Bird house gourds!

Removal of the front Lawn: Part 1

Howdy all! 

We live in California, and if you haven't been watching the news, we are in a record drought. Our governor has requested that people reduce their water usage by 30 % so we decided to get rid of our water sucking lawn! As well, our local government has offered reimbursements to cover the cost, so bye bye lawn!

We first need to kill our old grass. We covered all of it with sheets of cardboard, which will prevent light from reaching the grass, and will prevent the grass from reaching the surface. Cardboard is great because it is cheap (basically free), and will break down eventually once the grass is dead. Here you can see Nicky spreading out sheets on cardboard. We had to rip off all of the tape, plastics, etc since they won't break down:

On top of the cardboard, we placed bag after bag of mulch. This has weight, which helps keep the cardboard weighted down onto the surface. As well, it will eventually break down.

We spread the mulch over over the cardboard. We did this (stupidly) on a windy day, so we had to put down the mulch as we went or the cardboard blew away:

The cardboard is overlapped, such that no grass can make it the surface. The few plants that we had were placed such that they could still peirce through the cardboard. Where needed, we cut holes out of the cardboard, such as around our sprinklers

Mulch mulch everywhere!

More cardboard to spread:

The finished product. After you spread the mulch onto the grass, you has to hose it down with water, allowing the mulch to suck up the water.

After two weeks or so, we found that our cardboard placement wasn't great everywhere. Some of the grass managed to make it through little holes in the cardboard. Not a problem! We brushed the mulch away, put down a fresh sheet of cardboard where the grass snuck through, and covered it with more mulch.

Step two:
After the grass is killed, and the cardboard begins to break down, we will plant our new native/ low water front "lawn".

M & N

Chicken watering system upgrade

Howdy All,

Recently we upgraded our watering system for our chickens. For those of you without chickens (most of you I suspect), chickens love to dig around in the dirt looking for grubs and worms. When they do this, they kick dirt all around their chicken run, and it inevitably ends up in their water! I did some research online, and found a great system using a bucket, PVC pipe, and little nipples for the chicken water, but it was expensive! So, we decided to build our own! 

Here is the heart of the system. These two piece nipples that just lock onto standard 3/4" PVC pipe. You have to drill a 5/16" hole in them, and the shape of the nipples lock around the PVC pipe. We ordered these from amazon, but they took forever to arrive at our house!

For the PVC, I shaped them into an "L," and had a "T" in the middle which went into a hose fitting. The ends were capped off. The PVC was glued with Christy's Red Hot Blue Glue.

After I drilled the holes, I cleaned them up with an exacto knife to deburr them, and blew air into the pipe to remove all of the little plastic shavings which might clog the nipples. I then added kitchen silicon sealant around the outside of the holes to prevent water from leaking. When plastic is in the sun, the UV rays break down the plastic and make it brittle. I didn't want the locking nipple parts falling off of the PVC pipe, so after the silicon dried, I then used Plastic Epoxy (5 minute set) to glue the nipple piece to the PVC pipe as a mechanical bond to prevent them from eventually slipping off.

On the outside out chicken coop, we attached a piece of wood (made from 2 4x4s, and two sheets of plywood) which would hold the water bucket. The piece is attached to a 2x4, which might be too weak for the weight of the water, so I'm keeping an eye on it to see if I need to beef it up a bit. Water is heavy!

Here is our large bucket. At the bottom, we attached a hose outlet. Some people have a facet valve at the bucket, but we choose to go without if for now.

Here is a good photo of what the watering system looks like inside the coop. Right now it is only attached with wire until we make sure that the chickens like the height that it is installed.

We bought a 3 foot hose to run from the bucket to the PVC pipe, but it turned out to be too long! The water had a hard time going into the PVC since the water hose trapped air in it. We eventually cut off about a foot and a half from the hose so that it is a straight shot to the PVC pipe. Since the new water bucket is 14 gallons, and our old waterer was maybe 1 gallon or two, we can go a lot longer without having to worry if the chickens have their water. As well, where we live we almost never have temperatures below freezing, or else this system wouldn't work in the winter.

Filling up the water bucket with water for the first time We also added a bit of wire around the bucket, which will prevent it from being knocked off of the bracket we placed it on.

Only one leak! And that's because I didn't tighten the hose enough! Once good and tight, no leaks!

Hopefully this will mean happy chickens, since they will have clean water, and a happy mother-in-law, who had to clean the water in the coop when we were on vacation! So far the chickens are bit confused by the watering system. We showed each of them how to peck at it, so that water would come into their mouths (chickens are not terribly bright). We held each of them, and then moved their beaks until water came out of each of the nipples. As well, we removed their old waterer to force them to learn how to work the new system.

We'll try to get a photo of the chickens actually using it! Happy gardening!

M & N

Mason Bee house

Howdy all!

It's been a long time since we did a post. We have actually been crazy busy in the yard, and haven't had anytime to really post anything! So today we are going to show a recent project for a bee hotel. Mason bees are awesome little polinators, Unlike the usual honey bees, these bees are solitary, laying their eggs in holes. We decided to encourage the bees to visit our yard by building them a little hotel where they can make more little bees.

We based our bee hotel on these two posts:

http://solarbeez.com/category/mason-bees/

http://reallygoodwriter.com/bees/mason-bees-in-the-summer/attachment/masonbeehouse/

For our wedding, we cut up a large number of 2 x 4's to make a giant jenga set. Since then, we have slowly been incorporating these into projects around the house. Below, you can three 2 x 4s, and a piece of scrap wood that will be part of the roof:

Each of the 2x4s were cut at an angle, to give the roof a slight slope:

Here you can see the three 2x4s after they were cut.

They were then screwed together to make them into a large block. Screws were placed at the far corners, so that they wouldn't interfere with the bee holes later drilled:

Another image of the 2x4 block, and the roof.

Here you can see the results after I went nuts with the drill bit! I used a 3/8ths bit, and drilled them a nice little line:

I used an L bracket to mount the bee hotel. It was placed at the top of the hotel, such that the screws would not interfere with the drilled bee holes.

The bee hotel, once mounted on the chicken coop:

I have read that wood peckers can be a problem with these hotels, so eventually I will place some chicken wire, or bird netting around it such that the woodpecker can't eat the bee larva. As well, the bees need mud to close up the holes. I will eventually make a mud tray somewhere in the yard, such that they have all of the mud they need. Now get out there are get pollinating!

M & N