April 6, 2009

Wow, my internet reserach has determined that that yellow ball in the sky is actually the sun!  Yep, that's right, it was out for the weekend.  That's a rarity indeed in Seattle.  Of course, I wanted to take advantage of it!  In fact, we hit 70 degrees for three days in a row.  Of course, it's looking like wind and rain in the next few days.  Glad I have my plastic to re-cover my beds.

Now for the story on the wood from yesterday's post.  Many of you have seen my potato bin page. In fact, we've surpassed 10,000 views of that page.  I seriously think that more people have seen that page than every other page on my blog, hehe.  Pretty cool. 

So Sunday was the day to start season two of my potato bin saga.  I don't think I'll chronicle it in a page, rather I'll keep it going in the regular posts.  However, if something comes up, I'll update the page.

Anyway, yesterday you saw that I got new 2x2s to replace the pine that rotted out inside my bins.  I could probably got one more year out of them but it was cheap insurance for heavy dirt cubes pressing out.

Of course, I really want to get my sons involved in gardening with dad.  Passing good food production on to one's kids is important these days, kid yourself not.  So for this project I had them carry the boards from the shed to the patio where I built my boxes.



Once the materials were there for both bins, I had the kids separate out the long and short 2x6s and count out four 2x2s in each pile.  Hehe, I kept having to tell Logan not to answer for his baby brother.  He's working on counting.  He knows his numbers but is still all over the board with the counting. 



See how the lower pile has perfectly lined up boards to show that they are different sizes, that's my perfectionist at work.  After that, the kids kind of played as I put the lower level together. 



Actually, my youngest helped a lot putting them together.  I didn't pre-drill first so it was hard to get the screws to bring the boards together, so I had him stand on the top, pressing it down.  Worked well and he was very patient with me.  We had fun.



Doesn't it look pretty?!  I can't wait to start building it up.  So, a half hour later, I had two of them built for this year.



And there's my little helper being shy.  I wish I could have more than two of these, but as I decided not to plant yukon golds in them (I have no idea where I'm going to plant them).  I figured I would just grow two bins of Buttes.  My wife isn't too keen on the fancy kind anyway. 

So after I put these two together, all that was left was to place the finished bins where they were going to sit for this season.  Hehe, I had left the landscape fabric in place from last time, so all it took was to rip out the weeds that had taken root in the little bit of Mel's Mix that was left in the depression.



You think I have enough room to place a 31 gallon SWC and an 18 gallon SWC and a trellis in between those two?  We shall see!

Hope you had a great weekend and enjoyed your garden.