The Garden -- Part 1

No, not that Garden, Part 1. This is part 1 of my misadventures in the back yard.

As I mentioned last week, one of my first projects was a composter. I know this shouldn't seem too important, but we've gone without a composter for a couple years now, and really wanted to get back into it. A year or so ago in a Green Guide issue there were instructions on building your own composter. They made it look quick and easy, and it sounded much better than my previous composter, which was just a plastic garbage can with some holes in it. Besides, it's still a couple weeks before I can get my first planting up here, so I figured I get this done before the garden beds.

Future home of the new composter.

The first step was finding the right spot. Well, this wasn't much of a first step. It's not that difficult to find a spot to put compost. We put it in the far corner of the yard, against the wood fence that borders the condos next door. This way, if it begins to smell bad at all, hopefully it'll waft into their areas.

The next step was getting the supplies. I went to Home Depot a week or so ago to pick up the 2x8's needed. (Note: I know the wood above is untreated, and for something that's going to be outside all the time, I really should have gotten treated lumber. Unfortunately I needed 8' 2x8s, and the shortest ones Home Depot had were 10'. I would have gotten the 10' ones, but they only fit in the VUE if I can put down the passenger seat and stick them out the front window. Sage was with me, so that wasn't an option, so I figured I'd just go with the 8' untreated ones. I'm sure this thing will rot away in 10 years, but who looks that far ahead. And a coda to this side-story: I was in Lowes a few days later trying to find extenders for the downspouts, and walked by the lumber, and sure enough, they had 8' 2 x 8's.) The composter is quite large -- 4' X 4' -- and the instructions suggest building it on-site, as the final weight is close to 100 lbs. I was up early on Saturday, and figured I'd get going in the garage before moving the operation to the yard.

Building the sides.

After cutting all the pieces to the correct lengths, I attached the 2x8s to some 2x4s to build the sides. The instructions suggested using a 1/2" piece of wood as a spacer between the 2x8s to allow air to flow into the compost. Of course I never measured out all the 2x8s to make sure the 1/2 space between them made sense. So after hammering in 3 of the 2x8s, I realized that the last 2x8 would either be way too high from the bottom, or would have way too much space between it and board #3. How could this be? After measuring the 2x8s, I realized what it was: they were all 7 1/8" wide instead of the standard 7 1/2". (At least I thought the standard width was 7 1/2", but who knows.) So when I built side 2 I used 1 1/4" spacing, and it came out much better.

The "good" side on the left, with even spacing. The "bad" side on the right, with uneven spacing.

After getting the 2 sides built, I moved everything out to the yard to finish up the construction. The next step was to connect the two sides at the back with 4 more sections of 2x8s.

Putting on the back.

The back was easy; the front was a little different. Because you need to get in and turn over compost from time to time, the ideal set-up is to have a front that can come off. The Green Guide's plans were for the front to have 4 2x8 pieces that slide into the front. For this I needed to nail in 2 more 2x4s behind the front 2x4s, leaving enough room for the remaining 2x8s to fit in.

Sliding in the removable front panels.

More panels sliding in.

And with that, the composter was done. All that was left was to add in some compost!

The inaugural dump.

The last step I wanted to take was to cover it up with some burlap, just so animals will keep out, if at all possible. And ta-dah! Our composter is ready for business.

The composter sits forlornly in the corner of the yard.

Two hours was all it took, and I didn't have to make any additional trips to Home Depot. (A note on the photo above. During the day on Saturday we finally met the woman who lives across the street from us. She's been living there since 1970, and mentioned that there used to be a golf course where the condos are now. There still is a driving range next to the condos, but she said right on the other side of the fence was the 3rd tee. How sweet would THAT have been?)

So the composter wasn't the only project of the weekend. A ton of smaller things got done, such as organizing the garage, cleaning out the gutters, hanging up a new mailbox, and raking up all the branches from the yard. Another item I had on my list was to move an Ikea bookcase that the previous owners left in the cedar closet. I wanted it in the workshop. Normally, this wouldn't rate even a mention, but here's a photo of the bookcase in the cedar closet.

Cedar closet with bookshelf.

Maybe you can't notice from the photo, but the top of the bookshelf is only 5/8" from the top of the cedar closet. Why is this a problem? Because the top of the door jamb comes down 1 3/4" from the ceiling. And because it's so tall and deep, you can't even tilt it down to pull it out. This all leads me to the question of how did they get it in the closet in the first place, and all I could figure is that they built it IN the closet. Now if you wanted shelves in a small cedar closet, instead of building something IN the closet that is impossible to remove from the closet, wouldn't you simply put in individual shelves instead? No, that would make too much sense. Anyway, I had to take apart the bookshelf, take it out piece by piece, and then re-build it in the workshop. It only took 20 minutes, but I still found this completely inane.

Finally, to the garden. My plan was to roto-till up the yard area either this weekend or next, build raised beds, bring in some topsoil to mix with the soil already there, and then get going. However, after doing some research online, I found that roto-tilling up a lawn is the worst idea when starting a garden, as all it does is disperse your weeds and their seeds more deeply into the soil. So now I'm off to plan B, which is to try to kill the grass off, and then build the raised beds with soil/loam completely.

Black plastic in the back yard.

I went to Russell's this morning and got a big piece of black plastic. I'm hoping that within a week this will kill off the grass so that it can be ripped out with minimal work. (I know -- ha!) Once that's done, I plan to lay down wet newspaper, then plenty of topsoil/loam and compost, and build the raised beds from there. This will require a lot of loam (I figure close to 5 cubic yards), as I'm building them all from the bottom up. But I think the long run it'll come out the best.

Next week: The grass comes out, and the beds go in.