Samurai's Organic Garden

I am always excited to encourage organic gardening.  My buddy, Samurai, wanted to learn how to grow teh foodz and I used this opportunity to make another organic garden.  This one is starting from zero.  We have a dead Bermuda lawn that has a sandy loam base soil.  From what I saw when we were preparing the bed it is basically sterile.  I saw very few weeds, and no insect life, no worms.  What this indicates to me is this is a chemically dependent lawn which, at one time, had regular pesticide, herbicide, and chemical fertilizer treatment.  The soil is basically dead from an organic gardening perspective.

Above we dug the primary hole to evaluate the soil and drainage.  We found a sandy loam soil which surprised me.  I was expecting Texas Black Clay, which is very difficult to work with.  So this was a good thing, and we found, eventually, that the sandy loam is a lot easier to work in, and till than the clay.

Here we are excavating the Bermuda grass.  We started this process with shovels, thinking that it was necessary, as I assumed that it would be too tough for the tiller.  Then after trying the tiller we found that the tiller could cut through the dead Bermuda, and cut into the sandy loam easily.  This speed up the process a lot.  The second half of the excavation process went a lot faster.  After tilling the full 6 foot by 12 foot garden we spent a while pulling out Bermuda roots to try and prevent the Bermuda from growing back.

Mixing in the soil amendments was next, and we used composted lawn clippings, and Chicken Manure.  We found a sack of organic Miracle Grow fertilizer at the Home Labyrinth store.  It was pelletized Chicken Manure and its odor reminded me of the Fish Emulsion I used to use on my garden.  So we sprinkled the soil amendments on top of the garden, and mixed them in with the tiller.

After mixing in the soil amendments we smoothed out the bed, placed the plants, and started planting them.  We chose winter vegetables to populate Samurai's first garden.  I wanted to get some Tomatoes, but we couldn't find them this year.  We did plant Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, Kale, green Onions, Rosemary, Sage, Carrots, and Lettuce.  All of these plants will grow in the Winter in Texas.  Now we have to focus on watering on a regular schedule, and weed control, and we should have a happy garden.

The Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, Kale, green Onions, Sage, and Rosemary were seedlings, while the Carrots, and Lettuce were planted as seed, the two rows in front.  We have about three months before the first freeze, so this garden can potentially make some delicious Nomnoms before Winter...

 Tilling new organic gardens make Harley very tired, me too...

Fence Post Repair

I've got an old Cedar fence which not treated with any weather repellant.  Its probably about 15 years old.  The Cedar is in pretty good shape for its age.  There are some rotted out boards here and there.  The biggest problem with this fence is where it meets the ground,  When the Cedar is perpetually moist it rots, and attracts parasites like fungus.  Termites don't seem to like it though.

This is the hinge post for the gate, so there is extra stress on this one as well.  When I noticed it was getting weak I added a brace to it, which is a 2x4 at an angle in to the ground and secured to the post with deck screws.  One way to do this repair is to take apart the fence, pull the post and the concrete slug out of the ground, plant the new post, and reassemble the fence.  I was looking for a more efficient way.

Eventually I am going to replace this fence, and really only need something to prop it up for now.  So instead of replacing the hinge post I am adding a support post about a foot away.  When I go back to replace the fence I can pull the old hinge post and replace it, and still use the support post for extra strength.

This also gives me a chance to use up those partial bags of concrete hanging out in the garage.  Rather than using stake to hold the post in place I have attached it to the fence where I want it to be.  Then made sure the fence was positioned where I wanted it.

I mix the concrete in the Orange Bucket using a Sharpshooter shovel.  Its not easy, but it is cost effective.  These support post repairs are cost effective too.  The pressure treated Pine post is around $7, two sacks of concrete $5.50, and some deck screws.  If I was to replace the hinge post I might have spent 4 hours doing this.  With the support post I only disassembled the fence as necessary to attach the support post.  So I saved some time there.  I only had to pull two boards.  The time I spent installing the support post was about 2 hours.

 A couple days later the concrete is fully cured.  The post and the fence are solid again.  Now I'll remove the brace and replace the ground cover.  There were another two support posts I added in this time, so the east side of the fence is solid again.

The next project for this part of the fence is to add dog boards, and add some planks to close the gaps so a certain very loud dog, Harley, can't see out.