How to: Put Up Siding

Ok, I know I haven't finished roofing, I need to get some pictures taken.  Fortunately I have found my camera so I can use that instead of being afraid of breaking my phone while working.  It will happen.  Until then, siding!

The first step is to attach this metal corner along the bottom which block rain water from getting up and under the siding and into the structure.  Caution: Be aware of the nail size you use.  Ours were pretty short which made it hard to hammer them in without getting a few fingers in the process.

Once that is in the felt can be stapled on right over the top of the metal.  It should be overlapped with the lowest sheet at the bottom, just like in the roofing.

Now we're ready for the actual siding.  It helps to have some extra hands, especially for the first sheet.  You want to set it right on the metal along the bottom and make sure the vertical lines are running level.  If you are working alone you have to come up with a way to push your body onto the sheet until you can get one screw in along the top.  Once that is done you can rotate it around that screw to get it level.  When you're ready, continue to add screws along the top of the sheet. Aim to have a screw at each corner and then 2 more evenly spaced between them.  We didn't have a board across the top of this sheeting so in the picture below you will only see screws where the posts are.  Caution: have a play with your drill's clutch to make sure you don't send the screws all the way through the siding.  You want them to be flush.  

Continue to screw the sheet down from top to bottom to avoid any bubbling.  Since these are short sheets I only had one row of screws along the middle.  Caution: pay attention and use a guide for where your middle rows are.  It can look very funny if the row of screws doesn't go straight across.  

Since I did have a bottom plate to work with, I added screws near the corners along the bottom of each sheet.

The sheets have notching on either side so the next sheet should go right over the first one.  Line up the seem and double check the vertical leveling then screw it on just as you did with the first.  Continue adding sheets until you've reached the end.

Finishing touches:

- We still need to add a line of caulking to seal along the very bottom.

- If painting, clean up the screw holes so they are clean and flush with the outside.  Ideally, they will be invisible after a coat of paint.

- If your seems and/or cuts along the top really suck they make skinny pieces of the siding to go over them.  Personally, I would use a nice custom stained piece of wood to create a nice contrast.  We may be doing this at another spot on the greenhouse so I could have a picture for you in the future. 

Please let me know if there is anything I'm missing.

Ta-Da!

Roofing!

Yep, I mean it.
Background: We are building a greenhouse.  Not like those ones with the plastic pipes and clear plastic wrap over top.  This is basically going to be a building that happens to be half clear plastic.  We wanted to make something that would stand the test of time and hold up against the santa ana winds that tear through us.  It's probably overkill but at least I have confidence that it won't spend years in a pile of stuff that needs to go to the dump because something broke and TF won't fix it.  We have been racing to get the roof done before more rain comes our way so I got to be in charge of shingling!  I had no idea how to do it but some quick googling and planning with my project manager and now I think I could go pro.  Ok, maybe not totally pro.  But I think I'm pretty good at it.

Before shingles you need to put down a layer of plywood followed by a layer of felt.  The felt needs to be rolled out so that the upper pieces overlap the lower rows.  The whole idea is to keep rain from getting in and rotting the plywood so overlapping helps make sure that can't happen.  There also needs to be a metal corner piece that hangs over the edge to repel water.  This is what it looks like with felt, metal bits, and the beginning of shingling:

I know it's wavy... did I mention it was my first time?

Now for the shingles!  This is where I should mention that we didn't exactly follow instructions.  The different advice columns suggested starting from the middle and snapping chalk lines.  We started from the side where it was more visible and I just used a tape measurer to make sure we were in line.

Ok, NOW the fun stuff.  The starter row is actually a bunch of 3 tab shingles with the tabs cut off.  These are placed hanging over the edges by 5/8s of an inch with the sticky stuff down.  This way a seal is formed so water can't get up under the tabs.  Give each starter shingle 3 solid nails and then you're ready to lay full shingles.  The first row ends directly on the starter shingles, 5/8" overhanging the roof edges.  These should be nailed down about a half inch above the top of the slots and at each side.  (I know thats not how it is in my pictures, remember the learning curve!)  Four nails each just above the slots ensures the nails won't be seen through the next row's slots and each shingle will get 2 sets of nails.

Starter row and first row.

That is how to get started with installing 3 tab shingle roofing.  There is more to come!

Nameless Headwarmer

It is cold!  Ok, it's not that cold.  But I've been enjoying summer for a full year now and I am not used to this temperature drop.  In honor of the weather I'm going to share my pattern for a really cute slouchy beanie.  I'm making a few of these as Christmas gifts and hopefully they will be a big hit.

Yarn: Bulky, I use Loops & Threads Charisma because it has a such a smooth feel.
Needle: US 11 (8mm) 29" circular and/or dpn


Pattern:
 - Cast on 48 stitches with long tail method (I just like the way it looks better)
 - Add marker and join edges to begin knitting in the round (if you are using only a circular needle you will need to use the magic loop method for the beginning)


Ribbing:
 - Rounds 1-8: k1, p1 all the way around


Chunky Spirals:
 - Round 1: k1, yo, p1
 - Round 2: k1, p2
 - Round 3: k1, p2, yo
 - Round 4: k1, p2tog, p1
 - Round 5: k1, yo, p2
 - Round 6: k1, p1, p2tog
 - Repeat rounds 3-6 five times, or until you reach the length you desire.


Begin decrease: (this is where dpns come in handy but again, the magic loop method works fine too)
 - Round 1: k1, p2tog around (back to 48 stitches)
 - Round 2: k3tog, p1 (24 stitches)
 - Round 3: k3tog, p1 (12 stitches)
 - Round 4: k3tog, p1 (6 stitches)
use large needle to thread the end of the yarn through last stitches and weave in ends.

And tada! (the picture is pretty blurry, my phone camera is not the best.  I will try to get a better one tomorrow)

Super cute slouch!

I don't have a name for this pattern yet, please give suggestions!


This is my design, it is simple, but mine.  Please have respect and knit it only for personal use.

Beer Baiting

I noticed some holes in some of the leaves in Alice so I decided to try an organic snail/slug trap I'd heard about a few months ago.  Apparently those little slime creatures love beer (I mean, who doesn't?) so if you put some beer out in a shallow container they will flock to it instead of flocking to your plants.  I gathered my materials: small containers for the beer, beer*, something to cover the container, and something to dig a small hole.

Materials

Figure out where you want to put the traps.  I put one near the tomatoes and one near the zucchini since those were the plants that had been getting chewed on.  Then dig a shallow hole so that the top of your container is at about the same level as the ground.  We want to make it as easy as possible for the snails and slugs to get to the beer.  Once you get your hole dug place the container in there and tuck it in a bit so it doesn't spill too easily.

Fill up your container with the beer and then you want to cover the trap.  The perpetrators are more cozy in this dark, cave like scenario.  You can use anything for this as long as there is still an opening for them to get in.  I used to have a couple pet rats so I used their old house as a cover.

*I brief note about beer.  I love beer and generally do not condone "wasting" it.  The beer I used for this was from the beer of the month club.  What should have been the best birthday gift ever turned out to be a lot of very disappointing beers with the same bad aftertaste.  I suspect this has to do with the beer getting too hot in the shipping process but I am not an expert so I'm not sure what went wrong exactly.  Before pouring the beer out I did taste it to make sure it was a bad one. Other possible ways to get beer are:

• Have a party, people always seem to leave half filled beers around.  
• that last bit of beer in the bottom of a bottle that a lot of people leave
• buy some cheap stuff

Elbow Room

The last time I was here I was talking about how amazing companion planting is.  The less exciting part of planning your garden layout is figuring out exactly where plants should go in relation to each other.  It is important to make sure you can easily access each plant without damaging anything but other then that there is a lot of personal preference for design.  Some people like to plant in rows, others group many plants together in one square area.  I tend to be a bit more of a mess and just put plants where ever they seem to fit.  Especially since I rarely have many plants of the same species.  Whichever way you choose, those little plant information tabs come in handy:

Most of these tabs will show each plant's suggested spacing.  Once I know what plants benefit from each other I look at their specific spacing requirements and figure out a general distance that should be left between them.  I like to place the information tabs into the dirt while I'm looking at spacing that way I have a good visual of how everything is coming together and can easily see if plant spaces are starting to overlap at all.  

We learned last time that tomatoes, peppers, basil, and marigolds all do well together.  My garden area has a little southern wall along the back; I decided to put the tomatoes along there since they will be tall enough that the sun will be able to reach them.  Thankfully they are still short enough (for now) that the plants to the north are still in full sun as well.  Using them as anchors I worked my way out determining where my other plants should be placed.  One companion planting site mentioned that it was good for hot peppers to be shaded by other plants to block some of the sun and create a more humid climate.  Because of this I placed my pepper plant a bit close to one of the tomato plants.  I put the basil between the two tomato plants and planted two marigolds on either side of them for protection.  The finished product looks like:

I have decided to name my gardens the way they name hurricanes...I give you: Alice, West

Some times deciding where to place your plants is a pretty easy puzzle and you can start to use other methods to plan.  For example, in the top left of the picture you can see a pea plant.  Since there are two tomato plants I wasn't sure which one to put in the middle.  Then I noticed the tomatoes have different days to fruit maturity but one of them is similar to the pea maturity.  I hypothesize that plants will need more nutrients to sustain themselves during fruit production so I separated the plants with similar maturity dates to make sure they aren't competing against each other at that important time.  I also made it a point to surround the entire garden with marigolds in hopes of offering extra protection.

My final step was to make a quick drawing of Alice's general layout for quick reference:

Alice Layout

Some quick notes:

- Alice ended up being a bit squished since we bought more plants then we actually had room for.  That zucchini to the far left is way too close to the strawberries and marigolds!

- Some of you more experienced green thumbs may be yelling "what about zone information?!"  I am fortunate to be in zone 8b where winter comes late (if ever) and we are hoping to have a greenhouse up in the next month where we can transplant to.  Because of these two things I chose to ignore that part for now and will touch on it in a later post when it is more relevant.
- You may have noticed my tomato trellis is not very conventional.  Instead of going out and spending money on one of those fancy circular tomato homes I used a couple sides of an old dog play area fence.  I'm not sure how the tomatoes are going to go but so far the pea vines seem to love it!

Ta

Making friends

Gardening has always been something I liked doing but I never took the time to really learn how.  I would just throw plants in the ground and wait to see what happened.  Turns out when you're starting a garden there's a bit of planning that should happen before you even touch the ground.

This week's skill is: Planning the layout of your garden.

Initially, you need to figure out what you want in the garden.  A friend of mine is starting some creative gardens based on meals: spaghetti garden(YUM!).  We are not that creative in this house.  We went to the local garden center and picked out whatever was there that sounded good.  We did end up with a few garden oddballs.  Why?  Well because of: "companion planting."

I .L.O.V.E. companion planting!  Who has heard about how marigolds should be planted with tomatoes to help keep hornworms away?  That is companion planting.  I haven't found any exhaustive lists but wikipedia has a good start.  Anything that's not on there you can just type in a search for "[plant] companions" and you should be able to find what you need.  It is so neat how certain plants just love to hang out together!  Plus it's such an easy, organic solution to help you get the best from your garden.

With some quick research I learned:
-Marigolds are great with tomatoes, squash, peppers, well with most plants really.  Wikipedia mentions the benefits of planting them everywhere.
-Another plant that does well paired with tomatoes and peppers is basil.

So when we're planning our layout we now know we want to keep the marigolds, tomatoes, peppers, and basil all close together.  And hopefully there will be some marigolds left over to scatter around the rest of the garden.

Next time: Spacing

Hello!

Day one!  The Skill Bucket is my way to share and keep track of all the random stuff I like to do along with the things I want to learn how to do.  Some posts will be informative while others will be pretty, no matter what I'm confident there will be fun!  My initial goal is to start a new project every week with lots of pictures and regular updates as they play out.


Some themes:
- Anything to do with Gardening
- Food!  (cooking is probably a basic skill for a lot of people, I am not one of those people)
- Knitting
- Creative construction projects
- Saving money