Okay, so this project has been incredibly slow going!
I first started preparing the area at the beginning of July. That was just to prepare the bed in advance. It wasn’t until the middle of the month that I could finally get started on the wattle weaving.
For the vertical support posts on the long sides, I used the openings of the chimney block retaining wall to space them out. They’re not quite 2 1/2 feet apart. The bed itself is roughly 12 feet long. For the bottom wattles, I was using maple, which is not very flexible, even when freshly cut, green and newly stripped of its bark. So in that respect, the wider distance was better.
The problem is, I had I think only one straightish piece that was 12′ long. I had a few that were long enough that I could use two, but anything less than that, and there was just too much space between the verticals to do any weaving.
So that got set aside while I figured out where I could find long enough materials.
For the retaining wall side, I decided to experiment, and to completely the other direction. Each of the chimney blocks has three openings in the sides on the front and back. I spaced the verticals with four opening between them. In retrospect, I should have done it with three, but it’s too late to change that now!
I decided to add vertical supports in every opening, and try weaving with much shorter, thinner wattles.
I used the remaining pieces of maple and cut them slightly shorter than the verticals that are already in place.
Then I made a point at one end.
That mostly white cat on the left is Frank, aka: Old Blue Eyes.
Yes. He turned out to be a she, and she is pregnant. *sigh*
I used a scrap piece of board to hammer in each of the new verticals. I ran out of the maple, though, and use some willow for the last four. You can see those set in place in the second image of the slide show above. The willow I used is from what I harvested a couple of weeks ago, yet when I peeled them, they were still pretty green! Which is why I had to peel them. If I just stuck them into the ground, they would root themselves and start growing, and I don’t want to grow willow in my retaining wall blocks!
Once those were in place, it was time to harvest as many willow switches and maple suckers as I could find.
In the last picture, you can see the two piles I gathered. One is of willow switched, the other of maple suckers. I took advantage of needing these to clear out some growth that needed to be cut back completely, so I knew that some of them would not be useable for this. For the weaving, I need long, flexible, straight pieces. Unfortunately, even with the shorter, younger pieces I was harvesting, they tend to grow just a few feet before suddenly ending and splitting off into two.
Once the material was gathered, I grabbed my first piece of willow to start trimming the twigs and branches off when…
My pocket started to ring.
There’s only one place that calls my cell phone.
Yup. It was home care.
They didn’t have someone for my mother’s supper time med assist. They did for her bedtime assist. Just not supper. Normally, they are both done by the same person, so it looks like they found someone to cover for her for the end of day assist, but not the supper time one.
My mother was scheduled to get her med assist at 4:45pm.
I had just enough time to clean up, change and head out.
*sigh*
I did phone my mother in advance and left a message on her answering machine before I left. When I got to her place, however, she was sitting outside, enjoying the day, and was very surprised to see me!
I was early enough that we could sit outside together and chat for a while before heading in. Since I was there anyhow, once I got her meds set out, I helped her get her supper together, did some dishes, etc. I’m going to be back tomorrow morning to take her to the lab for blood work, so I didn’t stay for very long. I reminded her not to have breakfast tomorrow, as one of the tests requires fasting.
This makes three days in a row I have had to do med assists for my mother because there was no home care aid to do it.
While I way away, my daughter made supper and was feeding the outside cats for me again. I was very happy to grab some food, and then head back out again. I wanted to at least get those maple suckers woven in, as they will dry out and get brittle much faster than the willow.
Yes, Sir Robin is chewing on the tip of a maple!
I got about a dozen out of the maple I’d harvested and got started with the weaving.
At those length, I needed three to go the length of the bed.
I made it to two.
Even as thin and green as they were, with how close together the vertical pieces are, they just weren’t flexible enough. While trying to weave through, I broke a vertical. I managed to scrounge a long enough piece of older maple to replace it, but when I broke a second one, that was it. I found another piece of maple to replace that one – at this point, the remaining pieces were among those that were rejected for being too bent or whatever – and gave up using the maple suckers.
The willow was much faster to prepare. I didn’t even need to use pruning sheers.
For the first three passes, I wove the willow switches – it took three to complete one run – up higher. They didn’t want to bend around the verticals until I got to the skinniest tips, and would instead push them to one side or the other, if it was just one run of the willow switches. Once the first three runs were done, I used a scrap piece of board to hammer them down, little by little, to the base.
I kept that pattern up, but still had problems with the willow switches basically being stronger than the vertical supports. I ended up snapping one of the verticals after several passes. It didn’t break off completely, though. I was able to find a strong and straight piece of willow harvested last time and drive it into the space, alongside the vertical that snapped.
Some time later, another vertical snapped right off. This time, the piece of willow I found to add into the space had to be trimmed flat on one side to be able to fit alongside the remains of the broken vertical.
It took some doing, but I eventually figured out how to force the wattles to bend around the verticals as I went along. Unfortunately, that’s when the wattles started snapping, too!
In the end, I was able to get about a dozen runs woven through the verticals, sometimes having to get creative with shorter pieces to make up for not quite being able to reach the ends.
If you scroll through the slide show above, you’ll be able to see a picture I took from above the wattle weave, where some switches bent to the point of breaking, while others were just running straight through!
I don’t need to make the wattle weave on this side any taller. I had to stop at this point and head in, and will continue tomorrow, which is basically to tidy things up. At each end, the wattles will be trimmed evenly, and the shorter verticals will be trimmed to just above the wattles. The original, taller verticals will be left long. As they match the verticals on the other side, they will be left tall so that, should this bed ever need to be covered with netting or something, the taller verticals will be available to attach support hoops to.
Aside from the tidying up, this side of the new wattle weave bed is done. For all the pain in the butt it was, it looks much nicer than the other side. I’m not sure how those pieces that snapped during weaving will hold out, but on this side, it’s not going to be holding soil.
The ends, of course, can be woven in with any short pieces we’ve got; there are only three supports to weave around.
It’s the other long side that is going to be more of a challenge. I need to find more materials long enough to weave around those widely spaced vertical posts.
So, my conclusions on how this is going.
Obviously, on the inside, the posts are two far apart. On the retaining wall side, they’re too close together for the base thickness of wattles I was weaving, even though they are MUCH thinner than what I had for the other side. This is where it would be handy to have basket willow instead of the varieties we’ve got. Side note: if you noticed that some of the willow looked green, while others looked more yellow, that’s because they came from different trees that seem to be different varieties of willow.
With the closer spacing, the biggest advantage is that there are fewer gaps between the wattles. Which means they’ll hold soil in place better. What I have now on the other side has gaps large enough that I will have to line the inside with something to keep the soil in. With the L shaped bed, I had cardboard at the bottom of the bed that was wide enough to go partially up the sides. The rest of the height was lined with grass clippings. The soil in this bed has already been amended, so there’s no lining the bottom with cardboard again. I will probably just use cardboard along the inside.
I’m seriously considering removing the weaving I’ve done so far on the inside of the bed, and adding another vertical between each of the ones currently in place. I don’t know that I’d be able to reuse the maple wattles, though. If I had something long enough for them that could hold water, I would soak them for a day or two, to make them more flexible, but I’ve got nothing like that. It might be worth sacrificing the maple wattles to get a better and tighter weave. If I did do that, some of them would be used to make the additional vertical posts.
I’ve been eyeballing the trees in the spruce grove, and I might be able to harvest some poplar to use for weaving.
It’s a good thing I have time to figure it out. It won’t be used until it’s needed for next year’s garden, which might include getting winter sown this fall. As long as it gets done before the ground starts to freeze, that will be fine.
I really like the wattle weave beds, but gosh it’s hard to get enough materials for them. They use so much more than you’d think, and it’s surprisingly hard to find material that is the right combination of long, straight and flexible.
In the end, though, I think it’s worth it.
It is another reason for us to get basket willow, though! 😄
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 