Last year we we couldn't keep up with the persistence of bind weed in the garden. It is by far the most vigorous plant I have ever come in contact with. Bind weed pushes through the ground on great white spaghetti like roots that grow 20 feet into the soil. Bind weed twirls gracefully up the fences, forks out over the lawn with perfect balance and come up to grab the delicate stems of your fresh produce. You can hoe it and put the remains in your bucket and next day it will be back.
Bind weed is so beautiful in late July and August. Her deep green leaves and burgundy blush on the cream tipped buds mesmerizes me. The bud opens to the sun as white as a wedding gown. When we moved in, the lawn was blanketed with the white flowers of bind weed and I was taken by it's beauty. It wasn't until it took over my garden that I began looking for solutions. Garden boxes is one of them. Garden boxes with a heavy duty layer of weed cloth on the bottom on top of the lawn. Paul had mentioned building wooden garden boxes for the spring growing season but I had no idea they would be so spacious and beautiful. I am a lucky wife to have such a talented and willing husband. Here is how he made 3 - 3'x7'x24" high garden boxes. Cost was $200.
Shopping list
200 coated outdoor screws 31/2" long
water based waterproof cedar stain
12 - 2"x12"x10'long lumber
3 - 2'x4"x8' cut into 22" pieces for inside corners
36 ' of weed cloth we used a natural cloth made out of corn.
Tools Needed:
skill saw
screw driver gun
staple gun
carpenter's pencil
tape measure
framing square
paint brush
2 saw horses
and 2 extra boards for a work surface.
These 2 saw horses came in handy. Notice the 2x4's lying under the saw horse. The next day the sun was out and the stain had dried. We carried the separate layers out to the garden and decided where to put them. Once we figured out where they would go, we attached the 2 layers together with 2x4's by screwing the 2x4's on the inside corners. We turned the boxes over and attached the weed cloth to the bottoms with the staple gun.
Next the trailer got hitched to the white Ford truck and Paul went off to town to buy some clean dirt. The boxes were filled one by one, load after load with the finest richest dirt I had seen since moving from Southern California. The red clay here in Utah is beautiful to look at but the hard pan is difficult to sink a shovel into. When it is dry it is hard as a rock and when it is wet you can sink to your ankles in the orange red mud. Growing delicate vegetables and flowers is difficult in the heavy red clods of plowed up earth. Big Sage, Rabbit Bush, Juniper and oh yes, Bind Weed do well. This black gold promised success with this year's vegetable and flower crop. We of course put in a bottom layer of llama manure then filled it with the new soil.
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| Bind Weed August 1, 2010 |
Bind weed is so beautiful in late July and August. Her deep green leaves and burgundy blush on the cream tipped buds mesmerizes me. The bud opens to the sun as white as a wedding gown. When we moved in, the lawn was blanketed with the white flowers of bind weed and I was taken by it's beauty. It wasn't until it took over my garden that I began looking for solutions. Garden boxes is one of them. Garden boxes with a heavy duty layer of weed cloth on the bottom on top of the lawn. Paul had mentioned building wooden garden boxes for the spring growing season but I had no idea they would be so spacious and beautiful. I am a lucky wife to have such a talented and willing husband. Here is how he made 3 - 3'x7'x24" high garden boxes. Cost was $200.
Shopping list
200 coated outdoor screws 31/2" long
water based waterproof cedar stain
12 - 2"x12"x10'long lumber
3 - 2'x4"x8' cut into 22" pieces for inside corners
36 ' of weed cloth we used a natural cloth made out of corn.
Tools Needed:
skill saw
screw driver gun
staple gun
carpenter's pencil
tape measure
framing square
paint brush
2 saw horses
and 2 extra boards for a work surface.
Line up the boards onto a few extra pieces of lumber to keep the boxes off the ground and level.
It was snowing outside and we did all of this under the carport. We listened to country music and the work went really fast. Below Paul is putting in the screws to hold the box together.
The garden box is 24" high so we make 6 - 12" layers then paint on the stain.
These 2 saw horses came in handy. Notice the 2x4's lying under the saw horse. The next day the sun was out and the stain had dried. We carried the separate layers out to the garden and decided where to put them. Once we figured out where they would go, we attached the 2 layers together with 2x4's by screwing the 2x4's on the inside corners. We turned the boxes over and attached the weed cloth to the bottoms with the staple gun.
Next the trailer got hitched to the white Ford truck and Paul went off to town to buy some clean dirt. The boxes were filled one by one, load after load with the finest richest dirt I had seen since moving from Southern California. The red clay here in Utah is beautiful to look at but the hard pan is difficult to sink a shovel into. When it is dry it is hard as a rock and when it is wet you can sink to your ankles in the orange red mud. Growing delicate vegetables and flowers is difficult in the heavy red clods of plowed up earth. Big Sage, Rabbit Bush, Juniper and oh yes, Bind Weed do well. This black gold promised success with this year's vegetable and flower crop. We of course put in a bottom layer of llama manure then filled it with the new soil.
Below are my beautiful garden boxes filled to the brim with lovely rich soil. Paul is already plowing the cow manure into the cornfield. But that is another story.
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