Northside Dovetailed Vegetable Bed

Potter's Pal's Carrots

This post follow's up a post earlier in the year when I planted from heirloom carrots in newspaper pots. The experiment was a mixed success. The pots while out of the ground dried out quickly and I lost a number of seedlings. In the ground after transfer they did a lot better. Next time though I will have smaller thinner pots to help the breakdown of paper. 

Garden beds by a furniture maker

While the shop continues to be without power my focus has remained on the gardens. I'm installing various garden beds and in particular a large one on the north side of the shop. This bed will be 5.4-6m long x 1.2m wide x 0.5m high, made from 2.4m x 1.2m x 50mm Tallowwood sleepers. A simple task to cut to size and screw together... however... I don't like simple. Rather than simple screws I've decided to dovetail the joints. In a sense treating the project as a rather large chest or blanket box. 

To begin with I've used hardwood dowel and titebond 3 to joint the end pieces.

I've recently acquired a  Makita BDF459SHE brushless drill. This is a piece of kit I can definitely recommend. Plenty of power. Not too heavy. Holds a charge well.

I used the circular saw to trim the ends using a MDF guide and a Chris Vesper Square. 

Then laid out the joints like I would any other. 

However, the dovetail saw stayed in the toolchest and the 4351FCT Jigsaw did all the hard work. 

A slight deflection in the blade resulted in some angled cuts. However, repeating the cuts on the other side and adjusting the oscillation of the saw resulted in a good result without chiselling.  

The site of the future Northside bed. I've be excavating slowly by hand to level it and remove rocks. I'll also be placing a drainage channel along the edge. 

Joining the sleepers end on end will be a little tricker... perhaps finger joints, perhaps half lap... proper scraf joints made be a little too much. 

Behind the Shop: The Vegie Garden

Behind the shop is a funny little piece of land; a historical anomaly.  A little strip behind the otherwise rectangular block, making in the words of a friend 'like a battle axe'. Although it looks small and useless when you measure it it's actually substantial - 17.3m x 1.85m.

The strip has had no specific purpose and has thus defaulted to an area of misc. plants and storage of timber and metal left overs. 

However, my plans are grand, for a lovely vegetable garden. I plan to enclose the entire area as a raised garden bed. With the bed 1.2m wide it makes for 20 m ^2 of useable vegie space with no loss of backyard.