The Salad Days


Cole and I are excited to share this little corner of our backyard with you in some closer detail today. I have been instagramming away at it for months and kept promising a detailed post whenever a question would pop up. So here we go... We have put some life into this particular corner of the house before. You might have seen the picture of our teepee sandbox passed around the internet. The sandbox was a hit for a few days, but wasnt practical for us in the long run for a few reasons: Neither Cole or I felt like letting the children back into the house all covered in sand (because I am crazy about sand on the tile, its gross right?). Also, I wasnt a huge fan of sticking my head down into the box and giving the sand a good thorough smell test to try and figure out if an animal had pissed in it or not, or if it just smelled like mold, (which both oddly enough smells like old piss). The biggest deterrent was that LB had a sensory thing cooking where he loved the sound of sand when he would chew it up. So that sandbox did not last long for us. Ugh, my teeth hurt thinking of that sound. We wanted to create a space that accomplished a few things, we wanted to dress up the cold feel of the cinder block, we wanted something a little warmer, something that said something more than "old prison yard". We wanted our garden right up against the house, we wanted it to be all things we all enjoyed eating, and we wanted it to be something that added a ton of life to the area, an inspired play area that was functional and easy on the eyes. It all started with that wall. Im not a real savvy DIY person, so I apologize if I leave out a bunch of the common sense components like: "next, we nailed the boards to the studs".Materials: I wish we had the budget to be indulgent with our lumber selection, but money was definitely an object, so we had to get smart with what we chose. This whole thing was almost abandoned because all of the appropriate wood that would hold up to weather was pricey. Then Cole suggested we buy fence slats. They are pressure treated, made to hold up to the elements, and super affordable. So we bought a bunch of fence slats, we picked out a few stains of wood we liked together, divided the stack into thirds, stained them, water sealed them, and just zipped the rounded tops off the fence slats when we cut each piece to size as we assembled the wall. For support, we slapped a bunch of 2x4 studs onto our house. Then we covered them with the finished pieces as you can see in the photos. We did this over the course of a day. The bulk of the work being done at naptime. Something to add, is that we had those brown gutters installed all along the back of the house to protect our garden beds and plants from getting drowned and tore up from the roof runoff. I had no idea our house looked so naked without proper gutters. So for our garden we wanted the main focus to be lettuce, mainly because we eat a TON of it (ever since I decided not to be 30lbs overweight any longer), and besides the hottest summer months, its easy to grow in Florida, tons of varieties, all delicious, and besides all that they look great in a galvanized half round metal gutter!The containers.We totally chose these half round metal gutters for their sexy look, and I found them to be more sturdy in terms of taking them on and off the wall and moving them around a bunch. I wanted to be able to circulate the containers as we ate up the lettuce and replenished with new lettuces. So dont feel like you have to buy these suckers, they were the most expensive component to this project, hands down. We bought them at a specialty all stop gutter paradise, the people there thought we were crazy, "you want us to cut them into 4ft sections?" My point is, any gutter will work, we have also seen people use PVC to make a vertical garden, paint it, and cut holes into the pipe for planting. Google vertical gardening and you will see all kinds of cool ideas show up. The gutters dont come with the end caps installed, so we had to do some tinkering to figure out what worked best. For us we decided on drilling into the gutter and the end cap, and fixing them on with a rivet gun. A simple little tool, and I really liked the finished look it gave. The last step was drilling drainage holes into the bottom of the gutters. The gutters come with hardware to fix them onto the wall, and they just cradle right into them, and can be taken on and off the wall, especially easy if you have guns like Cole Marshall. People keep asking us how on earth we are growing lettuce in Florida while it is so hot out, and the answer is, we shouldnt be. And soon after these pictures were taken we started harvesting and devouring salad. These next couple sweltering months we are going to grow some herbs and experiment with a nevada lettuce with the help of my gardening genius mother. I keep encouraging her to do a blog. She helps so many people in the community with their gardens. Bottom line is, we got a really late start on this project, and are really pushing it, and honestly got flat out lucky that it hasnt been soaring into the 90s every single day. Having the lettuce up off the ground and against the house in the shade during the hottest parts of the day helps. That wall gets all the glorious morning sun and by midday it is in shade. So that has helped. The lettuce was all grown from seed (my mother frequents many a seed exchange around town) and she brought over a few tubs of seeds that she started, and as they sprouted we transplanted them into the containers. The only thing sprayed onto these plants was some fish and kelp mix that I mixed up to feed them some extra nutrition while they grew. You gotta feed your plants. The biggest thing I noticed having them up off the ground was that I didnt have bug problems. These containers are pretty shallow and I had total soil control. The best bug prevention is your dirt. To keep the containers a little lighter I made a peat moss and soil mix for the lettuce to grow in, and the plants loved it. The Teepee: Hands down the most asked about thing in our yard is that teepee. The most popular question is: where we bought it. I have seen a big teepee explosion in the last year, and you can buy some really cute ones for your playroom, but I wouldnt go leaving them outside. We made this teepee four years ago for LB, and it has stood up to the Fl weather beautifully. It is fixed into the ground, and covered with some shade material that boasts it reduces temperatures 15 degrees cooler (lie), but it has help up extremely well over time. We found it at Home Depot in the garden section. It seemed really pricey at the time, but four years later, a bunch of tropical storms later, was worth every single penny. Once we decided to ditch the sandbox out of the teepee, we wanted to make it more of a place to lounge for the kids. A comfy spot to play. So we bought these outdoor patio cushions for it, and they have done really well so far. My only complaint so far, is that the mosquitos are so bad in our yard right now, that sitting down anywhere for long seems crazy. We are actually thinking of saving up some money to buy one of those mosquito catcher machines that you see in Sky Mall. We hope this was helpful/inspiring in some way. We decided to tackle our backyard one section at a time. Create a corner that makes total sense for us, has function, adds life to our house, and gives the kids something to do. We are always trying to find ways to get them, and keep them outside, especially LB. They love to water, and we planted a bunch of different plants that they can eat off of when they are outside, all kinds of herbs, and berries, and they planted some carrots they keep an eye on. We have loads of green beans almost ready to pick, so they stay about as excited as a kid can get about things like this. When the blackberries were producing it was hard to keep Tessa inside the house. Next up is tackling the deck. Right now we have this broken up tile that came with the house, and are currently drawing up plans for a nice low wooden deck that we want to incorporate planters into. We also want to add an additional play area for the kids that will tie in their irrigation efforts in a way that doesnt waste as much water, and also keeps them entertained and cool. A custom seating area. And most importantly, some shade. Stay tuned.
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