Building A Salad Table and More Tales From the Skunk Woods

As promised,

I thought I would share a little info with you

about how Hubbs built our salad table.

Our garden is by the barn, which is quite a ways from our house,

so I thought that having a specific container in which to grow

our salad greens would be a great idea to have

right at the house.

I saw a catalog item called a salad table and it looked

super easy to build.

So Hubbs set out to recreate what we saw.....

The bed of the salad table is made from cedar;

the legs are pressure treated pine.

You don't want to make your boxes from pressure treated

lumber, as the chemicals used to treat the lumber are toxic 

and can leach into your planting soil.

The length of our table is 5 feet.

The sides are 1 foot, 10 1/2 inches.

The legs are 2 1/2 feet long.

The slats across the bottom are 2 feet long.

The bed of the box is constructed with two 1X6's on

top of each other....making it about 11 inches deep.

The entire structure is screwed together.

It is lined with several layers of screening...

providing drainage, but keeping the soil in.

The bottom slats have space between them,

again providing drainage.

Wheels on one end allow for easy movement

to sunny locations if needed.

I filled the box with 4 parts topsoil, 2 part compost,

and then top dressed it with

sterile, organic garden soil....

this is a great weed deterrent.

I have planted a variety of leaf lettuces and spinach.

Once the seedlings emerge, I will cover them at night

if we have a particularly cold snap,

although both lettuce and spinach are cool weather crops.

The lettuce might not tolerate a hard freeze.

Three more skunk attacks over the weekend

(Sam - 2, Oakley - 1 more)

 prompted me to make this....

Having everything right in one place makes dealing

with the haz-mat clean-up much easier!!

The contents are:

hydrogen perozide

baking soda

detergent

tecnu

baby shampoo

eye lube, to prevent chemical irritation

sponges

dog towel

Having the in a bucket is handy,

because then I use the bucket to mix up the 

hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and detergent bath.

A note about the Tecnu....

use it as the first step.  Work the lotion into your pet's fur

while his/her fur is still dry.

Then wash it out with the peroxide bath.

Follow with baby shampoo.

Another peroxide bath if there is any residual smell...

and this should eradicate the nasty odor.

It's always good to be prepared!!