on seeds but I honestly haven't been in the market. We'll be adding a bed and a dump trailer full of compost to the garden this year, should be about a ton and a half once it's all unloaded. I got most of the garden under cardboard so we'll see how that goes. It has been an exceptionally mild winter so I suspect I've got quite a few visitors under all that cardboard. I made zero progress on moving to a greenhouse, zero progress on clearing any land, but dammit we're going to have tomatoes. This loving garden.
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Jan 25, 2021 02:39
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Hexigrammus posted:I was in one of the local garden centres last week picking up some crushed limestone for the fruit trees, noticed they already had their main seed rack set up. Picked up a few packets I knew I needed, went home and prepared the rest of my list for this year. Went back on Thursday and it looked like moths had had a go at the rack, holes everywhere. Tried mail order, many items out of stock. Finally got everything I needed by visiting every seed rack in town, something I was not planning on doing during a pandemic. If you see a plant that you want, get it. There’s a good chance you might not see it again for a long time
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Jan 25, 2021 02:43
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Yeah, I was treating seed releases like I would console releases. I didn’t have issues with Territorial Seed or Floret Flowers but I placed orders right away. I’m really curious what stock is going to be like for trees from Costco or the local nurseries. Also, folks should be ordering stuff like fertilizer, slug killer and so on now so that you’ll have it when you need it. I lost a ton of sunflowers from slugs last year and they already started getting at my ranunculus before I put down more slug killer to take care of it. It took a long time to find what I needed and it took even longer to ship.
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Jan 25, 2021 03:06
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Condo tent gardening continues to make me happy. Tomatoes are popping up all over the bushes, cucumbers are excellent, and the watermelon plant is almost ready to do exciting watermelon things. Emerging lima beans look like clams.
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Jan 25, 2021 03:55
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Solkanar512 posted:Also, folks should be ordering stuff like fertilizer, slug killer and so on now so that you’ll have it when you need it. I lost a ton of sunflowers from slugs last year and they already started getting at my ranunculus before I put down more slug killer to take care of it. It took a long time to find what I needed and it took even longer to ship. Good idea. BtK disappeared off the market last summer but re-appeared in the fall just in time for the last spraying of the winter brassicas. Got the cabbage loopers but then the slugs moved in... Unfortunately BtK only has an 8 month shelf life so you can't stockpile it.
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Jan 25, 2021 04:08
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Shine posted:Condo tent gardening continues to make me happy. Tomatoes are popping up all over the bushes, cucumbers are excellent, and the watermelon plant is almost ready to do exciting watermelon things. Emerging lima beans look like clams. gotta grow weed in there, like a normal person
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Jan 25, 2021 04:20
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Kinda garden related- if you see mason jars on sale this year be sure to grab them. They are impossible to find in stores and people on amazon are price gouging them.
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Jan 25, 2021 04:45
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Solkanar512 posted:Yeah, I was treating seed releases like I would console releases. I didn’t have issues with Territorial Seed or Floret Flowers but I placed orders right away. Territorial did ok for OR seed houses because they didn't have to evacuate (to my knowledge). Other seed companies (Victory for example) were evacuated due to wildfires during harvest and processing time for a number of seeds, so they were unable to get get as much stock as normal. They are saying they are seeing some uptick in business, but they are just missing the quantity and variety that they would normally have to accommodate that. Add on doing everything under COVID restrictions, and they are struggling to make and ship orders.
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Jan 25, 2021 06:40
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Solkanar512 posted:Yeah, I was treating seed releases like I would console releases. I didn’t have issues with Territorial Seed or Floret Flowers but I placed orders right away. What did you end up getting for slug killer? Slugs decimated my sunflowers last year and the ones I had left were killed by arborists taking a tree down.
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Jan 25, 2021 12:58
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Bloody Cat Farm posted:What did you end up getting for slug killer? Slugs decimated my sunflowers last year and the ones I had left were killed by arborists taking a tree down. I found a few boxes of Corey’s. https://www.lowes.com/pd/Corry-s-1-...wE&gclsrc=aw.ds Works really well, didn’t bother my cat and the damage stopped immediately.
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Jan 25, 2021 21:48
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Trimming the basement pepper jungle today and found something hiding behind a bunch of other stuff. Bhut Jolokia strain II
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Jan 25, 2021 22:51
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Hexigrammus posted:I was in one of the local garden centres last week picking up some crushed limestone for the fruit trees, noticed they already had their main seed rack set up. Picked up a few packets I knew I needed, went home and prepared the rest of my list for this year. Went back on Thursday and it looked like moths had had a go at the rack, holes everywhere. Tried mail order, many items out of stock. Finally got everything I needed by visiting every seed rack in town, something I was not planning on doing during a pandemic. This post got me motivated to pull out my seed collection to see if there's anything I need to be grabbing. Thankfully the answer is no, but we do want to grab the bags of strawberries, onions, and garlic when they hit the shelves. Seedwise we are completely set for this spring! And I found tons of flower seeds to go with the veggies. The fun thing that happened is last year or two years ago (time is weird with pandemic) I found "expired" seed packets at GoodWill. They were selling them for a nickel a piece and we ended up buying forty of the packs or so. I've got seeds for quite some time!
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Jan 27, 2021 05:40
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Anyone have a guide for raised beds on top of urban fill? My wife wants to do some raised beds, but I'm concerned with contaminated soil since the neighborhood was built in the 1920s and I imagine lead paint was used. Unfortunately the University that would do a heavy metal analysis of our soil is not doing those tests due to covid.
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Jan 27, 2021 07:37
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The Slack Lagoon posted:Anyone have a guide for raised beds on top of urban fill? There might’ve been a test done in the relatively recent past (~3 decades), maybe ask your city about that and see if something’s on record. At minimum they might be able to put you in touch with somebody who could tell you whether it’s safe or not. If you’re really worried about soil contamination and can’t get a good enough response you can always build up a container garden in the same space. Or build an elevated bed, which is what my sister and her neighbors did when their landlord wouldn’t let them dig up the yard.
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Jan 27, 2021 07:51
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I just finished putting together two "Zizin" brand raised beds. Never again. Heartily discommend. The main problem I have with them is that the screw holes are not even. They aren't even close to even. More than one of the screw holes is off by half the width of the hole, which means I can't thread the provided screws through the holes anymore (I have plenty of left over screws from previous projects and used those as a stopgap for now). Dirt gets here in a few days, and I'm crossing my fingers that they don't just fall apart when I fill them. The manufacturing quality is transparently poor in several other ways as well, most of which made them a lot harder to assemble than they should have been. Also, the instructions for assembling them are exactly backwards, so I had to take the first one apart and put it together again. The Slack Lagoon posted:Anyone have a guide for raised beds on top of urban fill? Maybe put down some bricks or concrete blocks and make your raised bed on those? Lots of videos around on how to do that. LLSix fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Jan 29, 2021 |
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Jan 28, 2021 23:42
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LLSix posted:I just finished putting together two "Zizin" brand raised beds. Never again. Heartily discommend. Return that poo poo and get some boards and stakes or brackets. There’s really a ton of ways to slap together something better before the dirt arrives, and for way less than fifty loving bucks. Apropos of raised/elevated beds, my sister and her neighbors built theirs on some wood pylons, but they wanted to be able to lift them and move them around.
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Jan 28, 2021 23:51
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Get pictures to Amazon before you put dirt in those. I'll bet you a buck they refund you and don't ask you to try and return it. Don't settle for garbage.
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Jan 29, 2021 02:02
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If you are looking for metal raised beds, I recommend https://www.metalgardenbeds.com/. I've had four for 1.5 years and they are high quality.
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Jan 29, 2021 04:12
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Dirt arrived today. Supposedly 3 cubic yards. Used it to make 4 barely raised beds. ~1 foot tall.   The two silver ones are 7' long and the two green ones are 4' long. Looking forward to planting in a week or so. The season starts early here in Houston. There's an empty space between my beds to leave space for a 5th one, but we ran out of dirt.
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Feb 1, 2021 00:01
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why are they so spread out?
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Feb 1, 2021 00:08
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Is this a good place to ask about composting techniques? I have been collecting vegetable waste in bins for the past few years but now have the space to actually put down a compost area, so I would like some recommendations on how to go about doing that. Thanks!
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Feb 1, 2021 18:42
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Pasha posted:Is this a good place to ask about composting techniques? I have been collecting vegetable waste in bins for the past few years but now have the space to actually put down a compost area, so I would like some recommendations on how to go about doing that. Depends on your space and how fast you want the compost. Worm bins are small but take longer than one of the rolly barrel types. Both are faster than just making a frame and dumping waste in it
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Feb 1, 2021 18:50
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Schmeichy posted:Depends on your space and how fast you want the compost. Worm bins are small but take longer than one of the rolly barrel types. Both are faster than just making a frame and dumping waste in it To be honest, I don't care that much about actually using the compost, I just feel bad about throwing away so much waste that could be used somehow. I was actually thinking of just digging a large hole and dumping it in there. I think that should work?
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Feb 1, 2021 19:09
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If you do the pile method you might get a volunteer garden. Best of both worlds. But if you like digging holes then you could do the pit method. It's odd though that you care enough to save it in case it can be used only to bury it and never use it
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Feb 1, 2021 19:14
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Pasha posted:To be honest, I don't care that much about actually using the compost, I just feel bad about throwing away so much waste that could be used somehow. I was actually thinking of just digging a large hole and dumping it in there. I think that should work? Yep. You can add grass clippings, leaf litter, and other plant matter to the pile and it'll sink on its own. Just know that the piles don't get hot enough like this to burn through seeds very well without turning and managing them. But it's still better than putting that stuff into a landfill. If you want, you can dig and turn it once in a while, and that'll help it decompose faster. I'd advise against putting raw meats and bones (or even bones at all) into this method. They'll attract pests and the bones won't break down quickly at all. Then someone will wonder what kind of farm yard killing spree someone went on.
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Feb 1, 2021 19:38
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Jhet posted:Yep. You can add grass clippings, leaf litter, and other plant matter to the pile and it'll sink on its own. Just know that the piles don't get hot enough like this to burn through seeds very well without turning and managing them. But it's still better than putting that stuff into a landfill. If you want, you can dig and turn it once in a while, and that'll help it decompose faster. I'd advise against putting raw meats and bones (or even bones at all) into this method. They'll attract pests and the bones won't break down quickly at all. Then someone will wonder what kind of farm yard killing spree someone went on. If you want to compost bones, meat, and other things that don't go in traditional compost piles at home, check out black soldier flies. There's some nifty DIY and off the shelf options for them and they're great if you have poultry or keep fish.
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Feb 1, 2021 19:44
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Jhet posted:Yep. You can add grass clippings, leaf litter, and other plant matter to the pile and it'll sink on its own. Just know that the piles don't get hot enough like this to burn through seeds very well without turning and managing them. But it's still better than putting that stuff into a landfill. If you want, you can dig and turn it once in a while, and that'll help it decompose faster. I'd advise against putting raw meats and bones (or even bones at all) into this method. They'll attract pests and the bones won't break down quickly at all. Then someone will wonder what kind of farm yard killing spree someone went on. Unfortunately the area here doesn't have much in the way of general plant matter available (grass clippings or leaves) due to the climate, but I have been shredding a lot of paper to add to the compost bins (the town does not recycle paper, only cardboard) - again, probably better to put the shredded paper into the compost bin rather than sending it to a landfill. I have not been including any meat or dairy products into the compost collection, only plant matter. There are numerous pests in the area (rabbits, mice, etc), so I want to make certain to bury everything deep enough that they won't be able to reach it.
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Feb 1, 2021 19:57
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Pasha posted:To be honest, I don't care that much about actually using the compost, I just feel bad about throwing away so much waste that could be used somehow. I was actually thinking of just digging a large hole and dumping it in there. I think that should work? This is basically what I do. I keep an open bowl in my kitchen for vegetable scraps (open is key, otherwise you get fruit flies and mold). Usually I line it with a brown paper bag, but that's mostly because I have an excess of brown paper bags from my local grocery. Every few days I dump the bowl in a pile in my yard. It also gets leaves in the fall and various other compostable materials, like sod or brown paper bags. Sometimes I'll turn it by digging up some of the bottom of the pile to cover the newest stuff, otherwise I ignore it. That's my "active" compost pile. Once that pile gets big enough / "done" enough that I can dig some useful compost out of it, I usually dig the finished stuff out and move it to a separate pile to free up space. This is once or twice a year depending on how much I care about it. That's my "finished" compost pile, and I use it in my vegetable beds or whatever. Like Jhet said, it doesn't get hot enough to kill weed seeds or anything, but I don't really care. The only thing I really care about is that nothing harmful is put in there that could get into my tomato plants. For a low-temp low-maintenance pile, you can't put any animal products in it. I also avoid putting weeds in it, as this spreads the seeds around. I get a fair amount of volunteer vegetables. Compost really is just nature doin its thing, all the various methods do is speed it up.
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Feb 1, 2021 19:57
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Ok Comboomer posted:why are they so spread out? They're about 40 inches apart. The last time I made beds they were only two feet apart and that didn't feel like enough space. It made mowing challenging and felt cramped. I'm hoping spacing them out will help with that, and maybe limit the spread of bugs from one bed to another. Keeping the insects from spreading is probably a dumb hope, but I've got the space.
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Feb 1, 2021 20:18
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For our very small-scale gardening (a 4x3 tent in a condo), we make compost with an 18-gallon rolling barrel thingy on the balcony. Since we live in a desert, it gets plenty hot enough from about March - September to break everything down within weeks. We made enough compost last summer to easily handle our winter plantings. And no HOA complaints, as rolling it every other day keeps it basically odorless; just smells like "dirt."
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Feb 1, 2021 21:04
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