i won, i won!

After two rounds of judg­ing it’s now offi­cial. My image of a chalk dud­leya (Dud­leya pul­veru­lenta) is the win­ner in a con­test look­ing for an image to use to pro­mote the upcom­ing Cal­i­for­nia Native Plant Week, which this year is April 17 to 23. The com­pe­ti­tion was held by the San Diego Chap­ter of the Cal­i­for­nia Native Plant Soci­ety, and the win­ning image will be used locally in pub­lic­ity and on t-shirts and who knows what else.

Woohoo! I’m jazzed!

To the right is the win­ning image, Chalk Dud­ley, Bud­ding Out.

Down below I detail the steps I took to turn a snap­shot into this final photo.
con­tinue reading »

March 20 2011 | Categories: gardening • my garden • photography | Tags: • • • • | 35 Comments »

steel cube planters, part 2

Below are instruc­tions on con­struct­ing the steel planters I dis­cussed in my last post.

For each planter, you’ll need:

  • 5 sheets of 12-guage steel, cut per­fectly square (I used pieces 1-foot square)
  • dis­pos­able weld­ing sup­plies: either weld­ing wire or steel electrodes

Tools:

  • welder
  • 90-degree cor­ner clamps (alu­minum Pony clamps work well)
  • the usual weld­ing pro­tec­tion: weld­ing shield, gloves, sturdy shoes, long sleeves and long pants

Assem­bly:

  1. Clamp the sides together in a way that the final bot­tom piece will be able to slide into the assem­bly at a slight slant.
  2. Tack the pieces together using 3 1-inch beads per cor­ner, mak­ing sure to leave room for the bot­tom piece to fit into the planter with­out run­ning into the welds. Also make sure that two adja­cent sides will have their low­est welds a lit­tle higher up to be able to accom­mo­date the slanted bot­tom piece. (You could also use a slightly under-sized bot­tom panel so you could us it with­out slant­ing it, maybe 12 x 11 1/2 or so, depend­ing on how much drainage you want.)
  3. Slide the bot­tom piece in at an angle, tilt­ing it a lit­tle bit extra to not make the fit too tight, leav­ing slight gaps for water to drain.
  4. Tack weld the bot­tom in sev­eral locations.

That’s basi­cally it. It’s a good idea to clean off the oils from the mill using a degreaser or strong deter­gent. That step will get the rust started. But if you’re anx­ious to get patina quicker, you can use a weak solu­tion of acid. I used a stop-bath strength dilu­tion of acetic acid from one of my old photo dark­room bot­tles, but I’ve heard that vine­gar (basi­cally acetic acid as well) works just fine as well. Be sure to wear gloves and eye pro­tec­tion, and don’t inhale the nasty fumes! The fin­ish won’t be totally rusty, but it’ll give you a good head start to a nice patina.

A lot of peo­ple swear by weak pool acid (aka muri­atic or hydrochlo­ric acid), but you’re get­ting into ter­ri­tory where the mate­ri­als start to get unnec­es­sar­ily pow­er­ful. You might be in a rush to get more patina faster and think that using strong acid is the way to go. But when the acid gets too strong, it actu­ally removes rust, so stay­ing with some­thing weak and safe is the best way to go. If I haven’t deterred you, though, check out the dis­cus­sion at Met­al­geek for a mod­er­ately safe method for the truly impatient.

One lit­tle final finesse con­cerns the use of insu­la­tion. Plants in pots often suf­fer from roots that have to abide wild tem­per­a­ture swings far beyond what they’d expe­ri­ence in the ground. I’ve always felt that metal con­tain­ers, with their spec­tac­u­lar abil­i­ties to trans­mit heat effec­tively, poten­tially could make for some of the most hos­tile root envi­ron­ments. So I decided to insu­late the sides of the pot that would be fac­ing the most intense sun. This heav­ily canted cube in par­tic­u­lar cried out to me for some pro­tec­tion from the extreme heat of the mid­day rays…and I just hap­pened to have some left­over 1/2 sheet insu­la­tion sit­ting around. So, before I planted the cubes, at least one of the sides got a piece of insu­la­tion to mod­er­ate the worst of the sun’s heat­ing effects. Here’s a peek inside:cubesinsulation.jpg

All this is a grand exper­i­ment. The insu­la­tion may or may not make a dif­fer­ence. I’m sure the cubes will even­tu­ally rust out, though hope­fully not for ten or more years. In hind­sight, prim­ing and paint­ing the inte­ri­ors might have given the planters a bit more life, but the euphor­bias planted in them will even­tu­ally out­grow their homes any­way.  What in a gar­den is forever?

March 25 2008 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • • • | 2 Comments »