Soil Bed Preparation - Hoops

I had previously talked about our Row Caterpillars as part of the plan for Season Extension.  We believe that we could extend the growing season (which in Indianapolis is 181 days) by 4-6 weeks on either side.  That could push our growing season from 6 months to as much as 9 months!  So how do we go about constructing this tunnel?

There's a couple of things we'll need.

1.  1/2" EMT (Electro Metalic Tube)
2.  10' long rebar
3.  Hack saw
4.  Tape measure
5.  EMT Pipe Bender
6.  Sharpie

Begin by measuring out 5' (half way) on the first piece of rebar.  Use the hack saw to cut the rebar at the measured cut.

Now take all subsequent pieces of rebar and simply line one end up with one of the first cut pieces and cut at the matching end.  The rebar is going to serve as our anchors for the hoops.  We will knock the 5' pieces into the ground until 3' is underground and only 2' is left protruding above ground.

Now that the rebar is cut, it's time to measure the EMT.  The pipe bender has a 10 degree bend angle line, and that's what we're going to use to get our hoops bent.  If we consider one half of the hoop (1/4 circle) the direction change from vertical where it will start at ground level to horizontal where it will meet the other end, is 90 degrees.  Given 10 degree bends, we will need 9 bends in order to make the half hoop.  Given the length of our EMT, we will make these bends every 6" starting at 12" to allow some middle extension to bring the two sides together.  Using the measuring tape, mark at 12", 18", 24", 30", 36", 42", 48", 54" and 60".



Now turn to the other end of the EMT pipe and measure off 18".  This is 18" we're going to cut off to lower the tunnel so as to not have any excess air inside.  Remember that any air inside the tunnel needs to be warmed at night by the passive radiation of the water barrels.  The less air we have the more effective the barrels will be so it's important to keep the tunnel size as small as is practical while still fitting all the components inside.

Now take your other 7 pieces of EMT and align them on the ground with the piece we just marked.

Now, using the Sharpie, simply draw across the other pipes at each mark in order to mark them quickly and efficiently.

Next we position each piece of EMT into the pipe bender in turn.  Align the marker with the Sharpie mark on the short side of the pipe.  I can't stress this enough.  Bending pipe is about leverage so you do NOT want the short side to be the side you're bending.  Once aligned, simply bend the pipe until the longer side aligns with the 10 degree mark.  It's also easier to align when you have the longer side here.  Don't worry about getting the bend exactly at 10 degrees.  By the time you've made 9 bends, I guarantee you your hoop is going to bend 100 degrees plus and you'll have to bend back a little to get it to 90 degrees properly.  Don't worry... it doesn't have to be perfect.

One thing to ensure is that you keep the bent section of pipe level off the ground.  Failing to do so, will cause your bends to form a spiral which isn't good.

Continue until all your EMT has been bent to 90 degrees.

Now cut off the 18" piece at the bottom of the EMT.

After placing the 6 plastic 55 gallon barrels on the north side of the raised soil bed, we hammer the rebar into the ground until 3' is underground and only 2' protrudes above ground.  These form the anchors for the EMT pipes.  One anchor is at each of the 4' sides of the bed.  Given that we're using 9 cinder blocks on the 12' side of the bed, the other two anchors are driven into the ground between the 3rd and 4th cinder blocks as well as between the 6th and 7th blocks.

Once you've driven the rebar into the ground, slide the EMT pieces over the top.  Connect the ends over the bed with a simple coupling connector.  Once the 4 ribs are connected, your caterpillar frame is ready for the plastic cover, but that's a topic for tomorrow.

Joint us again tomorrow as we look at covering the hoops with plastic to complete the caterpillar tunnel.

Soil Bed Preparation - Bottom

This post is way overdue, but with the flurry of spring activity, I haven't had time to sit down and write it.  Nonetheless, I found time so here we go...
We had completed the construction of our raised beds previously.  The design has two layers of cinder block for a total height of 16".  We constructed the cinder block beds right over the top of what used to be grass lawn.  There are two problems we want to address with the beds, before we fill them with our soil mix.

1.  Digging vermin like moles.
2.  The pre-existing grass and weeds.

Before we get into the way we chose to address these, allow me to share a quick tip.  See this photo:

The cinder block was set with the second layer overlapping the first and mortared into place.  We then used Quickcrete to pour concrete into the two corner adjacent holes to hold the corners in place and add strength to the beds.  Given that the foundation of the beds is just soil, some shifting is to be expected, but the walls of the bed doesn't have to do anything except contain the soil, so we believe this will work just fine.  Now let's deal with the moles.

In order to prevent moles from tunneling up from below the soil bed and wreck havoc in our garden, we are going to lay out chicken wire on the base of the bed.  In my scurry to get everything done in a compressed time frame after the freaking snow from the Winter from Hell finally melted, I built the beds before laying out the chicken wire.  The better way would have been to get 5' wide chicken wire and lay it out where the bed walls would be and then construct the walls over the top of the wire so as to hold the wire in place properly.  Failing to do that, we went with 4' wide chicken wire instead that fits snugly inside our 12' x 4' beds.  The soil mix will be heavy enough to keep the wire in place, but we do have a weakness on the edges though.  That, unfortunately, is a risk we're going to have to take.
Now let's look at the installation.  We begin with our roll of chicken wire.

The easiest way is to place the chicken wire roll on one of the 12' side walls of the bed and then simply roll it out to the end of the wall.

Be careful not to roll off the edge as it could pull the chicken wire crooked and mess with your alignment.

As you roll this out, you will either need another person to hold down the starting point of the wire or you'll need to anchor it somehow.  As I was working by myself on this, I staked down the wire in the starting corner with a piece of off cut EMT.

Now get your trusty tin snips and cut the wire.  Be careful not to cut too short.  You'd rather have some overlap which you can fold over than have the wire end up being too short.

Once done, the wire should be resting over the side wall like this.

Now simply remove the anchor and flip the chicken wire over into the bed.  Stomp it down into the ground and fold over any overlap you may have.

That takes care of the moles.  Now we need to take care of the existing grass and weeds that are at the bottom of the raised bed.  In order to do that, we're going to cover the bottom with weed cloth.  The reason for using weed cloth is to allow water to still drain out the bottom of the bed.  We do not want to inhibit drainage in any way.  Proper drainage is after all one of the main reasons we built a raised bed and filled it with our special soil mix in the first place.  The layout of our planting plan and the design of our row caterpillars resulted in our soil beds having just slightly more than 4' between them.  This allows us to roll out the 4' wide weed cloth perfectly between the beds.  Start by placing the weed cloth roll on one 4' end of the target soil bed and unrolling it to the other 4' end.

Now use your trusty box cutter to cut the weed cloth.  Be careful as they're sharp!!!  ALWAYS CUT AWAY FROM YOUR BODY AND FINGERS!!!

Lastly, simply flop the weed cloth over into the raised bed bottom and fold over any overlap.

Congratulations!  Your raised bed is now ready to be filled with our special soil mix.

Join us again tomorrow when we'll look at the construction of the half hoops for the caterpillar tunnels we'll be using for season extension.

Soil components

As we mentioned in the Keys to Success, the second key component is Mel's Mix.  Here's our core components for the mix as it was delivered to the house.  A rather large amount of work awaited getting the three mixed and into the raised beds.  The compost alone was 4 cubic yards.  For our mathematical calculations, I calculated the Peat Moss to expand to double it's size, but that's not really the case.  I had to get more Peat before we were done and by my estimate, Peat only expands to about 1 1/2 times it's compressed size.  Nonetheless, the mix got done!

Seed Starting Shelves

A large part of season extension is in starting seeds indoors.  For this purpose, I'm going to be starting seeds indoors this year and see how the transplanting goes.  I don't have all the tools for full season extension caterpillars yet, so this is a quick, easy and cost effective way to get a jump start on the growing season.  Once the beds have full season extension features, indoor seed starting will help extend even further into early spring.

For starters, I wanted to find a stainless steel shelving system that would hold up for years to come.  I looked around and the Seville SHE14305-5 the best.  It can be found on Amazon here:

http://www.amazon.com/Seville-Classics-SHE14305-5-Shelf-Storage/dp/B001A0VYZY

The shelve arrived and my daughter Jill and I went about assembling it.  Jill's only 8, but she's my big helper in the garden. :-)

The rack in the box.

Once we unpacked it, it was a pretty clean and simple set of components.

There are no tools other than a small and thin hex spanner for getting the wheels attached.

The assembly was painless and straight forward.  I will just note that you need to be aware of the cylindrical corners of the shelves.  They are tapered to make them easier to position properly on the vertical supports, but if you lower the shelve the wrong way around, you'll spend some time trying to figure out why things don't fit.  Basically, if the parts don't just snap and slide together almost effortlessly, you're doing something wrong.  In our case, we assumed the shelves would have the larger lip side facing up, but that was not the case, so it took us a couple of minutes to figure out the problem.  Total assembly time should be about 20 minutes.

The ONLY tool we used, and it really isn't needed, was my rubber mallet to gently tap the shelves to the proper level.

The shelves are ready.  Now we need to get the lighting to go with it and the seedling trays to fit before we begin.

Seed Starting Tray

For the indoor seed starting, we had previously assembled a stainless steel shelf.  Now the next step is to get the starting trays that will rest on the shelf.  I'm trying out this kit from Burpee.

When you open it, the kit contains a couple of components.  The first component is a seed chart.  Since all seedlings look pretty much alike, this would be useful in helping identify what we planted where.

The next is a thin plastic elevation panel.

The plastic is VERY thin and in our case, some of the legs was crushed in transit from the store.  They pop back easily enough and since we're not supporting heavy weight, the flimsy feel can be forgiven.

The next piece is the tray itself.  This particular tray contains 72 pods.

Each pod contains a small compressed pellet.  The pellets are made of coconut material and should expand within seconds after being watered.

When we peer down into the pod, we notice that the bottoms have holes.  This is for the self watering function to keep the growing medium damp.

The next component is the self watering mat.  The mat is nylon on one side and soft spongy material on the other.

The final component is the water tray.  This is also very flimsy.  I'm a little more concerned about this one's flimsiness because we cannot afford any leaks or the self watering feature won't work.

The assembly sequence for use is simple.  Start by placing the elevation tray in the watering tray.

Now evenly place the watering mat over the elevation tray, ensuring that the watering mat's sides touch the watering tray on both sides.

Now the seedling pods is placed on top of the watering mat.  Water is kept in the watering tray which is wicked up by the watering mat.  The seedling pods being in touch with the watering mat, absorb the needed moisture and keep the growing medium moist.

Spacing of the seedling tray on our shelf seem to fit nicely with room to spare.  We can fit 4 trays on our shelf which would give us the ability to grow 288 seedlings at a time.

Planting Plan - 2014 Season Summary

When we summarize our planting plans for two beds of corn, two beds of tomatoes, a bed of broccoli, a bed of lettuce and a bed of potatoes, we find that the following seeds are required:

Beans - 48 X 4 X 2 = 384 @ 250 seeds/pack = 2 packs X $10.29 = $20.58
Broccoli - 48 X 3 X 2 = 288 @ 100 seeds/pack = 3 packs X $3.95 = $11.85
Carrots - (96 X 12 X 2 = 2304) + (96 X 4 X 3 = 1152) + (48 X 10 X 3 = 1440) = 4896 @ 5000 seeds/pack = 1 pack X $10.50 = $10.50
Celery - 48 X 3 X 2 = 288 @ 250 seeds/pack = 2 packs X $3.95 = $7.90
Corn - 96 X 4 X 2 = 768 @ 1000 seeds/pack = 1 pack X $13.00 = $13.00
Lettuce - 24 X 6 X 3 = 432 @ 250 seeds/pack = 2 packs X $4.95 = $9.90
Lettuce (Butterball) - 24 X 6 X 3 = 432 @ 250 seeds/pack = 2 packs X $4.95 = $9.90
Onion - 96 X 2 X 1 = 192 @ 1000 seeds/pack = 1 pack X $5.60 = $5.60
Potato - 48 X 1 X 1 X 0.5 lbs = 24 lbs @ 25 lbs/pack = 1 pack X $19.50 = $19.50
Soybeans - 48 X 4 X 2 = 384 @ 500 seeds/pack = 1 pack X $10.29 = $10.29
Spinach - 96 X 18 X 3 = 8640 @ 10000 seeds/pack = 1 pack X $11.80 = $11.80
Tomato - 96 X 1 X 1 = 96 @ 100 seeds/pack = 1 pack X $27.80 = $27.80

Adding smaller packet totals together and upsizing to a larger pack saves money so be sure to keep that in mind.  Sometimes, if you need 300 and they come in packs of 50, it's cheaper to just get a pack of 500 rather than 6 packs of 50.

Needless to say, seeds have been ordered and now we are just awaiting their arrival.  Next step is to get the vermiculite, peat moss and compost delivered so we can fill the beds upon their construction completion.

Raised Bed Building - Day 4

With the temperature finally above 30F again, we were able to make the mortar mix and get the second level of cinder block onto the beds.  The mortar mix needs to dry overnight and then we're doing some concrete pouring in the corners to strengthen the beds, wrap up the fence and we're ready for growth medium!

West view:

South-west view:

North-west view:

North-east view: