Wooden planters made from scrap wood

Posted by louisa on Monday 31 January 2011 in growing, making, wood stuff | 6 comments

Last week, I got the cravings – the “I NEED to make something out of wood” cravings – so I set Saturday aside for playing.

I actually set out into the garden to make one thing but found some planks (the long bits in the picture) that would be much more appropriate for something else on my to-do list – wooden planters. John’s dad had brought them for us last week – he regularly collects scraps of wood from a joiners’ yard for firewood and when he visited that day, they gave him these salvaged planks too – but he thought they were too good for firewood so they ended up in our general scrap lumber pile instead. The shorter bits in the picture are also scrap wood from the same source – all roughly about the same size so almost no sawing required!

With that scrap, and five 6ft long battens (leftover from when I built removable shelves in our airing cupboard), I made two planters – each about 4ft long by 1ft, by about 9ins deep.

The bases are different because each batten made exactly one long length and two shorter lengths – I was delighted to find it was pretty much exact, again minimal sawing! – and that was the most efficient way to make use of the wood.

I’ll use a liner of some sort in the planters and puncture that between the slats of the base for drainage. I added little feet to the bottom (in a way appropriate to the base) to raise the slats off the ground too. The whole thing will need treating with some veg-safe preservative too, to maximise it’s usefulness.

Neither planter would get me a job as an artisan woodworker or would be used as a practical example to teach even spacing or the concept of right angles – but they’ll grow salad (or similar) as well as planters that would cost me £50 each from a garden centre. Plus I had loads of fun making them :)

I think these will go in the front garden – we have some dead space out there which I’d like to make useful this year. Not sure exactly what we’ll plant in them yet – I really need to get on with planning where everything is going to go this year!

Another new shelter for the chickens

Posted by louisa on Monday 22 November 2010 in chickens, wood stuff | 1 comment

We made another shelter for the chickens yesterday. My mum calls them “smoking shelters” and I guess the principle is the same – although if I find out our little girls are smoking in there*, there will be hell to pay ;)

My original idea of duplicating the first shelter just using bigger pallets didn’t work out. Cut in half horizontally, the full size pallets wouldn’t be quite tall enough for our girls; cut in half vertically, it would be way too high. Instead we used one of the smaller size pallets and the crate that our greenhouse glass was delivered in for the sides and found some misc wood (an old table top? a gate?) for the roof. It’s not completely water tight at the moment, but I’ll fix that soon. As you can see, it’s already poop worthy.

The existing structure of the crate thing provides extra stability and also the sides of it should help protect the feeder from at least some horizontal rain. I might move the feeder and completely encase the crate bit actually – it might make an al fresco nest box for when they want to lay somewhere different.

I’m not as happy with this one as I was the first one – I have a feeling this is turning into a bit of a Goldilocks thing – the last one was a bit too small for the bigger birds, this one is probably a bit too tall, the next one should be just right though!

(Oh and in some more chicken related news, I think we’ve got our first rats down there – when John went down to check the girls were all in bed last night (they were), he heard a noise and when he turned the light on, the feeder was swaying all by itself. We’ve also found a little hole that could be a tunnel. It’s not a surprise really, given the run/coop is near a waterway and there is always spare food in the feeder. We put a lot of work into fox proofing the run but I guess we need to work on rat proofing it as well now.)

* More bad chicken puns. Top five cigarette brands that chickens would smoke: Clucky Strike, Beakson & Hendges, John Layer Specials, Reggal, Silk Cluck. (sorry.)

Frugal, cooking, growing and making link love

Posted by louisa on Friday 19 November 2010 in chickens, cooking, frugal, growing, meta, wood stuff | 2 comments

It’s super foggy here this morning so I need some ace inspiration to get going – and I thought you might need some too. Here are some of my favourite reads from the last few weeks…

• Ana White makes things that always excite me – demystifying woodwork and creating fab bits of furniture cheaply and easily. I think her old Knock Off Wood blog was the site that most inspired me to pick up a saw and screwdriver – and I just love her most recent side-table – and her “paint it bright” philosophy!
• One thing I was missing when I made my meal from just things I’d grown/caught/foraged was salt – now thanks to ManUpATree, I’m inspired to try making some myself – just got to find some clean enough sea water…
• Gillian of My Tiny Plot neatly summarised Which? Gardening’s heritage versus hybrid veg article – very useful info, thanks Gillian!
• Damn the Broccoli gave us some useful tips on staying warm but keeping the heating bills low…
• Compostwoman of The Compost Bin has been writing about… composting. Specifically, how she does it – and a very seasonal post on how to make leaf mould.
• And finally, Little House in the Suburbs recently ran a seven part series asking their community about lots of aspects of chicken keeping. I’ve contributed a number of times and loved reading what other people had to say – lots of very good advice and suggestions.

(For anyone who cares, the first is from the top of our garden, looking into the woods next door/at the bottom of the garden – and our chicken coop is in the bottom right; the second is the bandy trees at the bottom of our garden, just behind the chicken run; and the third is over our wood pile to the north, we can’t see our neighbour in that direction in the summer – or when it’s foggy!)