Posted on 05/21/2010 5:00:30 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
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Best Friend Forever?
My wife has the green thumbs in this family and I fill the void with the infrastructure. Didn’t get in the garden today as we had .8 of rain. SiL is painting and putting up blinds in one of our rentals and I checked on him, then visited with a FRiend who is celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary in June then came home and had lunch with our 21 year old grandson. He comes over every Tuesday from his job at the Dodge Dealer. I need his help with the wire on the berry cage...
bump
Yes, Best Friend Forever. I see you are up on teen-aged vernacular. LOL.
And don’t sell yourself short. Your 1st wife’s thumb would not be so green without the support of your infra-structure. Sometimes infrastructure makes all the difference.
I’ve just been out to the garden and found that the automatic sprinkler actually worked! And the shade housse still stands. Yea!
Of course the rest of the week and next week will be cooler, and I probably don’t need to water these plants 2 hours a day. T storms predicted for this afternoon.
Question re my shade house:
The projected temps for the next week, or so are in the 70s. Should I roll up the sides of the shade house and keep just the top covered while I am gone?
What kind of timer did you get for auto sprinkler?
Thanks so much for the photo of the compost piles. That is exactly what I needed to see to get me started.
The photo that you link to on your profile page is very beautiful. Just what my wife is wanting.
Yay you! Your shade house and garden setup in general are beautiful. I’m gonna have to show my ‘infrastructure’ guy the pics ;)
I got the single port Orbit from Wal Mart that you suggested. $23 and change. It’s easy to set and so far works flawlessly.
Unfortunately, I have to say that the shopping experience at WalMart was unpleasant and reminded me why I never shop there. Your wife would have whipped those clerks into shape in a minute. I had to ask 6 clerks for help. Each one was worse than the last. Luckily, the sourpuss woman at the register, who couldn’t seem to ring up purchases, left just before I got through the line with my purchase, and a young kid rang me up. Of course he forgot to neutralize the anti-shoplifter code, and I got stopped trying to leave the garden center.
I got so many blank stares when I asked for water timers, that I started asking for hoses, figuring the timers would be close by. Got some blank stares there too, but finally got directed to the correct aisle. But what really tee’d me off is that 3 clerks said to me, “We’re not a Super Store, you know.”
Well, it’s a plenty large store. Not being a super store, I should think, would make it easier for the clerks to know their merchandise. And to mark their stock! None of the flowers were marked, or the planting mixes, etc.
Yet, all these clerks had time to chit chat with each other and with off duty WalMart employees and weren’t tending to business at all.
Arrrrggghh!
Thank you. We built that all ourselves about 4 years ago. That is right in front of thel house in what formerly was a weedy circle with 2 trees planted off center. We never could get the grass looking — all pushed up with tree roots, etc. When one tree died, leaving a lop-sided silver Maple, I pushed for both trees to be removed and a fountain installed.
One thing led to another: Fountain had to have a base. I wanted roses; they needed better soil = raised bed. I needed water for the beds, so we undergrounded a water pipe and sprinklers from the house. Fountain needed electricity, so we undergrounded electricity at the same time and installed a connection in one of the raised beds so that we can have Christmas lights and also a place to connect power equipment out in the middle of the yard. The added bonus? I can turn the fountain on and off from the house.
Roses are a 2 season flower, so I wanted bulbs for the spring for color. The whole thing took all summer and didn’t get finished until November — so roses were put off until spring. But, I planted 1000 bulbs in the newly installed raised beds minutes before the snow flew. So, I have this wonderful color for a couple of months in the spring, and then the roses take over.
I wish that Diana's store was not 1200 miles away!
I purchased a 3 tier fountain for my wife to use as a centerpiece of something similar, with benches and raised beds. But we are on hold as we prepare to move in a couple of months. This is our first year with nothing new going on in the yard.
The raised beds came about because of the poor soil and because my husband balked at renting the very expensive diamond bladed circular saw needed to cut the edges of the pavers in place to form a circular pattern. The pavers in the center are really laid in sort of a square and the walls of the raised beds are laid on top in 2 semi circles.
There was a lot of jiggling required to get the slope just right on the center walk way because the center of that circle is several inches taller than the edges (domed).
But, it all worked out well, and the water drains and does not puddle at the ends of the center walkway. From above it looks sort of like this: (!) with the exclamation pint being the walkway.
We started out with a 4 tier fountain in aluminum, but we returned it because I was really worried that it would tip over in the winds we often get on top of this hill where we live. My aluminum porch furniture (which looks like wrought iron but not so heavy) often goes flying in the brisk wind gusts.
This was a worthwhile project, but it put my husband into physical therapy for his back. He’d work on the stones, digging, root removal, etc. over the weekend and then see the physical therapist a couple of days a week during the week. Funny thing — his back healed up just fine as soon as the project was finished.
My advice? Hire as much work done as you can afford. Look for people who own their own mechanized skid loaders, etc. to do the prep work. Then, have the pavers delivered and enjoy the process of building the walls and laying the stones. Then hire someone to come in, deliver and load in the planting mix to the beds. Young people with strong backs.
If you can work with squares, it is much easier. We were confined with a circle already inside our driveway and we had to retrofit everything to this alreadly layed out circle. We were further contrained with having to allow for some place to pile snow in the winter — a space. We elected to make that space be a trim of low growing junipers, but it is taking forever for them to fill in. And we lost 4 last year and 2 of those look like they didn’t make it this year.
“Glue” the blocks in your wall together with concrete cement in several places, and your walls will be strong enough to walk on.
Have fun! Keep a smile on your face.
BTW, we did rent a chop saw for cutting the wall blocks (especially the caps) to make them go around the circle neatly. That saw was not so expensive, and we rented so often we should have bought it. It really worked well and was fun to use.
We are looking forward to our move and the chance to start from scratch on a blank canvas, to design a garden that is pleasing to both of us, and to have a space for a veggie garden, too. We are hoping that veggies will do better in a differant area.
It is really wonderful to have a mate that enjoys the same things, and supportive of each other's interest. We share the garden and yard interest, and home improvements also, and I support her in her stained glass hobby, and she supports me in my interest in classic cars. It seems as most of the regulars on this garden thread are blessed with wonderful, supporting spouses. Ain't that the way it is supposed to be?
Yes, indeed! You are moving to TX, as I remember?
Yes, to Houston area. Her company is moving and building a new corperate headquarters on the NW side right off 290 past the Beltway. We are looking at property past Cypress to Hockley and maybe over as far as Tomball. We are NOT going to live in the city. We live inside a city now and are tired of the drawbacks to urban life, crime, decay, people on top of people, etc.
Yep! That is an unfortunate experience. My wife gets so exasperated with employees who have no concept of what it means to be an employee and to also interact positively with the customer. As a manager her job is to do her best to get the employee to understand their roll. She has fired a few just because they are incompetent but it is a difficult process that has to be very well documented. You know like a "warning" then a "serious warning" and then a "very serious warning"!!!
Any hints on fertilizing garlic?
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