DIY: Privacy Wall for Deck

I love having a deck, but the one problem is that it's level with our next-door neighbor's windows.  We all do a good job of minding our own business, but I felt like we needed to add some height to the side railing so we have more privacy.

I didn't plan on tackling this project this month because I have so many other projects to complete, but I realized that I already had almost all the lumber I needed in my basement.  It took almost all day Saturday, and it would have been a lot easier if I had waited for Abe to help me (he was at school all day), but I managed to pull it together pretty nicely.   Eventually I'd like to have some honeysuckle or clematis crawling all over the slats, but this summer I'll just stick with my potted herbs.

More photos that show the project step by step after the jump.

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DIY: Raised Garden Bed

I have visions of a yard filled with bounties of the land, but about 3 inches below the grass there are so many rocks it's impossible to dig a hole and grow plants.  (Not to mention I'm far from being an expert gardener). Fortunately, there is a pretty simple solution for the rock problem:  raised garden beds.

There are books, websites, blogs and magazine that explain the best way to garden with raised beds, but I figured it couldn't be that hard to figure out and I was itching to plant my zucchini.

We had few pieces of wood from our attic that was a little too beat up to be used for furniture making, and some random pieces of wood the previous homeowner left in the basement & under the deck.  I pieced them together with brackets to form boxes and filled up the boxes with different types of soil.  Pretty darn easy and the veggies are loving the rock-free dirt.  It probably would have helped if we dug up the grass, but it we didn't have the right tools and it was a pain in the butt.

[More photos after the jump.]

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DIY: Upside Down Planters

About 5 years ago I learned that tomatoes could be grown upside down and it changed my life.  I was living in Brooklyn, NY at the time and being able to have a mini vegetable garden on my fire escape temporarily satisfied my cravings to move to the country.

Fast forward a few years and here I am with my very own yard!  The possibilities are so overwhelming that I'm finding myself sometimes frozen when it comes to making garden and landscaping decisions.

I should also point out that I don't exactly have 400 acres of land to till.  We're talking a small plot of land in the center of town with a mega layer of rock about 6 inches down. So, I'm finding myself revisiting the upside down garden.

Resources

•  New York Times article Growing Vegetables Upside Down
•  The Cheap Vegetable Gardener - How to Make Upside Down Planter in Your Garden
  
•  The Cheap Vegetable Gardener - 1 Gallon Milk Carton Upside Down Tomato Planter
  

• 14dollarz on YouTube has an amazing collection of videos all about upside down gardens.

I've done it in the past years using plastic pots that you can buy at any garden store.  Recently I was reading Design*Sponge and saw Kate's project for making your own pots from various containers you have in your recyling bin and I thought that was brilliant.  You can find instructions on how to create your upside down hanging planter all over the internet, but Kate laid out a great tutorial that looks cute.

July 2010