How to make and use a DIY soil grader.
DIY soil grader!
What you need.
A wood pallet with most of the wood removed.
A couple of ropes.
The ability to act like an Ass. Or horse. Or mule. Take your pick.
Just drag it behind you.
Also if you could have weird hair and extremely pale legs, that'd be great.
.
Let me hear you bray!
Stylin'.
You are going to have the prettiest garden out there! This pic must have been taken about 2 weeks ago because all the trees have burst into leaf by now and the grass has had one cutting already.
you really have waay too much time on your hands
Maybe she is trying to get on the cover of a gardening magazine. The feature would be "The flattest, most level garden"! It does look nice Karen. Happy Gardening!
Wow! Look at the trees in the background. It is still early Spring where Karen lives. I'm in Zone 7 and we are in full summer already.
You make me laugh like a jackass.
I think I understand the leveling - you have giant clods of dirt and the seeds would just get too deep? Florida is just sand so the leveling is not necessary - but the compost is. Everything (water included) just running down through it like a sieve so the compost helps hold it for a little while. I have one question - for next week when you can read and answer - why don't you plant some sort of cover crop to till under? Seems that may help with the clotting? Or maybe nothing helps with that - at least it isn't rocks. Community gardens are wonderful!
This could be a new source of income if you can convince the neighborhood kids to pay you to pull them around your plot on that. The extra weight would help with the leveling process. ; )
I'm not sure serious grading is necessary for a garden plot. I just dig as much compost in as I can and then rake it out flat. I try to keep the foot traffic to the pathway and let the garden bed soil alone. You really don't want to compact the soil too much. But I admire your tenacity. I'm sitting here popping Advil because I was moving rocks yesterday. Gardening isn't for sissies!
looks easy enough to be a jackass. A project for my next years garden that is if I get through this year. Just "sayin". Karin
OK, everyone else is making snarky comments, which is usually my job, so I'll play it straight. Why are you going to so much trouble to make everything perfectly flat? It looks like that plot of land was pretty darn level to begin with. It's not as if your community garden is gripping a mountain slope in the Himalayas. And the fact that you are shown doing this yourself, with nary a Dirt Dude in sight, means that even they think this is unnecessary. Drop the seeds in the ground already, so you can drop the ice cubes in your drink. Oh, right. I forgot, you don't drink.
Maybe she took the picture after she did all the hard work of getting it graded!! I think this is brilliant. After we till it is always so uneven which makes it hard to actually do any planting of smaller seeds. Now if I could just figure out how to hook my Great Pyrennes to pull it for me. Cause it would work even better if someone stood on the pallet and the other pulled.
And I'm guessing you don't garden. ;) ~ karen
Hey, I pretend to garden, thank you very much. Actually, since my Toronto-area garden is both tiny (land prices here are beyond extortionate) as well as hard packed clay soil, my gardening efforts are confined to pots and planters, and raised beds. There was no way I was going to break my back, and cut severely down on my martini drinking time, by digging up my yard to break up the clay, and amending the soil. Therefore I got a very nice gentleman to build me 2 foot high raised beds. I then ordered a few tons of nice soil, and had him fill the new raised beds with it. Since the sight of me in tiny shorts was of no interest to him, I had to pay him in cold cash, but at least I got to sit and watch the work being done. With a martini in hand, of course. But back to my original comment; your previous post that showed you with the giant Lee Valley pasta fork clearly showed the garden plot as being very flat - both in the tilled, and untilled sections. Hence my belief that you were going to unnecessary trouble. But carry on - I shall watch you work via your photos, while I sip my martini.
She drink Diet Coke, so she can stop now and drop some cubes in her Coke. Maybe the girl likes a workout.
Very nice quad definition.
Hey, I just bought three bottles of magic stuff to remove every brown spot from my head to toes and I will start on my legs, so enjoy the lack of sun damage.
You could sit on it and get Leo to pull.
OK Cynthia, I'll bite....What's the name of the magic stuff that removes brown spots from your body? I need it badly, lol.
Thanks.
It's called AG3derm. Not sure if it's manners to post this, so remove if it's not Karen. :)
I'll let you know if it takes them off in an elegant way or burns a hole down to the bone. Hey, anything for not looking like I am 60.
I'm old. I just live with brown spots. But I had to visit the dermatologist recently for a skin cancer checkup and as he looked for suspicious spots (found one, fixed it, everything's cool) I asked him about the spots on my forearms and hands. I said, are these anything to worry about, or are they just "old lady spots"?
His reply: We call them "wisdom spots". I love my dermatologist now. What a crafty young fellow he is.
Cynthia -
Did you start using the AG3derm yet? If so, how are the results?
Thanks.
P.S. If you'd rather email me privately, my email is [email protected]
Not yet. Soon I will.
If only you had spider veins like me-then you could really rock the look!
Trust me when I say this Karen, they could be a lot worse....errr...I mean paler.
My friends and family have all asked me at one point during the summer months, in all seriousness, when I dare don shorts:
1: "Um. Why are you wearing white tights under your shorts?"
2: "Hey, have you tested to see if those things glow in the dark?"
3: "Aaahhhhh! The light! My eyes! It's blinding!!!"
Or the best one yet from the other day;
4: "I think they are just so bright that they reflect the sun & therefore are incapable of getting tanned...?"
If you ask me, you're rocking those shorts!! ;)
I say #4 to my Hubby, shield my eye's, crying and running away, "You're singeing me!" He just loves it.
Cool idea.
As for the legs, you're Canadian. Don't you spend a lot of months of the year just trying to keep from freezing to death, bundled up indoors by the fire? Nobody expects you to be tanned at the beginning of garden season.
Here is my favorite joke - it is a Minnesota joke, but I am sure it works just as well for Canada:
Q: What did the Minnesotan say to the Pillsbury Dough Boy?
A: Nice tan!
Really? That's it? No back story? Not arrested for public lewdness and assigned community service grading gardens? Lost a bet? Trying to make extra money for your cat's prosthetic leg? That doesn't look like your backyard. A woman's workcamp? Gulag? More info please!
Susan R, the back story is yesterday's post on her community garden. Karen doesn't have time to post explanations; she is prostrate from manually dragging a pallet around her huge garden!
You are hysterical! You get soo much done in a day...and now I know why. All the pea patch men ;) and the balls to act like a jack ass! Love!
Didn't everyone grade dirt like this ???
It is an honourable look for a true gardener.
also some blue gloves...which pretty much makes you "Babe, the Blue Ox" of yore.
good one!
thumbs up!!
Nailed it Deb!