Adventures In DIY

Southwest Gardening July 2010 Update

The temperature in Las Vegas and other parts of the South West have easily been 105 – 115 F these last couple of weeks. Here are some of the things I’ve observed.

The leaves on the tomatoes I have in planters that get full sun have been folding inward. These tomatoes are an heirloom variety that I grew from seed using the Burpee Heirloom Tomato Mix and a Super 100 cherry tomato.

Wilting Tomato Plant

Another Wilting Tomato Plant

This was even happening to the hot pepper that is in a pot. I think the problem is the plants weren’t getting enough water. According the Old Farmer’s Almanac tomatoes need at least 2 inches of water per week. I would think it is more here.

Here is what I’ve done to try to combat the plants from becoming dehydrated.

• Increased watering to twice daily. I water for 3-4 minutes each time on an irrigation system. There are 1/4” soaker hoses in the tomato planters.
• Built structures to partially shade the plants from the afternoon sun.

I built the shade structures from some 2x4s for the legs, scrap lumber for the top portions and some old solar screen material left over from another project.

Shade structure dimensions:

• Width: 2 ft
• Height: 6 ft
• Length: 8.5 ft

Shading Structure

The solar screen material was rolled over the sides and stapled on the inside.

Bottom View Of Shading Structure

I built only one shaded area to see the difference between added water and an area with additional shading. I’m writing this about 2 weeks after taking the pictures and I’ve seen some improvement on the plants that get both partial shade and the extra watering over the plants that get additional water only.

• The leaves aren’t as closed up as they once were.
• The Super 100 cherry tomato plant is starting to produce fruit again.

As a side note the basil plant that gets partial sun is doing well. I make sure to pick the flowers as they start to grow to keep the plant from going to seed.

Basil Plant Getting Partial Sun

First Summer Take Aways

• Next year I will start watering twice a day in June. Since I started to water more the heirloom tomatoes have started to really produce fruit. Hopefully I’ll get at least two more months out of them.
• Continue to plant basil in two areas, a cluster in the container that gets full sun for an earlier harvest and one in the bed that gets half day sun for summer use.
• I have some bell pepper plants that get half days sun. Those will be moved into some of the planters that get full day’s sun.
• I will try planting center clusters of 4 tomato plants in the 4 raised beds to see how they do there. (Each bed gets a varying degree of morning and afternoon sun)
• Continue to fertilize the tomatoes twice, once in May and when they are producing fruit. I use a time release fertilizer that contains calcium to help the growth of leaf tips and blossom ends. It also helps prevent blossom-end rot.

No Comments » August 13th, 2010 by DiyGuy Gardening |

Mixing Raised Bed Garden Soil

I read that instead of using traditional soil or topsoil for the raised beds it is possible to use something similar to what I believe a green house or nursery would use. The soil is comprised of equal parts of

• Something to aerate the soil
• Compost to feed the plants
• Material to keep the soil moist

At the end is my materials list and what it cost me to make this soil for 4 raised beds.

Before going out and buying the materials the volume of each raised bed was calculated.
Width x Length x Height

For me I used the following:
4 ft x 4 ft x .5 ft = 8 cubic feet

In able to fill all 4 beds I needed:
4 beds x 8 cubic feet = 32 cubic feet

I needed roughly 11 cubic feet of each of the materials listed above. When I bought the soil materials I got as close as possible, but I figured I wasn’t baking a cake so I just had to get close to the ratio.

Raw Materials

Everything was mixed on a tarp because it was too expensive to waste any of these materials.

Mixing The Different Types Of Compost

The peat moss is used to help hold moisture in. A compressed bail will almost double in size when you break it apart.

Breaking Apart Peat Moss

I found it hard to completely break the peat apart. I just break apart the little clumps when I run across them when checking the garden.

It was also helpful shifting the soil to one side and back on the tarp to bring up the material on the bottom of the soil heap.

Mixed Soil

Finally, with some assistance from My Helper the raised beds were filled.

Raised Beds With Soil

Here is what I purchased for the soil project:

Compost Notes

• The Walmart Composted Mulch (1cuft each) was the worst looking compost mix. There was a lot of thick wood fibers in it.
• The Humus Gro Compost (2cuft each) was the best looking mix for the price.
• The steer manure compost (2cuft) was the most affordable, but I had some mushrooms come up. After talking to a more experienced gardener at work, he had a similar experience when using steer manure.
• The ingredients for the Kellog’s Gromulch are similar to the Humus but it also has some fertilizer mixed in.

7 Comments » April 30th, 2010 by DiyGuy Gardening |

Irrigating And Positioning Raised Bed Gardens

Putting in an irrigation system to raised bed gardens is not necessary, but I don’t have the time to individually water plants for the four garden areas I’m putting in. Being in a desert, if I missed a day or two I would definitely lose plants when summer comes.

At this point I put the empty raised bed garden structures in what I thought would be a good layout. From there I just started to move them around. The frames are really light so re-positioning them was simple.

Getting A Feel For Raised Bed Locations

Once the general position was figured out I did the following to finalize the position:

• I drove a stake in the ground to reference where the fronts of the raised bed gardens would go
• Tied a string on the stake
• Put a really big nail on the other side of the string
• Used a square to referenced off an existing concrete walkway

Setting Up A Reference String

After the locations of the beds was finalized by measuring distances and squaring the fronts to the reference string, the outside corners where the irrigation would cross was marked with marking paint. I used marking paint because I had some, use what you have to reference the corners.

Luckily the existing irrigation ran under or near 3 of the 4 beds so it was a matter of digging to expose the PVC pipe where the modifications needed to be done.

The PVC was cut so T couplers could be added for each bed.

There is really only 3 things you need to work with PVC irrigation pipe

• Purple Primer
• PVC Cement
• Something to cut the PVC (I use an old hacksaw because I’m not spending $20 on a specialized PVC saw. I don’t think I would save that much time.)

To glue, cement, the PVC irrigation pipe together

• Get rid of all the burrs on the cut pipe
• Apply Purple Primer where the pieces will meet, this includes both the coupler and pipe
• Apply the PVC cement to the primed areas
• Push the pieces together (remember to work quickly the cement sets fast)

It always helps to dry fit everything first I’m not kidding when I say the cement sets fast.

I had to trench and lay new irrigation PVC pipe to one of the beds off to the side.

The ground wasn’t level in some areas. This was especially true of the raised bed off to the side where the grounds sloped down in an area by about 4 inches. Fill dirt from converting my lawn in the front yard was used to level out these areas.

To help with controlling the weeds and keep the tree roots from getting into my raised beds, I put down some weed blocker fabric.

When doing the installation, overlay the weed blocker by 4 inches and it is recommended to use lawn staples every 4 feet.

The reference string was setup again. Up to this point the stake was never taken out of the ground.

Final positioning was done using the reference string and a tape measure.

I used black 1/2 inch flexible pipe to distribute the water to the soaker hoses. To connect this to the PVC pipe there is a threaded cap that needs to be installed on the PVC and a PVC to black pipe adapter.

I found that a clamp was necessary to keep the black pipe on the adapter. Also, the protrusion of the logo can potentially cause leaks. I had to file down if the leak occurs from this area. It looked like a manufacturing defect because some of the other ones had this filed down already.

I decided to use the 1/4 inch soaker tubing instead of the drip tubing because I wanted a wide dispersion of the water over the whole bed instead of just down rows.

This is the one of the few cases when buying a specialized tool really pays off. Most definitely buy the tool that punches holes in the black pipe. The back side of this should have a hole in it. This is used to help push in the 1/4 inch barb connectors.

I laid out 8 rows of the soaker hose. The outside rows are 4 inches from the edge with the inside rows being 6 inches apart.

At the end of each soaker hose row a 1/4 inch plug was used to cap off the end and a hose stake held it in place.

I figured out that it takes around 4 minutes for the irrigation system to soak the beds thoroughly. We’ll see what I have to do come summer time, but for now running it every other day seems good.

4 Comments » April 16th, 2010 by DiyGuy Gardening |

Building Raised Bed Gardens

The raised bed gardens that I built are for square foot gardening method. All this means is I am using the suggested dimension of 4′ x 4′ x 6” for the size of my beds. When making these beds the only thing that needs to be kept in mind is accessibility to the plants in the middle of the bed. From what I’ve read the raised garden beds should be no more than 4 feet in width.

Here are the materials and tools used in this project to make the 4 raised bed gardens:

• (4) 2x6x16 Douglas Fir lumber @ $6.84 each (Lowes)
• 1 box 3” general purpose screws @ $4.79 (Ace)
• Drill and bits

When I purchased the lumber I had them cut the boards to 4 foot lengths.

Before I read the Square Foot Gardening book, I had already seen where someone had overlapped the joints of fixed sized lumber to make their raised beds.

Raised Bed Plan

First thing was to predrill the boards where the screws weren’t going into the end grain so they wouldn’t split. Stacking the boards and shifting them as the holes were drilled helped speed up this process.

Predrilling Boards

Before assembling the raised beds I identified the way the boards would cup because of the grain pattern. The curve in the picture below depicts how the board will cup if it were to happen.

Identifying Grain Pattern Cupping In The Boards

Only thing left was to put the raised beds together. It helped to put the 3 screws partially in the board and brace the other end against something.

Assembling The Raised Bed Gardens

As you can see my Helper was there to help me temporarily place the raised beds. I don’t plan on permanently putting the raised beds using 4 x 4 lumber or something like that. They will be heavy enough to stay in place when the soil is added.

Temporarily Placing Raised Bed Gardens

1 Comment » April 2nd, 2010 by DiyGuy Gardening |