Using the Forage

Yesterday I went out for my usual early morning Friday walk and saw nothing to come home with.

That was all right. I wasn't "shopping" for much anyway and I was in the process of de-cluttering anyway. This week I had a number of projects on the go that used the stuff I've foraged in the past few weeks.

Emergency watering: rain did not come as expected mid-week so the drip waters I made from kitty litter jugs and water jugs came into use. The grape vines, blueberry bush and pole beans were very happy.

I decided it was time I had a good salad garden outside my kitchen rather than have to go to the main garden to get salad fixings. I used eight of the concrete blocks I'd foraged to build one, using the lasagna method of a 6-sheet thick layer of wet newspaper over sod, then layering in compost and garden soil to a depth of 8". I also filled the cement block holes with the same compost and soil for salad complements such as radishes and peppercress. So the stack of bagged soil and compost is cleared from our side entry walk, as are the concrete blocks!

Once set up this is a prime spot for cat deposits unless the little beasts are kept out. I bought a T-bar post to support one end of a 6' by 4' fence panel built of reused lattice and new fence boards. The other end of the fence panel is secured to my shop shed corner. I had improvised a barrier with some green fence netting and a foraged small cement pillar to keep cats from my tomato and herb beds. That was easily transferred to serve as an interim gate from the T-bar to the kayak shed. The permanent gate will be of reused trellis and new fence boards as well.

More of the trellis will be a shade for the new greens. I already have shade supports built and painted from last season. The rest of the trellis will probably be made into portable cat barriers to protect the melon and bean areas.

When it rains here, it pours -- and the one rain barrel we have fills very quickly, then we see a lot of water going out the overflow. I picked up a plastic barrel that had a clamp lid. I reused the main hole in the lid for a hose from the first barrel's overflow. I filled around the hose with some leftover window screen. I drilled/cut another hole in the second barrel and installed more hose for that barrel's overflow. I had plenty of hose from a Friday forage to do this. Some of the pipe insulation that I took off the solar oven when it failed there as a gasket works fine as hose gasket (to keep out the mosquitoes). I may eventually put in a tap (I have a couple on hand from some other previous use) on the second barrel, but for now it is easy to lift the unclamped lid and get a pail or watering can of water. I've also got a remainder of old garden hose I can use to siphon water out of the second barrel. I used two thinner concrete blocks I had foraged to support the second barrel.

I also finally sealed (with a can of acrylic sealer I got in a remainder sale) the two framed pieces of fretwork hardboard from a yard sale, put the piano hinge on them that I got another yard sale and set up a new screen in the gazebo. That nicely cleared some clutter from the shop shed.

Cleanliness is Next to...

Now that I've got my garden hose permanently on to a shut-off sprayer, I can clean my hands whenever I want. But it does use a lot of water and will often wet my jeans and feet as well as my hands. And the sprayer is close to the garden, but outside its fence and it's not close to the greenhouse at all.

So last week when I spotted a discarded laundry tub on the boulevard down the street, I had an "Aha!" moment and brought it home. I already had a spare pail with no lid kicking around as well as one of those large detergent containers with a push-button spout.

I shifted the potting table over to the edge of the cold frame behind it and had enough space to fit the laundry tub between it and the sage. The bucket has a good hand and fit nicely under the tub's outlet. I had previously rinsed out the spouted container so I filled it with water and put it on the potting table's edge so it hung over the sink. You just need a little water to rinse off the compost before grabbing the hoe again or whatever. I had a sprayer bottle as well that I could put in there for getting garden gunk off of tools or rough-clean vegetables. The used water can be cycled through the garden. The finishing touch was a sturdy stainless steel soap holder that I picked up at a yard sale the following Saturday for biodegradable soap when I've not resisted the urge to mess about the soil with my bare hands.

Now I did have a old bathroom sink hanging out by the sprayer hose. It'd come from the far back of the yard when I put in the shade garden. I decided to see if I could set it up by the greenhouse. The trick was elevating to the old machine part that was holding. I had a quartet of of 4x4 chunks and a couple of bricks that provided a stable base for it on either side of a square bucket. I nailed a horizontal support for the sink edge to the kayak shed which is opposite the greenhouse. The second detergent container still wasn't very stable, so I ran some covered wire through a piece of discarded hose to make a tether that held the back end of the container to the shed wall. The covered wire is easy to detach when I need to refill the container.