Archive for the ‘DIY’ Category
June 11th, 2011 | 
Author: After having a complete break from growing vegetables last year due to the rather awkward age of our son (very active toddler, too young to help, but old enough cause trouble, with a penchant for eating anything growing in the garden, edible or not), we thought we had should get back into the swing again this year. Our son is no longer a liability in the garden and loves nothing more than ‘helping’ whenever we’re outside. We have plenty of raised bed so we will let him have one of his own to work, with his own set of mini tools, whilst we’re busy with ours. Hopefully this will keep him happily pottering next to us and prevent him from digging up our seeds.
We unfortunately missed the start of the growing season as we were too busy with other home improvement projects. So none of the normal potato, onion or garlic crops for us this year, but we can still expect a bumper supply of salad leaves, herb, tomatoes, chilli, runner beans, courgettes, etc. to compensate.
The first job was to remove the polythene sheets that had been covering most of the raised beds for the last year or so. The sheets had done a good job of keeping out most of the weeds, except around the edges. The worms and ants had also done a good job of turning over the soil under the covers. We really didn’t have too much work to get them ready for planting.
Within a few hours all beds were cleared of weeds. The two beds to the right in the above photo, which were visibly still full of weeds, have now been cleared and will eventually be our fruit beds. They will be planted with raspberries, strawberries, rhubarb, etc. at the appropriate time.
We erected two tepees for French beans, using Laurel branches from the garden. One was planted with French Bean seedlings from the greenhouse and we directly planted Dwarf French “Purple Queen” Bean seeds around the other, for a later crop. We also planted two varieties of outdoor cucumbers in large pots near the greenhouse and plenty of courgette seedlings and seeds in the same beds as the bean tepees.
We’ll plant out the herb and salad seeds as soon as possible. We’ll probably use DIY seed tape for quite a few of the smaller seeds as we have documented previously.
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I have recently been working on a DIY gadget to allow remote monitoring of the status of the leisure battery which powers our electric chicken fence. Usually the first warning that the battery is getting flat is a red warning light on the fence energiser. By the time we see this it is normally too late and the fence is not being powered at an effective voltage. This is not an ideal situation, with foxes visiting our garden most nights. The idea of the remote monitor is that it will always give an accurate reading of the battery voltage, that can conveniently be checked from inside the house and can sound an alarm if it drops below a predefined threshold. It will also give an indication if the electric fence is actually switched on. There is a switch for the fence that we use to power it down when entering the run to collect eggs, etc. Unfortunately it is all too easy to forget to turn the fence back on when finished. Without going back outside it is often not possible to see if the fence is on or off. The energiser does have a light that flashes green when the the fence is powered, but this is not really visible during the day. As an additional feature the outside temperature is also monitored. To be honest a large part of doing the design was as a challenge to do something different and interesting during the winter evenings. But I do still think it will be a very useful tool to have.
I have now produced a fully working prototype. It consists of two units. A transmitter unit that sits near the bottom of the garden, connected to the battery, monitoring and regularly transmitting its readings. A second unit in the house receives the data from the transmitter and displays the status on a small 16×2 LCD display. Both modules are based around an Arduino Duemilanove microprocessor board. The Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. There are plenty of free resources available that make the Arduino platform an easy introduction to microprocessor development. The Duemilanove is the latest revision of the basic Arduino USB board. It connects to a computer with a standard USB cable and contains everything else to program and use the board. For the wireless link I used low cost 433MHz AM Transmitter and Receiver modules. With a couple of home made antennas the indoor receiver unit can reliably receive data from the outdoor transmitter when separated by more than 40m (and a window).
To finish off the design and get it into daily use I just have to box the two modules (including a weatherproof box for the outside unit). I also need to ruggedize the antennas and have a couple of minor hardware and software tweaks that I would like to implement. In the spirit of the open source Arduino platform that the design is based around, I am happy to share my design. If anyone is interested drop me an email (on the Contact Us page) and I will write up the project and provide a link on this site to any support files I have. I am sure that the general design could be used for numerous general purpose remote monitoring or control applications. With small software changes, for instance, the receiver could support multiple transmitter modules.
With autumn well and truly upon us, I decided to spend a little bit of time this weekend constructing a wellington boot stand. The idea of the stand is that it is positioned just outside the back door. Instead of muddy wellies being brought into the house, they are removed outdoors, and are placed upside down on the stand. They can stay outside, on the stand, in all weather and the inside of the boots won’t get wet.
The stand didn’t cost anything to make as it only used materials I already had (old fence posts, scraps of wood and reclaimed screws). Less than an hours work, a quick coat of non-toxic wood preserver, and hey presto, one ‘rustic’ (ie. it looks homemade), but very useful welly stand.
This weekend, in an effort to make looking after our hens even easier than it already is, we made a droppings ‘tray’ to sit under their perch. It was very easy to make and should be suitable for most henhouses that don’t come with a built in tray.
The hens enjoy kicking up their litter material all over the area around the pop hole, making a real mess in their run, jamming up the horizontal slider for their door. The solution was making a dropping tray by modifying a heavy duty tarpaulin. We had a spare one, but they are very cheap to buy. It was measured and cut for size allowing a 7.5-10cm (3-4 inch) turn up on each edge. It was then just a case of hemming the cut edges and sewing the corners. Handles (from cut off material) were also sewn on the sides.
Time will tell how long lasting or successful it is, but they certainly haven’t been able to kick any bits in the first couple of days of use. It should make cleaning out a breeze. It is waterproof so nothing goes through onto the floor of the henhouse.The handles mean it can be easily lifted out and tipped straight in the compost bins. It’s also easier for us to fill it with the litter material and carry it back to the hen house.
This evening we made up some carrot, radish and lettuce seed tapes. Seed tapes (basically seeds stuck onto paper at regular intervals) are available from quite a few seed retailers, but at quite a high price, which is why we prefer to make our own. I think that seed tapes are a very convenient way of dealing with very small seeds, with very little going to waste and saves lots work on thinning out when the seeds come out. They are extremely quick and easy to use. Simply make a small trench of the required depth, as you would for the seeds and lay the tape in the trench before covering and watering. Hey presto – job done ! Perfectly spaced, straight rows and no seeds blown all over your beds by the wind.
Carrot seed tape is one of the most frequently sold seed tapes. Supposedly a big advantage of carrot seed tape is that not having to thin out the carrots reduces the risk of carrot fly. The very act of thinning the carrot seedlings attracts carrot fly.
For the seed tape paper we used kitchen roll. You can just as easily use old newspapers but we didn’t have any on hand. We use all ours to line the bottom of the hen house. It is just important that the paper will quickly break down in wet soil. Glossy magazine paper would not be suitable. This should be cut into thin strips (say 1.5 cm or 3/4 inch wide). One advantage of the kitchen roll is that it is easily folded, concertina style, to make it quick to cut the strips. It can also be made into longer strips than the newspaper, matching the length of our raised beds.
To stick the seed to the paper we used rice glue. This is often used for traditional Japanese paper crafts and quickly breaks down in wet soil. It is made very simply by wizzing up a small quantity of left-over cooked rice in a food blender with a small quantity of water. You are looking for a consistency similar to PVA adhesive. Don’t make up too much as it really won’t last more than a few days before going off. Alternatively you could make up a flour and water paste, but we find the rice glue is stronger and makes for easier handling of the tapes when they are dry. We put the glue into one of the squeezy, refillable glue pens that you can get from hobby shops. We just made the nozzle slightly larger to stop it from blocking up. You could also use a cheap icing syringe or just a small paint brush. Then it is simply a matter of putting spots of glue at the intervals you want and dropping a seed on each glue spot. A pair of tweezers helps here.
Then leave the tape to dry overnight. Don’t forget to label the tape if you are making several different tapes at the same time.