Digging In
May. 23rd, 2006 11:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ltmurnauI spent the long weekend (the part that didn't rain, anyway) digging slit trenches.
I thought I had forgotten all about how to dig a hole for one's personal protection against unseen enemies, but by the third (and last) one I was constructing dead-straight rectilinear positions, with level floors and neat spoil heaps.
I even revetted the walls with leftover sheets of galvanized metal left from The Shed That Died, cut lengthways by the Armstrong Wire Method*.
I was tired but proud. Next comes camming up the position as a whole, by judicious planting of leafy greenstuffs.
None of this should mean anything to anyone, but if I get around to it I'll take and post a picture.
* [EDIT: The "Armstrong Wire Method" of cutting corrugated galvanised iron (CGI) is as follows (excerpt from Chapter 8 of the Canadian Forces Basic Field Engineering Manual):
CGI can be quickly and easily cut in the field by the following method:
a. anchor two strands of 14 SWG wire about 1.80 m long securely to a picket in the ground and secure the other end to a stick or pick helve;
b. lay the CGI over the wire at the position to be cut and as close to the anchor picket as possible. The edge of the corrugations of the sheet are turned towards the ground;
c. stand on the sheet facing away from the anchor picket with the feet close to the line of the cut and pull the wire upwards, as vertical as possible, using the stick held in the crutch of the arms; and
d. as the wire cuts through the sheet move the feet back along the line of the cut. Do not jerk the wire but apply a steady pull.
Fig 6-3-4 Cutting Corrugated Iron
[I did not have any 14 SWG wire on hand so I used some vinyl-covered wire clothesline I had lying around, and Aki's old baseball bat instead of a pick helve. Improvise, adapt, overcome.]
I thought I had forgotten all about how to dig a hole for one's personal protection against unseen enemies, but by the third (and last) one I was constructing dead-straight rectilinear positions, with level floors and neat spoil heaps.
I even revetted the walls with leftover sheets of galvanized metal left from The Shed That Died, cut lengthways by the Armstrong Wire Method*.
I was tired but proud. Next comes camming up the position as a whole, by judicious planting of leafy greenstuffs.
None of this should mean anything to anyone, but if I get around to it I'll take and post a picture.
* [EDIT: The "Armstrong Wire Method" of cutting corrugated galvanised iron (CGI) is as follows (excerpt from Chapter 8 of the Canadian Forces Basic Field Engineering Manual):
CGI can be quickly and easily cut in the field by the following method:
a. anchor two strands of 14 SWG wire about 1.80 m long securely to a picket in the ground and secure the other end to a stick or pick helve;
b. lay the CGI over the wire at the position to be cut and as close to the anchor picket as possible. The edge of the corrugations of the sheet are turned towards the ground;
c. stand on the sheet facing away from the anchor picket with the feet close to the line of the cut and pull the wire upwards, as vertical as possible, using the stick held in the crutch of the arms; and
d. as the wire cuts through the sheet move the feet back along the line of the cut. Do not jerk the wire but apply a steady pull.
Fig 6-3-4 Cutting Corrugated Iron
[I did not have any 14 SWG wire on hand so I used some vinyl-covered wire clothesline I had lying around, and Aki's old baseball bat instead of a pick helve. Improvise, adapt, overcome.]
no subject
Date: 2006-05-23 06:28 pm (UTC)What are you growing?
[/horticultural squee]
no subject
Date: 2006-05-23 07:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-23 08:33 pm (UTC)Yeah, you guessed it, even without a picture. My vegetable garden has lain fallow for the last two years and has gone right back to sod. I was going to do the raised-beds thing as had been suggested to me, but I didn't want to buy material for and build boxes, nor did I have any spare dirt, so I dug trenches and used the dug-up dirt in between them for vegetable beds. If you can't build up, you dig down, right?
It rained on Monday so I did not get a chance to prepare the soil and sow, but I will be planting things that are nice to eat when fresh, cost too much at the store, and taste better when you grow them yourself:
- potatoes (grown-in-the-tire trick)
- onion sets (for green onions and winter onions)
- snow peas
- spinach? (I don't like it but she does)
- tomatoes
- peppers
- corn (just a bit, as my son wants to see it grow)
- watermelons (just for fun)
Meanwhile, the strawberry plants survived the winter, and opium poppies are shooting up everywhere....