Borouz Woodworking

This year we moved a lot of our raspberries, some to a row of raised beds at the lower part of what we call the berry room, and the rest of the black raspberries that were still in 22 gallon tubs to the top of the hill in the berry room.  The golden and red raspberries, blackberries, loganberries, and currants were moved to the new garden area by the fruit trees.  This left the blueberries where they were.  This was mainly because 6 of the blueberry plants are in a raised bed.  Three of them are still in the 22 gallon tubs, and we could have moved them, but decided to keep all of the blueberries together.  Well, except for the 2 in the greenhouse.

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We love our greenhouses.  They were not expensive, they went up quick, we have been able to move them by picking them up and walking them to their new locations and they help us to extend our season and save things in the winter time.  Did they save everything like I had hoped, no.  None of the hardy mums made it.  But we still love them.  Last year when it got warm I clipped bug netting to the two doors.  It worked, sort of, a white fly issue got out of control.  It did keep out larger bug pests, cats, a dog, birds, and our own chickens.

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When we moved here I had a dream.  I had been picturing land, animals, gardens, raising our own food and being able to breathe.  I won’t say that there were no Disney style cartoon birds and woodland creatures helping do the work while I sang, in my mental picture.  I will say that Bill probably would describe my ideas and also use the word mental.

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In this article, I will discuss the setup I use to add drip irrigation to large pots and grow bags.  I put drip rings of various sizes in bags and containers.  I make these rings to fit the container and provide consistent water to them.

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One of the things we like best about raised beds is the ability to work without having to bend down to or get down on the ground.  As we get older, this becomes a much bigger issue.  We have found that with a 2 foot high raised bed, we can bring a lawn chair up to the bed and work on it while seated.  This allows us to spend more time working without tremendous discomfort or pain.

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6 years ago (has it only been six years?  Wow!), our initial “raised bed” garden was a fenced in area behind the shop.  The beds were about 8″ tall 4′ by 4′,  made with wood that we had milled from our trees and we used the square foot method.  I loved my garden.  I would throw a board across the top of two beds and sit there and weed, listen to the birds and the wind and just be happy.  Time passed, life happened, and I went through a little time where my health was not great.  I thought gardening had passed me by.

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Bill originally built the shaker deck to help harvest potatoes.  For years we have grown potatoes in bags, not in ground, not in raised beds.  It just works better for us.  We will probably never get the huge harvests that other methods provide but we are happy.  Frankly happy is a pretty good outcome for anything that you do in life.  The shaker deck made bag harvest simple and quick.  We could work through 50 bags in a short amount of time and not miss a single spud.  This year we put the shaker deck to work breaking up bags of dirt and adding amendments to reclaim the dirt.

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Having a greenhouse always seemed to be an out of reach dream.  The entry cost was prohibitive.  We struggle with flat land up here.  We also struggle with sunlight and a fear of trees.   Case in point yesterday I was out looking at the grapes and found a rather large limb laying in between two of the beds.  It had hit the wire and mercifully missed damaging the grapes themselves.  One tree, with branches that slightly overhang the driveway, had managed to land on our grapes.  Imagine if that had been a glass structure, or even plexi glass.  You might say,  well that flimsy film with light weight aluminum poles will get smashed too, and you would be right.  The difference is in the money invested and ease of repair.

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