I’ve used the flickrrss widget to add my flickr account photos to the side of the blog for a visual update of the garden. I did find that with wordpress 2.2 you don’t need to install the automatic widget plugin as it is already built in, but you do need to create the widgets directory underneath the plugins directory and load the flickr-widget.php file into this directory.
I was just building a standard 4*4 garden so I was going to need 4*4*0.5 =8 cubic feet which is not very helpful when dividing by three for the three main ingredients. However in order to dump the ingredients onto the tarp I needed a box to measure the appropriate quantities and the cardboard box that I had lying around in the garden just happened to measure 1.3 cubic feet which meant 2 boxes per ingredient. As I have previously mentioned I found the compost really hard to get hold of, but the one bag that I did find and the cow manure bags were both 40lb bags and both filled the cardboard box nicely, so my final ingredients list was 2 vermiculite, 2 peat moss, 1 cow manure and 1 compost. However after mixing all this and pouring it into the bed I still had a fair amount of empty space as the watering of the bed compacts the mix down so I had to mix another box of vermiculite, peat moss and potting soil. So, when shopping make sure that you always buy more than the standard calculations (in my case a third more). In the case of vermiculite and peat moss I have loads left as I purchased the large bags although I think I used more than a half of the vermiculite.
The SFG made the night with no creatures digging up the soil mix or cats pooping in it. I nipped out this afternoon to put the cross slats on to make the square foot sections. As the book mentioned, you do need to drill pilot holes for the screws in the slats or otherwise they will crack as you screw through them – woops!
The soil stinks of manure at the moment, so in the hot weather it wasn’t the greatest of environments to be working in. Hopefully I’ll be planting the seeds tomorrow and making a chickenwire cover to keep the birds, chipmunks and rabbits away.