Three words: Twilight Corn Maze. Yes, really.

Frank Herbert’s Dune… in Lego. Aren’t the eyes of the minifigs supposed to be all creepy blue?

Hey Sis, you might need to make the Snook a World of Warcraft cake someday. I can get you a picture of his character so you can start designing giant fondant axes and such.

Hotel Toilet-Paper Folding. Our cleaner always folds down the end of the toilet paper in the bathroom, and it’s always a happy surprise when I see it. Makes me feel all special. (Incidentally, if you’re looking for a cleaner in the Inner West, let me know. Ours are terrific and they’ve already got a few more clients from us.)

Gizmodo’s list of Essential iPhone Apps for Fall 2009. Several I have… and several I don’t have. Yet.

Garden Update: We put in a solid five hours of labor today out in the garden. We pulled out loads of weeds, trimmed back the palm, and cleaned up a few of our growing areas. Then it was time to build our four beds for our experiment with Square Foot Gardening. We used four lengths of 3m Ezy Edge to define each bed. (This was a compromise, as we were unsuccessful at finding untreated wood that didn’t cost a fortune and I flatly refused to use plastic.) Our main garden bed is 4′ x 5′, and we also have a long 2′ x 5′ bed along the back fence. We also made two 2′ x 3′ beds under the bottlebrush tree and along the side wall. Once we’d weeded and levelled each space, we put down the edging and then lined it with weed matting. (We used bamboo stakes to hold the edging in place.) Then it was time to make the “Mel’s Mix.”

As mentioned in the previous post, Mel’s Mix is the key ingredient with square foot gardening. We did the maths and worked out that we were going to need approximately 600L of mix to fill our four beds. This meant 200L each of vermiculite (coarse horticultural grade), peat moss, and compost. (We followed the book’s advice and used five different types of compost: cow manure, mushroom compost, chicken manure, general compost, and special organic compost.) Mixing and transporting the Mel’s Mix took up the better part of the day, and I decided I’d document it for future Googlers.We followed Mel’s advice and purchased a tarp to do all the mixing on… but our tarp was much too small. So we decided to do it in two batches. Here I am using a shovel to mix up the first half-batch of Mel’s Mix. You’re advised to wear a breathing mask when you do it, as some of the particles can be quite fine. (We also used the hose to mist the pile a bit.) We used a shovel and a fork to mix, along with Mel’s trick of pulling the corners of the tarp to turn the pile over itself.

Eventually we had this! This is the finished Mel’s Mix. It’s very loose and friable. The white specs are the vermiculite, which are hopefully going to act like little sponges and hold water within our raised beds.

Here we are filling the main garden bed. All of the beds are meant to be filled to a depth of 6″. (Note: 1′ x 1′ x 6″ = about 14L of Mel’s Mix to fill.) This bed gets a couple hours of full sun a day, but it’ll get more once we trim back the lilli pilli tree.

This is one of the small 2′ x 3′ beds beneath the bottlebrush tree. We’ve got some pretty walking lilies growing around it too.

Here’s another small 2′ x 3′ bed along the side of the house. This is the spot where I planted my two pumpkins last year that went nuts and tried to take over the whole garden (yet never produced any fruit).

This is the medium 2′ x 5′ bed along the back fence beside the pawpaw tree. If you look closely, you can see how I’ve defined our squares: green garden twine. We didn’t have any luck finding cheap slats, so that’s what we went with. I nailed the twine to the top of the edging, and I used bamboo stakes to secure it on the sides with no edging.

This is a small “ferny glade” we’ve got along the side of the house close to the street. It gets a lot of shade and there are a number of native palms and walking lilies growing happily there. We’ll probably put some more similar plants in.

Here’s one last view up the side of the house. The pathway looks much better when it’s not overgrown with weeds. We’ve got loads of peace lilies growing there under the palm. We’re planning to put some more potted dwarf fruit trees along the other side to go with our frangipanis and lemon tree.

Now comes the fun bit – what are we going to put in those 42 squares?! Planning has commenced.

Expense report: This project was partly inspired by the GRS Garden Project, and I’m going to copy their method of tracking their garden expenses.

The 5 hours listed there only accounts for our manual labour. We also spent nearly double that time going to garden stores to price and purchase materials. Also, a fair bit of the expense was actually in purchasing some new garden tools that we needed: a shovel, a wheeled cart, a watering can, etc. The Square Foot Gardening book is up-front about the fact that the initial cost of setting up your beds isn’t cheap, but from now on our expenses (other than seeds) should be minimal. Next weekend we’ll plant!

Spring has sprung, and the Snook and I have been busy making plans for our garden. This year we’re going to give Square Foot Gardening a try. The idea is that instead of trying to condition our poor soil, we simply build raised beds and use “Mel’s Mix” to fill them. Mel’s Mix is the magic. It’s composed of 1/3 compost, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/3 peat moss. So last weekend we headed out to check prices at Bunnings and the Annandale Garden Center. We came away pretty disappointed. Neither of them had vermiculite in bags greater than 5L, and we couldn’t find any peat moss at all. (We calculated we’d need about 200L of each.) This was going to be difficult.

I spent the week trying to track down the bulk materials. Vermiculite was easier; it gets used in hydroponics so I found it at a few places. But man, I had the hardest time finding peat moss. I must’ve rung every garden center in Sydney and none of them had it in quantities greater than 5L bags (at ridiculous prices). We toyed with the idea of substituting Cocopeat, which is more readily available and is arguably more environmentally sustainable. I didn’t want to stray too far from Mel’s recipe though if we didn’t have to. Friday the Snook found Garden City Plastics, who supply big 235L bags of peat and 100L bags of vermiculite. So I called them up to find out how we could get our hands on some. Unfortunately they’re only open on weekdays, and their warehouse is in Rouse Hill (way, way far away). We could pay for delivery, but one of us would have to stay home to meet them here. Again, it seemed we were at an impasse. Then the salesman had a brainwave. GCP supply Ace Ohlsson, who have a permanent stall at Flemington Markets. We could drive out there and buy it from them!

So that’s what we did. For the benefit of future Googlers, when you drive through the main Market entrance and come to the roundabout, turn right and drive past the Flower Market. Keep going straight and you’ll find Ace Ohlsson down on the right. We were able to get two bags of vermiculite and a big 220L bag of NZ Peat Moss for $80 less than it was going to cost us to have it delivered. I’d recommend them for anybody in Sydney who needs bulk garden products at cheap prices.