GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Category: Video

DIY Soaker Hose Irrigation System – GF Video

I put together this DIY soaker hose irrigation system for my raised bed vegetable garden and made a video for you. With this and a timer, I don’t have to spend time watering by hand, and wasting water. Soaker hoses are great for slowly watering your garden while saving water. In another video I show how to run a garden hose underground to your garden beds.

Steps to build your DIY soaker hose irrigation system:

The video explains it quite well, I think, but here are some photos and tips to make it all work.

Soaker hose is available in a few different diameters. Lately I’ve been seeing mostly 3/8″ diameter hose. Buy the hose tubing connectors that match your diameter. Either a farm supply store or a hardware store will probably have the T and elbow connectors.

Soaker hose is easiest to work with when it has been sitting in the sun for a few hours. Lay it out flat, use some rocks to hold the ends and keep it from curling. It cuts easily with a wire cutters or scissors. Be sure to cut off about 6″ of hose with the feed end of the hose before cutting the lateral lengths that run down the bed.

If your hose pressure is enough to pop out the elbows and Ts, use wire or cable ties to connect the hoses. At the hose ends, I use a wooden dowel or bend over the end of the hose. Sometimes bending the hose doesn’t work.

Parts needed for this project:

Easy To Program Water Timer

Good quality soaker hose

Here is a diagram of the watering system for my raised bed vegetable garden:For my beds, I run a hose across the bottom end of the bed for a trellis. I usually plant snow peas or beans on a trellis at both ends, and the lateral soaker hoses don’t do a great job of getting to all the seeds I plant along that edge.

For connecting the garden hose to the bed, I show in this soaker hose installation video how I bury the hose so the lawn mower doesn’t run over it.

I have found it best to use your soaker hose drip irrigation system once or twice a week in the early morning, you want long deep watering, not short shallow watering. Here is a garden hose timer that works well for automated watering.

June 28, 2016
Best Homemade Tomato Cages – GF Video

These are the best homemade tomato cages I have made. They hold up every year, and are easy to put away, and they don’t break like those cheap tomato cages. Watch the video to see how to make tomato cages my way.

How to make the Best Homemade Tomato Cages

I use concrete reinforcing wire to make tomato cages. These come 9′ long, and we will cut them down. There are two gauges of wire avail for concrete mesh, buy the thinner kind if there is a choice.

Lay down the wire on the ground, and cut the mesh in to pieces as shown in the video. Be sure to wear eye and ear protection if you are using a power tool. You can also use bolt cutters to cut the wire.

I bend the end wires over the adjoining piece of wire mesh, you could also use wire or cable ties to connect them. If you use wire, you could dis-assemble the best homemade tomato cages for storage. Wear gloves when working with the mesh or wire, it saves your hands from cutting cut and being stained with rust from the metal.

To keep the cages upright, I weave a 1×2 stake through the mesh once or twice. Drive the stake in and the cage wont go anywhere. If you are using raised beds (video to build them here) screw the stake into the side of the bed, works great for stability.

An alternative is to buy a roll of concrete mesh. You can cut off a length of it and tie it together. My issue with this is that the roll of mesh isn’t very wide, so you get a short tomato cage, and most tomatoes do well in a tall cage, I think.

I find these cages work really well for cherry tomatoes. Those stalks grow all over the place and tend to get taller than most other tomatoes, and these cages are up to the challenge. I like taller plants because my dogs will eat the cherry tomatoes off the vine at their level, so tall plants are necessary!

June 17, 2016
Make Better Compost With This Addition – GF Video

You can make better compost by having the ideal carbon nitrogen ratio. Unfortunately, most home compost bins don’t have that ideal ratio. There are several compost accelerators on the market, here is one by our sponsor, Eco Scraps.

How to make better compost

The ideal carbon to nitrogen ratio, or browns to greens mix, according to Cornell University, is 30:1 by weight. That means 30 pounds of brown leaves to 1 pound of green grass. Coffee grounds are also high in nitrogen, btw.

If you compost pile smells like ammonia, it has too much nitrogen. I worked at a community garden with a large compost operation and found that by adding wood shavings from a local wood shop made a huge difference in the ammonia smell. Plus the curly nature of the shavings helped us make better compost. The woodworker was happy to get rid of huge bags of shavings, saving him carting fees and landfill space. Pretty amazing how they broke down quickly.

But too much nitrogen is rare, the average home compost pile has too much carbon (browns) in the mix, so a compost accelerator like Eco Scraps adds nitrogen. I suggest layering the accelerator as you add material to your pile. Just tossing it on top of an existing pile wont help.

From Cornell University

Another key if you want to make better compost is to provide air to your pile. This can be done just by turning it, but if you have the pile in a bin (like my pallet compost bin) that’s not always easy. You can buy a compost auger, Augers on Amazon link, I have used these and the good ones work well. (You get what you pay for) You can also find a neighbor who is throwing out some 1″-3″ pvc pipe, drill holes in it, and layer these in the pile as you build it.

We have a bunch more composting videos here, let me know your thoughts below.

June 10, 2016
How To Build A Raised Garden Bed – GF Video
Learn how to build a raised garden bed in this video we made while building some for our own vegetable garden. This isn’t rocket science, not hard to do at all. Watch the video and start building.

Steps To Build A Raised Garden Bed
- Figure out the size of the bed.
- Purchase the lumber and hardware.
- Assemble the bed.
- Add soil and plant.
I like to build 4′ wide raised beds. The width is good for me, I can reach across the bed from either side. Plus, this width is great if you use floating row fabric or plastic mulch. You can cut the fabric to one width for all your beds. The mini greenhouse I built drops right on top of these beds. So yeah, I like this width.

For brackets to attach the sides of the bed, I use whatever I have. Shelf brackets, angle brackets, or the metal brackets you use for roof trusses, use what you got. They will all work and last longer than the wood itself.

Position the lumber where you want the bed to be, and build it in place. Don’t worry about making the bed super level. You can shovel out high spots, and some dirt will come out the bottom of the bed to fill in low spots.

After you are happy with the placement and assembly, drive in some pipes or rebar or metal stakes in the middle of each long board and secure with metal banding. This keeps the sides of the bed from warping out. You could use wood stakes, but I wouldn’t, it wont hold as well.

What kind of soil do I fill the raised bed with? I’m a big fan of the lasagna gardening method of filling up raised beds. Again its some of the ‘use what you got’ thing here, but assemble a mess of cardboard, straw, compost, soil. Watch this video.

If you don’t want to do the lasagna method, don’t use pure top soil, see if someone nearby sells a garden soil, its needs to have a mix of materials, not straight topsoil. Let me know your comments or questions below.
May 18, 2016
Pressure Treated Wood For Raised Beds? – GF Video

Can you use pressure treated wood for raised beds? Watch our video to find out if pressure treated wood is safe for gardening.

This question gets asked many times each season, and I thought I should see what new research has been done, and what the current thinking is.

Part of the issue here is that for years treated wood was infused with arsenic, which is bad stuff. In the last decade, two types of new treated woods have arrived in stores, and arsenic treated wood is no longer sold in the U.S. I don’t know if it is available anywhere else.

Untreated wood exposed to soil.

So, Can You Use Pressure Treated Wood For Raised Beds?

The new pressure treated wood contains an insect repellent and a mold inhibitor. From Wikipedia:

Alkaline Copper Quaternary (also known as ACQ) is a water based wood preservative method recently introduced in countries where there is a demand for alternatives to Chromated copper arsenate (CCA).[1] The treatment is made up of copper, a bactericide and fungicide which makes the wood resistant to biological attack, and a quaternary ammonium compound (quat) which acts as biocide, increasing the tolerance of treated timber to copper-resistant bacteria and fungi, and also acting as an insecticide.

In other words, it has chemicals to repel insects and fungus, the two main culprits in rotting wood.

Copper is the main ingredient in treated wood. If you’ve ever wondered why it has a green tint, its because of the oxidized copper. And we already use copper in our gardens to fight fungus in spray-on products we buy at the garden store.

Plus, we are exposed to copper in our home water pipes, many of which are made of copper. I read that one will ingest more copper from their household water than they will from copper from treated lumber.

From The University of Missouri Div Of Plant Sciences:

A 2007 study of the safety of ACQ published in Human and Ecological Risk Assessment concluded that exposure to copper from contact with ACQ-treated wood is not expected to have adverse effects on the health of adults or children.

So there you go. Considering how many airborne chemicals rains down on our gardens from the air, and we haven’t perished from that yet, it looks like its OK to use pressure treated wood for raised garden beds.

If you are still not convinced, you can line the inside of your raised garden beds with plastic as barrier between the treated wood and the garden soil.

Thoughts or questions? Let us know below.

May 18, 2016
How To Grow Peas – GF Video

I can show you how to grow peas because they are my favorite vegetable, bar none. So I made you a video about it, watch and let me know your thoughts.

How to grow peas, what you need to know:

Peas like cool weather, when the summer starts to heat up, they wilt quickly. So its key to get the seeds starting quick. You have two choices, seed directly in the garden, or start them in seed starting trays or pots. Both have advantages.

I now prefer to start pea seeds in pots and transplant them outside. I have found that the seeds germinate faster and better than seeding them directly. A big reason is that the soil outside is cold, and the seed starting mix is warm, because its inside. Took me awhile to figure that out. I also direct seed a bit when the weather starts to warm up, as a back up measure.

Have the bottom of your trellis right where the plants are. Peas start to climb right away, or else they will fall over. You can set some small sticks alongside the plants to lead them to the trellis above, if need be.

I do not have any problems with insects or diseases with my peas. I mainly plant sugar snap peas and snow peas. Many of them don’t make it out of the garden, we and the Labs eat them standing there in the garden.

You can shade the pea plants to keep them growing a bit longer, but I have not had much success with this. Part of the problem is the trellis is quite high. There are some pea varieties that don’t grow as tall, you could try those.

When the sugar snap peas start to fade, I plant string beans below the trellis, and leave the fading peas on the trellis. The beans will climb up and work just fine. This way you have used the trellis for two plants in one season. Nice.

May 11, 2016
Is This How To Cut Down A Tree? – GF Video
When you are learning how to cut down a tree, its best to start with trees smaller than this one, but even after doing this for years, I still make mistakes. Thankfully, nothing bad happened this time. Watch the video to see. And then check out the safety gear that is a must have for chainsaw safety.

Here are the basics of how to cut down a tree:
- Use and wear safety gear. (list here)
- Plan the cut, study the tree.
- Plan your escape route.
- Use a sharp chainsaw chain, new is best.
- Wedge your back cut.
- Be very careful.
There are many posts on how to cut down a tree, here I’ll touch on some of the techniques I use.

If you don’t wear safety gear, you need your head examined.

Plan your exit from the tree 45 degrees from the back of the tree. Make sure you have a clear path, with no obstacles to trip on. Turn off your chainsaw after making your cuts and before you start your exit.

I use a 70 degree wedge cut that cuts the front 20% of the tree. The wedge faces the direction you want the tree to fall. Some will cut the bottom of the wedge flat level, I think the longer the tree stays hinged, the more control it has, so I cut the bottom part of the wedge lower.

Not a perfect hinge, but it worked.

The back cut is ideally about an inch above the center of the wedge cut. In this chainsaw video, that didn’t happen. Going forward I am going to chalk or spray paint the cut lines on the tree before I start. When you are actually cutting the tree, it can be hard to make sure the chainsaw stays level.

I use plastic tree felling wedges to keep the tree from pinching the saw or worse, falling back on itself. You can use wedges for several types of tree felling cuts. Be sure to use plastic wedges that are designed to be used with chainsaws, metal wedges will damage the chainsaw if you happen to touch saw to wedge while working the tree.

A sharp chainsaw chain is so important. Dull saws can hurt you and the saw, and hamper your tree felling. I will buy a new chain for a large tree.

Learn about the must-have safety gear when felling trees here

If you have the least bit of hesitation, don’t do this. Hire a professional to cut down the tree. You can then go in and cut it up for firewood.
April 29, 2016
No Knead Bread Recipe with Olives – GF Video
Easy to make no knead bread recipe, this time we add black olives for extra flavor. Oil cured black olives are what a friend of mine calls ‘little salt bombs’ they are that and more. Watch the video and check out the recipe.

Lately I’ve been doing a whole wheat – white flour mix for my no knead bread recipe. I’m adding more whole grains into my diet, and the whole wheat adds that nice nuttiness to the bread. Making 100% whole wheat breads can be tough, especially no kneads.

But the main ingredient here are black olives! Don’t buy the watery black olives in a can, get oil cured olives. These are usually available in a deli or gourmet shop. I have seen oil cured in a jar, but not often. Buy pitted olives, but when chopping them, keep an eye out for pits, you may run across one or two.

For some time now I have been using parchment paper to move the dough from the the bowl it rises in into the dutch oven. This eliminates the risks of flopping the formed dough into the dutch oven. Its ok if the parchment paper sticks out of the lid of the dutch oven, it will help with removing the baked loaf when its done.

This is what shaggy can look like.

For my basic no knead bread recipe, the bread is done with the internal temperature reaches 200F. I usually bake the bread for 35 minutes covered and then 15 minutes uncovered. With your oven these baking times may change. Its better to over-bake bread than to under-bake it. Wet dough bread is no fun.

Even if you are a big fan of black olives, using less is more here. Olives pack a lot of flavor in a little portion, OK?
No Knead Bread Recipe with Olives

Recipe Type: Bread

Cuisine: American

Author: Eric Rochow

Prep time: 18 hours

Cook time: 45 mins

Total time: 18 hours 45 mins

Serves: 1 loaf

An easy bread recipe that adds more flavor with black olives. Serve this at dinner, your friends will like it.
Ingredients

2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 cup chopped & pitted oil cured black olives

1 1/2 cups warm water
Instructions

Mix together the two flours, the salt, and the yeast. I like to use a whisk for this.

Add in the pitted and chopped olives, be sure they don’t have any pits in them. Bad things can happen.

Add in the warm water and mix together.

The dough will be stiff and will not come together. Don’t worry, it won’t. You want the dough to be ‘shaggy’ like shag carpet, not wet.

Add water by the teaspoon if needed, but a bit too much water will make the dough wet.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place is a warm place to rise. I use my oven with the light on.

Let the dough rise 12-18 hours. The dough should have strands pulling away from the bowl when its ready.

Flour a board lightly. Scrape the dough out of the bowl onto the board. Dust the dough with a bit of flour and turn the dough into itself to form a ball.

Place the ball of dough onto a sheet of parchment about 18” long. The parchment should be wide enough to sit in the dutch oven and stick out the top a bit, as shown in the video.

Gather the corners of the parchment/dough and put into a bowl with high sides. One similar to the one I use in the video is good.

Cover with a towel and let the dough rise for two hours in a warm place. I use the oven with the light on again.

After 1 1/2 hours of rise, put the dutch oven and lid in the oven and set the oven to 450F.

After 30 minutes, remove the dutch oven from the preheating oven, lower the parchment with the dough into the dutch oven, cover and bake for about 30-40 minutes. It all depends on your oven.

After 30 minutes, remove the lid of the dutch oven, the bread should be starting to brown. Bake another 15 minutes with the cover off.

Check the temperature of the bread, its done with the bread reaches 200F
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April 29, 2016
How To Sharpen Lawn Mower Blades – GF Video
Learn how to sharpen lawn mower blades and cut your grass better with our mower video. Then read through the steps below and you’ll be set to mow the grass.

Key Points To Sharpen Lawn Mower Blades:
- Be sure to put some plastic food wrap under the gas cap so it seals before you tilt the mower.
- Whatever side of the mower that has the gas cap should be tilted up.
- Wear safety gear when sharpening the blade, save your eyes and ears.
The video shows best how to tilt the mower so the gas doesn’t spill out, its easier to show than to put into words, but I trust you get it. Some gas caps have vents in them, hence the need for the plastic wrap to seal it.

Use a block of wood and a clamp set against the rim of the mower deck to keep the blade from moving while you remove the bolt. Do not use an adjustable wrench, use a socket or wrench, or you may round off the bolt.

Clamp the blade into a vise and use a right angle grinder to sharpen the blade, you want to do your best to keep the angle of the blade the same. If you do not have a grinder, you can buy a mower blade sharpening stone that attaches to your corded drill.

You can buy a right angle grinder here.

The most important part when you sharpen lawn mower blades is to balance the blade after sharpening it. If the blade is off balance, it will wobble when its cutting and damage the engine. Bad things will happen.

When attaching the blade to the mower, do not over tighten the bolt, hand tight and then a little more. Be careful not to bend the blade against the clamp when tightening the bolt.

The engine will take several pulls to start, don’t worry, the gas has to settle in the carburetor again. It will smoke a bit when it first starts. I sharpen my blade several times a year, it makes for a healthier lawn and a cleaner cut.

What are your thoughts on blade sharpening? Let me know below.
April 15, 2016
Bucket Bee Feeder Video – Beekeeping 101
Here’s a homemade bucket bee feeder I made to feed the honeybees sugar syrup. Watch the video and then step through the photos below.

I like the bucket bee feeder because you can feed the bees sugar syrup in the early spring and fall without having to open up the beehive. Our other sugar feeder videos all involve opening up the hive to feed the bees. This doesn’t.

The downside is if the weather is wet or cold or both, the bees wont fly and can’t get to this feeder. So I will use a combination of hive sugar feeders and this outdoor feeder.

Couple of tips when making the bucket bee feeder:
- Be sure to buy a food grade bucket with a gasket ring that seals the lid.
- Don’t drill holes where the handles meet the bucket.
- Fewer holes might be better.
- The bucket must be level when inverted.
You may have to shop around to find a bucket with the support ring that we will use as the feeder. This ring is for a person to be able to handle the bucket better with their hands, but when the bucket is inverted, the spaces under the ring make for great sugar cups.

5/64″ holes

I found that a 5/64″ drill bit worked well for me. Several people have suggested, after watching the video, that fewer holes would keep the sugar syrup from overflowing as much when its first turned over. With fewer holes, one would drill or cut through the walls between the spaces to allow the syrup to fill the ring. I’ll have to experiment with this. Let me know if you do as well.

If you accidentally drill in to the ring cavity where there handle attaches to the bucket, like I did, you can glue the hole shut. Silicon caulk works, or some plastic glue.

When you first flip over the bucket, some syrup will pour out. It will slowly stop. If it doesn’t stop, the drilled holes are too big, or the gasket isn’t sealing.Be sure the bucket is level, or the syrup will flow out.

As suggested by a viewer, test this out with plain water first. I used a 1:1 sugar syrup solution with some essential oil mix added with the feeder. Here is a homemade essential oil mix. I now buy a commercial essential oil mix from a beekeeping supplier, its just easier for the small amount I use every year.
April 12, 2016
How To Prune a Tree or Bush – GF Video
Can you show us how to prune a tree? Yes. For this post, we’ll be pruning an apple tree in spring, but this method applies to most trees. Watch the video, then read on.

How To Prune A Tree – Some Tips:
- Early spring or fall is the best time to prune.
- Use bypass pruners for live wood, anvil pruners for dead wood.
- Cut away branches that cross each other.
- Less is not always better.
- Buy a quality hand saw
There are a couple of types of pruners. I have a pair of hand pruners, the kind that look like pliers that cut limbs, and then I have the larger kind the require some upper body strength for larger limbs. Bypass pruners tend to make a cleaner cut on live wood. Anvil pruners have one blade that presses against a flat surface, these work best with dead limbs, as they can smash up live wood. But again, use what you got!

One of the big reasons for pruning is to remove branches that rub against each other, or are about to. Rubbing branches damages the bark and can invite disease. You’ve probably seen branches that have kinda fused together after years of touching, something you want to avoid. Remove branches that will start to rub as they grow before it happens.

Pruning less from a tree is not always better. For fruit trees, its important to have what’s called an ‘open habit’, you want air to flow through the tree.

Tools To Use

I was recently given a 4 cycle gas trimmer from Troy-Bilt (a GardenFork sponsor) that has a chainsaw pruning pole attachment that is excellent for pruning a tree. I was able to use this to cut off a large limb that had snapped on one of our standard size apple trees. With the pole extension, this rig can reach 11′ up, and it cuts fast. Be sure to keep oil in the chain bar reservoir and the chain sharp. You can see how The Impatient Gardener uses this powered pole pruner here.

Chainsaw Pole Pruner Attachment

Get yourself a quality hand saw. I prefer the kind with teeth that cut on the pull and push. I think the blade is called a Japanese blade. Cheap knockoffs will only bind in the tree and mean more work. I used to buy cheap ones, then I got a nice one, and its great.

You get what you pay for with saws. This one is made in Germany and works great.

When showing people how to prune a tree, I use two kinds of hand pruners, bypass and anvil. I use the anvil pruners a lot on blueberries and raspberries.

To start pruning, first cut away branches that cross, these will cause problems down the road, so visualize which limbs will get larger and cross. Its easier to cut them now, not later.

How much to prune? The common wisdom is you can prune out about 25% of a tree without harming it. I know that you can’t actually measure 25% of a tree, but step back from time to time while you prune and see what effect you are having. Its OK to cut out large limbs like I did in the video above.

Seal the pruning cuts? No, you don’t want to seal up the bare wood, the tree will form an internal chemical barrier to protect itself from any infection or invasion.

Here is a great example of the before and after of a nicely pruned fruit tree. I pruned this tree in Austin when the Troy-Bilt Saturday6 team got together and volunteered to restore a community garden. Note how you can see through the tree after pruning.

So this is my version of how to prune a tree, any thoughts or suggestions? Let me know below.

FYI: Troy-Bilt is a sponsor of GardenFork and provided me with these tools. Its part of how we pay the bills here. I won’t feature products I don’t think are of good quality.
March 31, 2016
Replace A Broken Window Pane Like A Pro – GF Video
Learn here how to replace a broken window pane, its not that hard, and once you do it, its like butter.

Easy Steps To Replace A Broken Window Pane:
1. Remove the broken glass.
2. Remove the old putty.
3. Pull out the old glazing points
4. Measure the window pane.
5. Get Glass Cut.
6. Drop in glass and push in glazing points.
7. Press in glazing putty.
Safety First! Be sure to wear gloves and safety googles, as you don’t want glass going into your eyes or your hand. If you can remove the window from its frame, it will be easier to do the work. If not, put a tarp below the window to catch the broken glass and old putty.

The putty may come out easily, it may not. Try to pull out the broken glass, it may still be held in by the putty and the glazing points. Alternate between removing putty, glazing points, and the glass, you will eventually get all of it out. Be careful with the wood trim that holds the window, you don’t want to beat it up.

To replace a broken window pane, we need to get a piece of new piece of glass, you can cut the glass yourself or have the hardware store do it. Measure the pane carefully, best to have it slightly smaller rather than too large for the opening in the window.

Place the new glass pane in the window, and press in new glazing points every 6″ to 8″. Again be careful, as you can crack the glass if you press down on it too hard while putting in the points.

If the wood frame is unpainted, you have the option of painting it or brushing on some linseed oil. The thinking here is that unfinished wood will draw out some of the oil in the putty, hampering its ability to form up properly and make it brittle. I have done it both ways, and have not seen a difference, but the theory makes sense to me.

Prepare the glazing putty by kneading it and adding linseed oil if you like. I like the putty more pliable than how it comes from the store.

Lay a bead of the putty all around the window pane, and finish with your putty knife as shown in the video.
March 24, 2016
How To Cut Up Chicken – GF Video
Wondering how to cut up chicken? The chef term for this is to joint a chicken, but cutting up a chicken is a pretty good term for me.

When you cut up a chicken instead of buying, lets say, chicken thighs, you save a ton of money. The cost of a whole chicken is not that much more than buying already cut up thighs, for example, and you get a whole chicken to use for other meals.

How To Cut Up Chicken, Some Tips:
- Buy poultry shears
- Wash the cutting board really well
- Pull out the neck before you start
I like the poultry shears that come apart for easy cleaning. Super simple way to clean up your tools after breaking down a chicken, and makes it easier to sanitize everything. Mine have good handles so I don’t slip while working.

Its important to clean your cutting board well after working with meat. I use comet cleanser, because is has some chlorine in it and is scrubs out stains as well. Its easy to cross contaminate, so pay attention to where you are putting your hands after handling chicken and tools.

Pull out the parts! Sometimes I forget to remove the neck and giblets, then I wonder what is going on with this chicken. Even me, the alleged expert has moments like this.

Consider cooking more than just the breasts or thighs next time, could you use the wings for something? You can make a nice stock with the back of the chicken and some vegetables, for basicaly free.

That being said, my favorite part of the chicken are the thighs, as they are the easiest to cook. You can overcook the dark meat and it will still taste good. Not true with breasts, you know.

Do you have any tricks or tips for cutting up a chicken, how about the best way to freeze a chicken after you have cut it up? Please let us know below.
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March 9, 2016
DIY Cold Frame From A Recycled Window – GF Video
Build this DIY Cold Frame with a window your neighbor is throwing out. I see windows out for the trash all the time, I could probably have built a whole greenhouse already! I like this home made cold frame for starting and growing salad greens, as they don’t get too tall, perfect for this rig. Watch the video:

Tips for building the DIY Cold Frame
- A wood frame window works best, but use what you’ve got, or what you’ve found.
- Be sure to prime and paint all surfaces.
- Install a thermatic vent to keep it from over heating.
Our cold frame has a thermatic vent built into the plan, so you don’t have to manually vent the cold frame greenhouse, you can buy one of these vents at a home improvement store. Buy the vent here.

What I also like here is we are recycling materials to build DIY cold frame. You can find old windows somewhere in your town, someone is most likely replacing their windows, and they will put out the old ones for trash pickup. Or check yard sales, or your own garage attic or barn, its very possible there is a window or two sitting there that you can use for this cold frame plan. Also consider using scrap plywood for this, it doesn’t have to look like fine furniture, its for the vegetable garden after all.

Be sure to paint the cold frame with primer and an outdoor latex paint, you may also want to wrap the edges of the plywood that touch the soil with duct tape to keep moisture from wicking up into the plywood. You could also use old garden hose to protect the wood. Slice open the hose along its length and slip the bottom of the cold frame into the slot in the garden hose.

If you want to extend your growing season, check out the books below, they are the ones we use!

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March 8, 2016
Mini Greenhouse Build #1 – GardenFork.TV
This is the first mini greenhouse build we did and we learned a lot. We have built several more since, and they are great garden season extenders. I start my salad greens early and can keep kale growing into winter with a PVC mini greenhouse. Watch the how to video:

A few tips on the Mini Greenhouse Build
- You can use 3 mil clear plastic from the hardware store.
- Buy the most flexible PVC tubing you can find.
- Be sure to have plenty of staples for the staple gun.
- Use at least one thermal vent.
You can get a UV resistant greenhouse plastic, but I don’t. My thinking is a tree branch or dog is probably going to crash through the mini greenhouse before the plastic is broken down from sunlight. Be sure to double over the plastic where ever you are stapling it to the frame. Where the plastic wraps over the edge of the plywood end, you can run duct tape or a slit rubber hose over it to reduce the chance of tearing.

There are several kinds of PVC pipe available. Go to your local hardware store and test the different kinds to see which bends well for the size greenhouse you are building. Pick up some pipe holder brackets from the electrical department of the store to hold the PVC to the wood frame.

Buy more staples then you think you need. I always run out! Hammer in any staples that don’t go in all the way themselves. Fold over the plastic where ever you staple it to reduce tearing.

Thermal vents are key here. The mini greenhouse build can overheat easily. I use at least one vent, if you use two, put one high and one low on opposite ends.
Buy the vent here.

If you are building this to sit on top of a raised bed, make the dimensions slightly smaller than the raised bed size, so the hoop house will drop just inside the borders of the bed, makes it much easier to deal with that way.

Four-Season Harvest The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener

Our cold frame hoop house greenhouse is based on those built by Eliot Coleman in his book, If you follow the procedures outlined by Elliot in his book, you can harvest food all winter. nice. We also learned a bunch from Nikki Jabour’s book. (affiliate links)

Hoop House Cold Frame #2 – DIY GF Video
March 7, 2016
How To Start Seeds Indoors – GF Video

I made a new video on how to start seeds indoors to reflect all I’ve learned lately. This included making cool paper pots and cardboard tubes.

To start seeds indoors

You need warmth and light and water. Lots of light and warmth, and not much water. Soaking wet seeds or seedlings will die off, imagine having your feet in water all the time, not fun.

I start my seedlings near the furnace in our basement. You can also buy a waterproof grow mat that is like a heating pad but built for seeds starting. Don’t go and use your heating pad for this, OK?

When the seeds start to sprout, its time to move them under the grow lights. The seedlings do not have to be as warm once they are started. But is is very important to keep the seedlings directly under the lights, basically touching the bulbs. With our DIY grow light rig, you can slowly raise the grow light as the plants grow.

I have found putting seed trays in the window doesn’t work. The plants get very leggy and top heavy. When you transplant them, they fall over in the wind. Your experience may be different, as I live in New England, where the winter light is poor at best.

It’s OK that the leaves touch the bulbs of the grow light

For the grow light, we use regular fluorescent bulbs, not the expensive lights. For seed starting, this works fine.

You don’t want to over-water your seedlings. This can cause mold and fungus to grow and will kill the young plants. Best is slightly moist to slightly dry. Many of the seed starting trays have a wicking mat under the seed pots, and this works pretty good. Watering from underneath instead of over the plants is best. I do not mist the plants.

I use a prepared seed starting mix, I don’t make my own, too much work, I think. Do not use regular potting soil or soil from your garden. You can get Clyde’s Planner here.

February 24, 2016
Cooking Steak On Charcoal with Will

Here’s a how to on cooking steak on charcoal by our friend Will of the The Weekend Homestead. I’ve been emailing with Will about different DIY and homesteading topics, and he watched our video on how to cook steak directly on charcoal and shot a video about his steak. Nice.

I’m not sure why people get weird about cooking directly on charcoal. Its wood! Like the wood your cutting board is made out of. And your food gets plenty of ash on it when its cooked on a grill or in a wood fired pizza oven.

Check out Will’s YouTube channel here.

February 4, 2016
Homemade Pallet Pry Bar With No Welding – GF Video

Build this homemade pallet pry bar with parts from the hardware store, no welding required. Grab a bunch of right angle brackets and some nuts and bolts, and make a pallet buster. Neat.

Pallet Pry Bar Parts List

Eight 4″ right angle brackets

Two 3 1/2″ Grade 5 3/8″ bolts & nuts

Two 3/4″ 1/4″ bolts & nuts

Handful of lockwashers

Handful of 3/8″ washers

Six 1/2″ nuts to use as spacers

Three foot length of 3/4″ pipe

Right angle elbow 3/4″ pipe

Do a dry run in the hardware store and make sure this all works as best you can, it might save a trip to the store.

I don’t have an exact measurement as to where to drill the holes, you can use this photo as a guide. You can drill this with a corded drill, or ideally, a drill press. Be sure to oil the bit as it cuts to keep it cool. The drill bit will wander when making the holes for the homemade pallet pry bar, so use a pointed metal punch or nail to set a point for the drill to sit in.

Drill out the existing holes in the brackets to accept the bolts.

I used nylon lock nuts on the two bolts that go through the pipe, if you can’t find them, use lock washers to keep the nuts tight. The two smaller bolts that hold the brackets to themselves don’t have to be Grade 5, regular ones will do.

The oversized nuts work great for spacing the brackets off the pallet buster. I made this wide to account for different pallets I have run into.

Be sure to tighten up the bolts! There is a lot of torque happening here, you don’t want this to fall apart. After you have assembled the pallet pry bar, round off the sharp corners of the brackets. This will help minimize damage to the pallet wood, if you want to use it to build stuff.

I found the addition of the pipe elbow really helps this tool work well. It adds a little bit of leverage. I got the idea from the small wonder bar crowbar I have, it has a small loop of metal behind the business end of the bar.

Thanks to Darren and Rybitski of Instructables for the inspiration to build this.

What can we do to improve this pallet breaker? Let me know below.

January 21, 2016