Extra plant space

No I am not posting this so you can see a messy closet. I copied this ideal from a blog I saw a year or more ago. Not sure whose blog it was but I thought it was a great ideal so I put up these shelves this fall and put some of my house plants on them.

Part of my problem with our house is that I don't have very good windows to put plants in front of. The front of the house faces east and only have two windows. One of them looks out on the porch so not enough light comes in for plants and the other is in the master closet. This one gets great light and is why I put the shelves up to take advantage of this.

The whole project cost about $50 and took about and hour to assemble. There is a metal bar on each side of the window that a bracket snaps into to. Then an 8 inch board sets on top of it. The window is 36 inches wide and the boards are 48. I was going to cut the extra off but decided that I could store extra pairs of shoes on the extra(you can never have enough room for shoes). Also the one orchid I have can't take the full sun from this window so it set to the side out of the sun. I will need to paint the boards but since no one see it but us I thought it could wait until next year.

Step Project

Here is my most recent project. I was thinking last year that there needed to be some steps here to make accessing behind the rose trellises easier. I was motivated a couple Sundays ago and put these in.


It was rather quick and easy to do. I guess since I have done this a few times before. All I did was figure out where I wanted the first step at the bottom of the hill and dug out some dirt so I could put the first rock half above and half below the dirt. Next I stood on it to make sure it didn't rock, if it did I just put some dirt under it until it stopped rocking, Then I eyeballed it to make sure it looked level and went on to the next step and did the same thing.


The plantings I did last week to finish off the look. The tree/bush on the left is a Crepe Myrtle, the picture on the card attached to it shows a purple flower but the one that is opening is pink. The small variegated plant in front of the bush (can only see a small amount of it) is the Tasmanian Tiger Spurge and the bush I am not sure. We like it because the new foliage comes out red.

Bargins add interest in the garden

Here are some additional things around our garden. Actually these are the new items I purchased right before the Garden Tour.

I really love Hobby Lobby. They usually have something every week that is on sale 40 to 50% off. But the week before the tour they had some home decor items 66% off and all the garden related items 50% off. Needless to say I made several trips.

The shelves are to the left of the front door. I try and change it up according to the season.



Sorry, turn your head sideways. Andrea turn your computer on it's side! The metal work was the most expensive at $18 and the shelf below was $11. This is under the deck to the right of the windows. My original ideal was to have a mirror put in the bottom part to reflect light under the deck. When I checked on the price of a mirror it was going to be $36 plus cutting cost. Needless to say I changed my mind. Will keep my eye out at garage sales.

The next couple of pictures of small more or less flat things that I put between the rocks on the patio. I think it adds some interest. It is so hard to get any plants to grow due to the ground under the rocks is hard clay.

Saturday Project/Rain Garden

As you can see we had a little rain last night so the rain garden got a workout. It must have came down pretty fast since the rain garden over flowed. That is the 2nd picture in case you were wondering. I guess I won't be doing any planting today!

This is one of the things I did on Saturday. Scoot says finally you got the downspout buried and the Azales planted, it's only been 2 months that you have been talking about it. My reply is kiss my a--!! But it does work we had a thunder storm this morning and I ran out side to see if the water was coming out of the end (that is the round green thing) in the yard and it was. I'm so happy!!

Stick Bean Trellis

This was my latest project. Here is a picture of the trellis I made for my pole bean plants. It is very crowded along the house but the plants were already about 3 feet tall so I think they will make it. If they don't grow, I'll just say it's a very expensive piece of art.

Stick furniture update

If you remember one of my early post was on how I made the stick chairs and plant stand. Well I finally moved them out of the garage and into the yard. The plant stand is under the deck with my house plants on them and the chairs are at the edge of the woods looking back into the yard.

Update on the Potatoes

Here is an updated picture on the growth of the potatoes. I have added dirt 2 times now and they are 3/4 of the way up the pot. Need to add more dirt today. Mom should get a kick out of seeing this. Since we planted a half acre of potatoes growing up.

Innovative retaining wall

Just wanted to pass on what I did with the sod I dug up when I made the flower bed in the front of the house. I was just dumping it at the edge of the woods in the back of the house. The problem with just dumping it was that some of it would roll down the hill into the woods and I want it to stay at the edge. The hill drops off at the back of the house, as I tried to show in the first pick, and I wanted to level this off somehow anyway. I don't know how this came into my mind but I thought why not stack the pieces into a wall? I mean they used to make houses out of sod in the pioneer days. So that is what I did. Not sure if it will work but I thought it was worth a try. I put the grass side down, since it is under the trees and grass doesn't grow there very well anyway and will cover it up with dirt and some kind of ground cover.

New Bed

Here is the latest flower bed I have added to the yard. It ties in nicely with the trellis. One thing that didn't make it into the pic's was a window box under the window.

The window box came from Gardener Supply Company, http://www.gardeners.com/. It is a self watering window box. It has a reserve at the bottom of the box that you keep filled. I will let you know how it works.

The basic ideal for this flower bed was to create something a little more formal for the cottage garden, which is what I am calling my col loge of plants that are in the other beds. I had a hard time deciding on what to put on either side of the windows. I looked at spiral trimmed evergreens, some sort of weeping tree, hydrangea tree and trellis on the house with roses climbing on them. What I decide on was tree roses from Jackson Perkins. Here is the website http://www.jacksonandperkins.com/, search for Diana tree rose. I let Scott pick which one he wanted of the 36 inch tree roses and he choose Diana Princess of Whales. I hope it works out ok. This is the first time I have had a tree rose and I am not sure how to over winter it.

Along with the tree roses I planted Azaleas. I picked these up at Lowe's after the frost when they were marked down to $1.99 each. I got 1 gallon pots of 4 light pink, 3 hot pink and 2 white. Here again I have not had much experience with Azaleas. The deer ate the only other ones I planted. I will add some annuals to give it color during the summer. Not sure yet what I will put in the window box. It is on the east, south east side of the house. I will add some pic's when it is complet so you can check out the finished product.

One fatality to the project is the spinker head that was next to the porch. Yes I said was. You know those little tillers can till up just about anything. Well it needed to be moved anyway. Other wise the 3 hot pink asaleas would have blocked the spray. Needless to say the sprinkler people have been called. I am sure that won't be cheap. Scott couldn't say much since he wacked one up with the edger along the side of the drive way. He says that it is the sprinker company fault for putting it so close to the drive. I say it is those crazy edger divers. They are worse than the blue hair drivers!!!(ok poor excuse for humor, but I tried)

I also want to point out and thank my assistant, he's in the last pic, for all his help and support during the digging and prep work on the bed. He likes to give out lots of kisses!! :)

Arbor

This was last weekends project. I love doing these things but had the amount of time it takes. It pretty much took all weekend to do. Well there were a couple of breaks to let the concret base set up and go shopping for more plants. You have to have some priorties! As you can barely see in the one pic that this is where the uitilies come into the house. These means that Scott stood on the porch with the phone ready to call 911 in case I hit the electic line. This didn't happen as I had insured him it wouldn't. I was careful and just took thin layers of dirt and grass off the top and dug with a trowel for the holes. The rose I planted to vine over the arbor is CI Westerland. Here is a link to a picture of it http://www.heirloomroses.com/cgi/browse.cgi?page=item&cat=11&item=548 I hope it works out for me. I will keep you all posted

Potatoes

About a month ago one of the local garden experts on the radio here in Kansas City was talking about growing potatoes in a pot. This brought back a lot of memories of planting potatoes growing up. But we didn't grow them in a pot. Anyway one of the local hardware stores that this expert promotes was selling a kit to grow your own potatoes. I checked it out and all that it was a large plastic tub, a bag of potting soil and a seed potato for 19.99. That seemed a little high to me and since I had an old flower pot I had picked up from someones garbage and an old potato that was starting to grow I figured I could get some potting soil and save about 15.00. So here are the pictures of what I have done so far.

I put a about four inches of potting soil in the bottom of the pot. Cut the potato so that I had four pieces with sprouts on them. Laid those on top of the soil and covered with a couple of inches of soil. Now it is a waiting game. But as I under stand it as the sprouts come up I will have to keep adding soil until the soil is a couple inches from the top. This will the plant can grow potatoes all along the stem from the bottom of the pot to the top. The only mistake I have made is waiting too long to plant my potato. The general rule around this part of the country is to plant them on St Patrick's day. Not sure the history on why you plant them then but I would think it has something to do with them growing better when it is cool.

Stick Arbor

Well it is finally done. I have mixed feeling about it. I guess in reality I am not the rustic sort of person. I wish some of the sticks were straighter or lined up better.

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The first picture is where I was laying the sides of the arbor out in the garage. It is hard to work with sticks like this because they aren't straight. You get the top and bottom of them the same distance apart and the middle looks out of line. What I ended up doing is just eye balling it to make sure it looked good.

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The second picture is the completed side of the arbor. It looks ok but when I got it outside and all put together the left side looks way out of a line.

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Third picture is both side set up outside. It took a couple of attempts to get them set the right distance apart. I didn't put the arbor in the ground at all. The wood I used would not last a long time being in the ground. What I did was drive T posts into the ground and wire the arbor to the posts. A T post is what a farmer would use to put up a fence to keep the cattle in the pasture. I hope that explains it well enough. You can find T posts at any of the big box hardware stores.

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The last picture is the completed arbor. You are looking at the same side as the second picture. See how it looks worse in the last picture than it did in the second picture. Once all the vines cover it you won't notice it. I guess I am most worst critic.

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The top of the arbor I tried to use odd shaped pieces of wood. Like ones that were really curved or bent to give the top a little additional height. I haven't decide if I will seal this or not. The chairs in an earlier blog I sealed with an outdoor sealer and it made them shine. Not sure if I like that or not. It does add a little polish to the rustic look. Anyway let me know what you think.

Do it yourself (DIY) rustic twig chair

To give you a little background information. We have been living in the house we built since Dec 2001. The lot is one of the largest in the subdivision but about a third of it is a hill with lots of rocks and trees. To make things worse where there isn't rock it is clay soil. To take advantage of all the natural resources I have made retaining walls and a patio out of rock and some trellises out of the sticks/twigs/branches that we have an abundance of. I thought I would share my 2nd piece of furniture that I have made. The first was going to be a chair but I made it too tall and wide but not deep enough. So I converted it into a bakers rack. There will be another post later on this.

I first got the ideal while going through my sisters Gardening How-To magazine and it had a project on how to make a Rustic Twig Chair. The issue was the Sept/Oct 2006 issue. Here is the web site http://www.gardeningclub.com/. Now their chair is done without the twigs overlapping and it looked more refined. For me it was easier to connect the twigs if they overlapped. I also changed the dimensions. I was planning on having the chair setting on the ground and figured when you sat on it they would sink into the ground and the legs would rot first.

Here is the list more or less of what you would need.

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2 back posts 1 and 1/2 to 2 inch in diameter and you can use what ever length you would like. I wouldn't go any shorter than 48" or longer than 72"

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2 front posts same diameter as above and 24" long

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4 rungs to attach to the front and back posts 23"

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4 rungs for the sides at 20"

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Deck screws 2 and 1/2 inch long and 1 and 1/2 inch long

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Several misc pieces to help secure the chair.

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Step 1:

Look at the 3rd picture from the top. Here I am assembling the front section. I attached the first rung 5" from the bottom and attached the top rung 3" from the top. See completed front section in picture 4.

Step 2:

Look at picture 5. Again I attached the bottom rung 5" from the bottom and attached the top rung at the same distance as the top one on the front section. This is where if you are very particular about measuring you might not like my directions. All I really did was lay them side by side making sure the bottoms lined up and eye balled where they should go. When you overlap the rungs with the front and back posts let them run past by about 3/4".

Step 3: Attach the front and back together with the side rungs. I put the side rungs on top of the rungs attached to the front and back panel. You can see that best in the last picture which is a side view of the chair.

Step 4:

Add pieces to the back of the chair as shown in picture 6. These can be any length and to me the more bends and knots the twig has the better. These can be from 1" to 2" in diameter. I would go to small or you might compromise the stability of the chair.

Step 5:

Add a piece to the side of the chair as seen in the last picture. You could add two pieces of wood for extra stability.

Step 6:

Next I bought a treated 1X4 board from one of the big box stores and cut it to fit on the seat. I plan on having a pillow to sit on but if you don't have one you will be able to sit without hurting your rear end. You can see what this looks like in picture 2. I also added a couple of round wooden balls to the top of the front posts. I would say this is optional. I thought it added the finishing touch.

Step 7:

Sealing your chair to make it last longer. I have sealed it with a Miniwax product that is for outdoor use. Not sure how it will hold up. I can let you know next year at this time. I would suggest using something and you will probable have to reapply it every year or so but that is just my guess.

Step 8:

This one I have not added due to the fact that it was raining the weekend I put this together. You will also need to add a cross piece to the back to lean against and hold the back post together. I will try and add a picture when this is done.

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As you can tell I haven't mentioned picture 1. Well that is the chair that turned into a bakers rack. More on that in the future.

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I think the most important thing is to use your imagination when choosing the wood. As you can see I didn't pick the straightest for smoothest branches but to me that adds more character to the piece. But above all have fun. If you need more detailed instructions I am sure you can find them on line. I did this project by the seat of my pants and just used the measurements from the Gardening How-To magazine as a guideline and adjusted it to fit what I thought I needed.