{"id":325,"date":"2020-08-23T15:03:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-23T19:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/?p=325"},"modified":"2020-08-23T15:03:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-23T19:03:00","slug":"idea-capture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/23\/idea-capture\/","title":{"rendered":"Idea capture"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"boldgrid-section\">\n<div class=\"container\">\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col-md-12 col-xs-12 col-sm-12\">\n<p class=\"\">I just had what I think might be a great idea, and I feel excited and energized by figuring it out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">This is good because I&#8217;ve been feeling not very interested in, hopeful about, or excited by anything at all, which is always a worrisome place to be if you have ever suffered a past major depression episode. You find yourself wondering, &#8220;Is this a normal stress\/grief response to a pile-up of loss in an isolating time of general stress due to a basically unchecked pandemic and its fall out, or am I about to get taken down by a black wave of depression?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">I&#8217;m not big on raised beds <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gardenfundamentals.com\/raised-beds-pros-cons\/\">for various reasons<\/a>, but largely because I don&#8217;t care to source the amount of soil needed to fill them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">But, this gardening season I have faced some challenges and had some realizations:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"\">\n<li>I have the garden design taste of someone with a much larger budget for garden maintenance staff than I have (which is none). I can deal with a messy tangle of things ok, but what really pleases my eye and soul is structure and order and neatness. It is always a relief when I plant in the well-defined areas I&#8217;ve already established as beds.<\/li>\n<li>Having random chickens and a wild turkey around make so much extra work in the garden. If I want mulch to stay on an area, I have to fence it in with at least a 6&#8243; high chicken wire barrier so the chickens can&#8217;t kick the mulch out.<\/li>\n<li>The chickens and Lurkey really like to eat any sprout or fruit, so I have also spent a lot of time creating taller fence barriers and covering tomato plants with netting. I put 2-foot tall fencing around the blackberry-and-strawberry patch bed to protect some of the fruit from these birds.<\/li>\n<li>The guinea fowl are much less likely to eat seedlings or scratch a whole bed up, but do have a proclivity for creating dust wallows in inconvenient areas and trampling things while they chase each other around the yard.<\/li>\n<li>Making individual cages to put around seedlings is time consuming and annoying and, if you forget to remove them in time, can be a problem later.<\/li>\n<li>All the fences and netting make it difficult to get at the plants inside them to harvest, weed, or remove pests. I need to sit or kneel on the ground to do this kind of work, due to a hip problem that prevents much bending, so even a low fence blocks my reach.<\/li>\n<li>Cabbage worms decimating my collards and kale, squash borers and bugs, etc. I have read that insect barrier over the plants can be a helpful deterrent.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"\">So I had been pondering several questions:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"\">\n<li>What can I do to introduce a more structured look to planting areas without hiring a hardscaper?<\/li>\n<li>How to install insect barrier securely, especially as crop<\/li>\n<li>Is there a way to make easily removable poultry-blocking fence panels that I can remove and replace quickly and easily as I am maintaining beds?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure id=\"attachment_323\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-323\" style=\"width: 739px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/wp-1598205190826.-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-323\" src=\"https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/wp-1598205190826.-1024x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"739\" height=\"739\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/wp-1598205190826.-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/wp-1598205190826.-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/wp-1598205190826.-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/wp-1598205190826.-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/wp-1598205190826.-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/wp-1598205190826.-2048x2048.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/wp-1598205190826.-48x48.jpg 48w, https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/wp-1598205190826.-250x250.jpg 250w, https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/wp-1598205190826.-550x550.jpg 550w, https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/wp-1598205190826.-800x800.jpg 800w, https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/wp-1598205190826.-180x180.jpg 180w, https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/wp-1598205190826.-500x500.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 739px) 100vw, 739px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-323\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo on page 86 of The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener, by Niki Jabbour<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"\">The above photo sparked my idea!<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">My idea is to build modular low bed frames with 2x4s with the dimensions all evenly divisible by 2-feet. (4&#215;4&#8242;, 4&#215;8&#8242;, etc.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The key thing would be to install on the outside edges, at regular intervals (every 2&#8242;) pipe straps or some other hardware. The purpose of these would be so I could easily slide in\/out fence panels created by attaching a length of dowel or pvc tubing to each end of&nbsp; a 2&#8242; length of fencing. Or, if I needed a row cover, to secure the ends of a bent-over longer piece of pvc tubing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The low beds would create visual structure and some mulch containment without requiring any significant fill soil. They could also possibly be moved around if I decided to redesign an area.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The fencing attached on the outside of 2x4s would not be very strong, but I think it would stand up ok and be a deterrent to yard birds. For some extra stability, I&#8217;m sure there&#8217;s some kind of clip I could use to attach each panel to the next.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Creating the fence panels would be time consuming and annoying but is easy enough to articulate that I have options for finding help with it. And having a plan to deal with this moving forward feels less annoying than the ongoing jury-rigged solutions that make maintenance more difficult.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">I don&#8217;t know if this will really work, but it&#8217;s worth trying a prototype, maybe later this fall of into winter when there are less pressing tasks at hand. (And fewer biting bugs!)<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">It is nice to feel the brain clicking into plan-experiment-solve mode again, rather than just feeling overwhelmed and exhausted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just had what I think might be a great idea, and I feel excited and energized by figuring it out. This is good because I&#8217;ve been feeling not very interested in, hopeful about, or excited by anything at all, which is always a worrisome place to be if you have ever suffered a past&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/23\/idea-capture\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Idea capture<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[39,40,41],"class_list":["post-325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-projects","tag-gardening-with-chickens","tag-gardening-with-guineas","tag-gardening-with-turkeys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":327,"href":"https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions\/327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.snailshellthicket.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}