A DIY garden path: Take a walk on the lazy side

My mother-in-law made a great garden path and offered to write about it for Gardenaut. Take it away, Karen:

Gardeners are not what you would usually term a lazy bunch. But even the most energetic of us have a slothful streak every now and then. I tend to look for shortcuts that perfectionists wouldn't think of.

The design and construction of our garden walk was a shortcut of major proportions. Previously in this area was a dreadful path made from pine bark mulch. Weeds cropped up in the mulch on a regular basis and the mulch washed out with every rain. But putting in a standard professional looking paver walkway with the leveled sand base was just too much for me to even consider. So my husband and I came up with this idea. We did have to rake the old mulch out and haul bags of gravel in, but all in all it was a project that we could handle in a few hours each day spaced over a couple of weekends.

We worked in small sections for several reasons. One we could design as we went, a major plus since we were too lazy to draw out plans. Also we did not want to tear the whole yard up at once, just in case we never finished it. Finishing a section at a time gave us more instant gratification, and it was easier to haul smaller loads of gravel from the supply store that way (it was too much trouble to rent a truck).

After raking out the mulch we placed a 4' wide barrier cloth on the ground in 4' x 4' sections. The 4' square section was then bordered with landscaping pavers and a 4" x 4" piece of treated lumber. A square paver placed in the center turned on a diagonal for the visual effect provides a stable walking base. We filled the area around the paver and lumber with sand. To top off the area we used two sizes of gravel, a small pea gravel then a larger river rock on top. Sand was then sprinkled over the top surface several times to fill in the gaps.

The photo shows the walk after a year of use, no weeds, the gravel firmly in place, and it still looks nice. The only problems we have encountered is that the lumber pieces are a little shifty, but we have resolved that by staking the wood with crude wood stakes driven in below the level of the gravel. A few of the pavers have drifted a little too. Maybe someday we will fix those. For now, we're feeling a little lazy.

Potato barrel project

A few weekends back we finally got our pumpkin, cantelope and watermelon seeds in. We planted those seeds in a very steady rain on a Friday after work. It was actually kind of fun. The following day we got our potatoes planted - not in the ground but in our old half whiskey barrel.

I thought that it would be too difficult for the potato roots and such to make much headway against our native clays. I also think that the clay would hold too much moisture and cause any potatoes that formed to rot. My mom and nephew had grown potatoes successfully in a half bushel basket several years ago.

The theory behind this method is that the shoots you cover up essentially revert back to root status and the plant is forced to grow upward once again to find the sunlight it needs. By raising the soil level this way (in increments) the plant is able to continue growing without suffocation, at the same time creating a longer tap root than when planting directly into the ground. With the longer tap root many more lateral roots can develop and each lateral root can then produces potatoes (at 3-4 levels rather than the normal single layer). So, this method should solve a soil suitability issue and hopefully increase yield.

My mom said that the harvest was easy - just knock it over!

I looked around the internet and saw other ideas that were very similar. I was hoping to come up with an aboveground growing process that involved free or cheap materials. I asked about bushel baskets at our farmer's market and was told that they are hard to come by and they wouldn't sell me any. I saw that you could use old tires - set one down and fill with soil and the seed potatoes and then keep layering soil and hay until you needed another tire and so on. That idea was not welcomed by the other adult in our household, who has a lower threshold for trashiness than I do.

I had hoped to do several separate potato plantings but since I couldn't come up with anything besides using our whiskey barrel, space was limited. I think it'll work and I am just excited about trying a new vegetable in our garden. So we drilled holes in the bottom for drainage.

Next we added a bit of compost and soil.

We placed the seed potatoes in and covered them with a layer of chicken poop-infused hay and then more soil from Mount Weed. We'll add more hay and soil layers as the shoots come to the surface.

I'm pretty sure that we planted too many potatoes in there but well, we had them. There are fingerlings, red potatoes and some blue potatoes. We don't usually eat that many regular potatoes - sweet potatoes are lower on the glycemic index and just a lot better for you, so we tend towards those. Maybe next year we'll try to grow some sweet potatoes, depending on how things go this year. Anyway, hopefully we'll get a good enough harvest this year so that our son and I can make some blue gnocchi!

Wine bottle border

We've always wanted to do this.

I did get a little zealous with the digging in. We have made more segments of this border since then - they run between three half-wine barrels containing blueberry bushes, then in a 20-foot border we've about half-completed - and I buried them a little shallower so the "wall" would be more pronounced.

I'll post more photos to the Gardenaut Flickr group when the project is finished!

Build your own compost bins

A compost bin can be as simple as a big pile that gets turned maybe once. It gets moistened by the rain, drains into the soil below, and is big enough to get hot inside.

But the needs of an urban gardener can require a bit more structure. Your piles need to be more "contained," partly for looks, but partly because the less space you have, the more organized you need to be. Smaller piles need to be turned more frequently, so you'll need at least three bins if you want to crank through a couple loads of compost every year. In theory, the third bin is for finished compost, the first two for flipping a single pile back and forth every time I turn it. I say in theory because I need the compost before it gets to the third bin. If I'd had more space, I would have built four bins - the fourth holding carbons (leaves) until I had enough nitrogens (greens) to build a proper pile from the start.

Mostly I use compost as a mulch. I compost it about three quarters of the way - so that it's at least a uniform brown - but it's still got lots of stick-like things poking out every which way. I spread it around in my perennial beds, covering up the stubble of the cover crop. A more refined gardener would sift it through a half-inch screen at least and put the sticks back in the bin for another round of digestion. But I'm too lazy for that. I dig it into the vegetable garden a little more aggressively, feeling a little guilty that it's not better composted (and thus will rob my plants of nutrients just a little while, until it's done digesting).

There's a lot of science behind composting. For the most part, I ignore it, adding greens until (the next day) the temperature of the pile feels about as hot as a hot-tub. In my small pile, this temperature doesn't last long, so I add lawn mowing greens whenever I mow (and turn the pile at the same time). The clearest guide I've seen to the science of composting can be found here.

There are a lot of good compost bins on the market. They're all based on the idea that you don't turn the stuff, you just put waste in at the top and either scoop it out of the bottom when it's done or let it sit until it's completely done and then "unwrap" it. If you chose to turn one of these systems, you'd need a lot of space. Compost tumblers may have problems staying moist, according to Gardenaut Dale. And if it's not in contact with the soil, you're getting fewer micro-organisms in there to digest the stuff. So with tumblers you have to buy "compost activators," leave enough of the old compost in there to recharge a new load, or treat a tumbler as a second-stage composter to transfer half-finished compost into for rapid breakdown.

I like to manage my compost, turning it by pitchfork every week or so, mixing in fresh greens when it cools down too much. I use the pitchfork to provide the fresh oxygen a tumbler is supposed to introduce, which helps speed up the composting process. To this end, I use a classic three-bin system, with removable slats on the front. A lid is optional, in my case, since I place my food waste in a green cone, where rats can't get at it. The three bins allow me 2 bins for the "working" load of compost (which I turn back and forth from one bin to the other) and a third bin for "finishing," this is the cooler stage when the worms move in and make it all nice and crumbly.

How we made our bins

Generally, I follow Seattle Tilth's plan for an urban compost bin: Three, three-foot cubes side-by-side. But my bins were right up against the property line, so I built a solid cinder-block wall along the back. Wood tends to fall apart after awhile, dumping bits of refuse into the neighbor's yard. I also used cinder blocks for the dividing walls, though I penetrated these with holes so the soil organisms could travel back and forth between bins. I also wanted to avoid using pressure-treated lumber where the composting was going on, and concrete is a relatively inert material.

The superstructure is inert, solid, concrete. A secondary wood frame is attached to the concrete using anchor bolts cast into the concrete slurry inside the cinder blocks. This wood frame provides an easy place for attaching lids, the metal tracks for the removeable front boards, etc. Wood is cedar where in contact with compost, ACQ pressure-treated on top of the bins (where I may attach a lid later). I probably would have used cedar there too if the bins were not protected from the rain. Then I screwed in a metal "L" shaped channel, so that removable wood slats could line the front of the bin. I found the metal in the basement, from a previous owner of the house; it was part of a bedframe. The removeable front slats are any old wood - 2x4 untreated studs. They can rot as they wish, and are easily replaceable. I used "duplex" nails (these have a double head - making them stick out a prescribed distance) as spacers, keeping the wood front slats gapped to allow air penetration. If the other wood components rot, it will be easy to unscrew the anchor bolts and replace the wood.

The first year, I smashed up a lot of free pumpkins from my grocery store's dumpster out of Halloween. But the liquid had nowhere to go, and pools of moldy pumpkin juice made the bottoms of the bins rather yucky all winter. The second year, I rented a jackhammer and busted a drainage hole into the concrete slab. Nothing fancy, just a hole. The worms provide the drainage channels. This hole also provides a repository for decomposers. Until this hole, my bins had a problem not unlike a compost tumbler - they had no direct contact with microorganisms in the soil.

I love the look of my bins. But if I had to do it all again, I'd have made all the interior walls and probably one of the side walls our of a concrete frame with a mostly mesh infill panel - removeable, replaceable panels of course. The concrete frame restricts airflow too much. Granted, I turn my piles a lot, so some of this is mitigated. I'm also toying with the idea of sinking a perforated pipe in the heart of each pile, but this is an awkward work-around.

Kids like dirt

Kids like dirt. Familiarity with dirt teaches them to be gardeners. And gardeners are necessarily stewards of the planet.

G follows me around when I plant things, digging holes next to mine, "planting" the almond slivers he finds in his granola. I indulge this whenever I can. But sometimes, I have to say no - that's where I just planted my shelling peas, for example, and I don't really want them dug up before they sprout.

That's why I built him a dirt table. He can do whatever he likes there. Plant seeds, water them way too much, dig them up again, run bulldozers over them. It's basically a shelf with drainage holes and an "edge" to accommodate a couple inches of dirt. He's constantly pulling up his sprouted peas and examining the roots. "Look at this papa!"