Creek Street Micro Farm

[Shane]

In the end it was easier to plant deciduous decorative varieties.

Gary

Which varieties did you end up planting Gary?


Back Pergola looks great BTW...nice size.

Cheers,
Shane.

[GaryD]

Hi Shane,

We planted out Vitis vinifera.....four of them.

Gary

[GaryD]

Hi,

Another day of cutting trim pavers, concreting the edges and sweeping dry mortar mix into the joints. Fortunately, the paving is now finished.

Yesterday, I spent half a day cleaning gutters on the shed and house. The long range forecast suggest that we could be in for some good old-fashioned storms during the upcoming wet season.

The dog is Miki.....our Maltese terror......intrepid chaser of chooks and cats....and trades supervisor.

Gary

[GaryD]

Hi,

Recent humidity and rain has really kicked the bamboo and vines along.

One of the more advanced vines is already reaching for the top of the pergola.

We've also spread 5 cubic metres of 40mm gravel to create a path from the house to the shed.......and there's a further 8 cubic metres of 20mm aggregate lying where the front lawn used to be.

Gary

[Hofmann]

Heh Gary, great little project. Isn't landscaping the best fun. I liked the idea of that being your outdoor harvesting area and I reckon you really need to get some waterproofing over the pergola. I understand you don't want to use laserlight but with a light pitch, tensioned shadecloth can be effective. I noticed you don't seem to have any pitch in the pergola but you can get around that. A light colour will still allow and reflect plenty of light for your vine and give you a bit of a break from the sun till the vine grows in. Custom ones aren't that expensive. You might have to brace up the frame a bit more though. Are you going to put a full sink setup with running water and a barbie to throw the twitching fish on? An SF compost nearby for the offal?
Man if I had your space. looks like you could go some bigger livestock.

[Hofmann]

Also Gary, those battens are on the flat. They'll bow like crazy, even without the vines. Move em so they'r on edge but I reckon they're still light on. Is it 90x45? You might be able to use this oportunity to put pitch into them.
You looked like you knew what you were doing with the paving, are you a builder or just got plenty of mates? one piece of advice from personal experience is you need to seal concrete tiles asap or you'll regret it.
That ret wall was unreal. Where'd you get those stones? I bugger about with footings and reo and concrete and blocks and you just grab a pile of boulders and lay em against the dirt. It's going nowhere and it looks unreal. If you waterblasted it it'd fit in in the northern beaches of sydney.

[GaryD]

Hi Hofmann,

Heh Gary, great little project. Isn't landscaping the best fun. I liked the idea of that being your outdoor harvesting area and I reckon you really need to get some waterproofing over the pergola. I understand you don't want to use laserlight but with a light pitch, tensioned shadecloth can be effective.

While it won't act as waterproofing, I've slung some shadecloth underneath the overhead timber work......largely to take the edge off of the sun. I did it this way to allow me to drop the shadecloth when the dead leaves from the vines start to build up.

I take you point about a bit of bracing on the frame.

Also Gary, those battens are on the flat. They'll bow like crazy, even without the vines. Move em so they'r on edge but I reckon they're still light on. Is it 90x45? You might be able to use this oportunity to put pitch into them.

The battens are actually 70 x 35 and, since I took the photos, I've put some rio mesh across the top of the pergola.....to encourage the vines to spread quickly across the structure.and I've since attached rio mesh to encourage the spreading of the vines. If, as you've indicated, they start to bow we'll replace them.

You looked like you knew what you were doing with the paving, are you a builder or just got plenty of mates? one piece of advice from personal experience is you need to seal concrete tiles asap or you'll regret it.

I'm no builder and I just chased around for advice on how to go about it......and I had the good fortune to hire someone who is generally handy with these things. What's the story with the concrete tiles?

That ret wall was unreal. Where'd you get those stones? I bugger about with footings and reo and concrete and blocks and you just grab a pile of boulders and lay em against the dirt. It's going nowhere and it looks unreal. If you waterblasted it it'd fit in in the northern beaches of sydney.

All of those rocks came off of our block. There's rock under the soil everywhere on our place. When the local council put an easement through our block a few years ago, they had to blast rock everywhere.

Are you going to put a full sink setup with running water and a barbie to throw the twitching fish on? An SF compost nearby for the offal?

Yep......we've the BBQ and the kitchen sink on a stand already sorted. My next major project in this space is the construction of a wood-fired Italian oven.

Man if I had your space. looks like you could go some bigger livestock.

Our first priority is to get our new aquaponics systems together. The remaining components for the new arrangement should be here any day now.

Following that, we'll be re-working our quail breeding and chicken set ups.

We're lucky when it comes to space (much less so when it comes to time) and we're still tossing around whether we'll go for a couple of dairy goats (crossed with a Boer buck) or even a Dexter cow with a calf at foot.

I'm keen to try cheesemaking.

Gary

[Hofmann]

The battens just won't hold up, sorry. They're going to sag quite dramatically and you're going to have to cut half your vine back to replace them. 70x35 on the flat can span a maximum of 900mm. You can turn them 90 deg so they're on edge, not on the flat which will help a lot, but I still think they're going to sag. Another option to save you undoing all your hard work is to get some more 90x45 or 90x35 and put them underneith the battens, but on edge. That should do it and you will get the same effect as the last batten which sits over the beam. Cut them neat between the outside beams and pump plenty of nails in the end and down through the top, or screws if you haven't got a nail gun. If you used wood glue as well it would laminate the two sections and give you an effective depth of 125mm. You could do this down the track if you don't have time now but it's way easier before they start to bow.
Concrete pavers are very porous and things as benign as leaves can stain them permanantly if not swept off quickly. With a light colour like yours they will just end up looking really dirty not to mention the hygene issues if you are cutting chicken heads off. Go have a look, I bet you have some already. You can buy transparent sealers for pavers that simply roll on and will stop the stains from penetrating. It's vital that you do this.
I can't remember from the pics if you buried your posts or not. If you did then the soil is going to provide you with a certain amount of bracing but it looks very high. As it gets top heavy with the vine, you will probably find it swaying around in the breeze. If you put the posts on post feet then you better get some bracing on quick time. If you don't want ruddy great cross braces everywhere, you can use those braced steel corner brackets, two on each post, 400mm minimum. If you want a cheap option you can try cutting a 45 deg angle at each end of timber offcuts, say 600mm long and fitting them up in the same way as the corner brackets, just make sure you get good fixings. You can even get the scrolled timber corner brackets from fed trim which have a nice look. Most hardwares can source them.

[GaryD]

Hi Dan,

The structure is 3 metres high and is supported on steel posts.....so we'll look at doing something to brace it up. Since the photos were taken, we've begun to put framed lattice around the bottom of some of the posts and that has stiffened things up a bit. Would the steel straps that are used on timber-framed housing achieve what we want?

I'll give some thought to which of your suggestions we can implement to resolve the sagging problem.

We'll get going on the sealer for the pavers, too.

Thanks for your helpful comments......much appreciated.

Gary

[Hofmann]

I assume you mean strap bracing. This will only give bracing under tension, not compression. Thus , by using the other options I mentioned, you will get double the bracing for the same effort. If you are putting lattice panels in though, job done. Hang on, that is if you put it in diagonaly. Tell me you put it in diagonal. They amount to a whole **** load of cross bracing. If there are sections you want to keep open, you can put say 1m deep panels up high.