this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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Gardening

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You all inspired me to do some beautification in my veg garden (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 months ago by IMALlama to c/gardening
15 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

When I planned these beds I spaced them far enough apart to get my lawn tractor in-between them, but getting between them and the fence involved my weed whacker. As anyone with a fence has found out, maintaining the grass at the base of a fence is a pain.

I'm 3/4 of the way done with the edging. It's 10" tall with something like 6" or 7" of it buried. It does a good job of keeping grass out of our other beds, so I'm sure it will do a good job here. The downside is the most effective way of installing it is to trench first, put the edging in, and then refill the trench. If you try to use one of those big pizza peel looking things to make a narrow slide the will usually get wavy due to variation in trench depth.

I mowed to basically ground height between the beds, weed whacked around the beds, and put in a layer of that thick paper builders will use to protect flooring below the mulch. Some areas for cardboard instead, but we just didn't have enough cardboard to cover it all. Hopefully it will be enough to kill the grass and hopefully that results in less grass appearing in my raised beds.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Very nice! Looks professional :)

Could you put down flagstones with some sort of soft groundcover to grow between the stones? Could keep the grass at bay more permanently.

Kinda like this, but with a better groundcover than grass:

[–] IMALlama 4 points 5 months ago

Thanks! I don't know about professional, but it should be pretty practical.

I thought about stone, but it's too permanent. We have crushed marble (that white stuff) in some of our flower beds from the previous owner and it's a pain. If we wanted to get rid of it we would have to pay someone to take it away.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Looks so manicured now! Now that the weed barrier is down and you shouldnt need the mower there, you think you'll consider putting more beds in?

[–] IMALlama 3 points 5 months ago

We might expand for more beds once our kids outgrow their play structure. We have four 4x8 beds and grow vertically, so we have a decent amount of space. This year we have beans, peas, cucumber, cantaloupe, trombetta, pie pumpkins, shallots, onions, carrots, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and lufa for fun.

[–] SchmidtGenetics 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Looks great! I’ve gotta live vicariously through other growmies posts for a week still. Steroid shots are next week than I should be able to get some more done.

Is that the same custom printed speaker I saw a post about last week or so?

[–] IMALlama 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Thanks much. Here's hoping you feel better soon!

Is that the same custom printed speaker I saw a post about last week or so?

Indeed it is, functional prints for life.

[–] SchmidtGenetics 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Trying to hold on until my surgery, steroid shots are so I don’t need to rely on pain killers, but they come with their own complications. Trying to find the right pacing in the mean time, but I hate not doing something if there’s stuff to do. It’s a struggle.

I’ve seriously contemplated getting one, so many things I could make and use, but I also wouldn’t have the time, that would probably be a winter only type of thing. But once it’s setup and I’m comfortable, obviously wouldn’t be hard to quickly set something up or tinker with files in bed on a tablet as well. But than that would flare up the carpal tunnel anyways, so waiting until after the surgeries before even testing that water haha.

[–] IMALlama 2 points 5 months ago

I hope you're back to your normal physical self soon.

As far as the 3D printer goes, there are three main types of categories of people with printers at home:

  • Tinkering with the printer is the hobby. This can be a mix of tuning for better quality, faster prints, etc as well as physical modifications to the printer. One of the extremes of this is the speedboat race where people go all out for the fastest print of a common model
  • Modeling things and then printing them. I fall largely into this camp. I've made many a replacement part for a kids toy, jigs/fixtures, brackets, printer mods, speakers, wagon wheels, a thing to keep cats out of potted plants, even a tiny toolbox for the minimal amount of tools I used to carry at work
  • The printer is largely an ends to printing free/paid designs from the Internet. There are tons of designs out there that are a mix of cute (but probably throw away), functional/practical, things you could sell, etc

If you're modeling it will be mouse and keyboard, but a SpaceMouse will improve ergonomics. All you're really using the keyboard for is number input.

If you find yourself in the functional print crew, don't be surprised if you wind up printing things to help in your garden. Some of the PVC fittings holding together my arch are now printed parts (less effort to model and print a replacement than drive to the store) and the hooks the "gates" to my fence hang on are also printed. Once you get in the habit of finding things you can print you'll be finding them everywhere.

[–] Today 3 points 5 months ago

That looks great!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Your hard work paid off, these look really nice! I have a U shaped garden and used stone pavers to make the path in the middle, but the grass is still growing in between. Maybe I’ll plan to switch to mulch.

[–] IMALlama 2 points 5 months ago

Thanks! For either mulch or pavers you're going to have some level of maintenance. My personal take is that the maintenance for mulch is more frequent, but less intensive, than pavers. Both will benefit from a boarder to keep roots out.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Wicked 🤟

[–] FauxPseudo 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm feeling a little called out right now. I have a similarly chicken proof raised bed area. The grass grows taller than the plants and I have to get in and mow it. One day I found some 1x2 ft tiles on a curb. I have to put those down to kind of help control the grass but it's not helping. I feel like I need to gravel the whole area because we get so much water.

[–] IMALlama 2 points 5 months ago

This fence has been in place for at least four years, so this has been a very long time coming. I went with mulch because getting rid of rocks is really annoying should we want to change the area again in 5-10 years.

[–] ThrowawaySobriquet 2 points 5 months ago

Beautiful! You really put some umph into this