Garden Box Construction, Part 7

Yesterday, despite the rain, Liz and I headed into the backyard to continue our work on the garden boxes. While the first box is assembled, we still needed to put in the pond liner (which will hold in all the water, at the bottom).

It took a few attempts, but we finally got things situated in a workable way. The material made it really difficult to work with.

Liz, looking less than happy at my documenting our next process: measuring and cutting up lengths of performated pipes.

Each of these will sit at the bottom of the garden box.

The ends we covered with landscaping fabric, fixed in place with duct tape. We only taped up one end, wanting to first do a dry fit to ensure we had things measuered properly.

Our makeshift workbench has gotten a little… messy.

Finishing up stapling in the remaining sides. Note the pipes are only covered on one side. We had to haul them out here to test placement/spacing… and then had to haul them back inside to cover up the other end.

We could have wrapped them all in the backyard I suppose, but the rain was making it a little tricky to do that kind of work. It was drizzling, off and on, the whole time we were outside.

One of the more dauting processes for me was drilling a hole in the side of the box for the drain tube. This guy will ensure that, should the water level ever rise above a certain point… the water would just drain out.

I had to go and buy a custom 5/8″ paddle for the hole. Which we had to drill first, before stapling the pond liner in place. After that was done, we had to cut a small hole in the liner, allowing the drain tube to fit snugly through.

I was definitely nervous about getting the hole placement wrong. And doubly nervous about cutting into the pond liner. I wante to make sure the hole wasn’t too large, because otherwise… we’ve just punched a hole into a very large swath of very expensive material, and made ourselves a custom water leak.

Pretty snug!

Dry fitting the pipes.

Not too shabby!

There needed to be at least 0.25″ between each one, to allow some of the soil to get through. With a bit of bending to ensure straightness, we ended up fitting eight large lengths across (and two smaller ones at the ends).

Time for some soil!

Liz, mixing up the first round of coir, soil, vermiculite, and… honestly, I’ve forgotten what goes in here. She’s the brains behind the operation, and I’m primarily the labor.

The first mixture sits at the bottom, and we were only to add just enough to where the tops of the pipes were showing.

Liz, feeling a little better at our progress – after many hours of working in the cold and rain.

Adding a soil mixture on top now.

Here, Liz is adding in some earthworm casings. The affinity for the poop of earthworms is something that, apparently, runs in the family.

After many hours of working, Liz was starting to lose it.

And the box – almost, almost done! We had forgotten to add in the fill pipe (bottom right) until we already added in the first layer of soil. But we were able to mostly get that sorted.

We had maybe one or two more large batches to mix up, but we were losing the light. I wanted to keep going, but Liz made the better call of us stopping. About 10 minutes afer this, it would have been too dark to see much fo anything at all.

Related:
Garden Box Planning Mode
Garden Box Construction, Part 1
Garden Box Construction, Part 2
Garden Box Construction, Part 3
Garden Box Construction, Part 4
Garden Box Construction, Part 5
Garden Box Construction, Part 6