Around 10:15 am, my long awaited Scenery Solutions Frame-it-all 8x8x12 Raised Bed Garden Kit from Costco finally arrived. It came in four 4 foot long boxes. The hardest part of this job is screwing the joints to the planks and levelling the ground. The handy video I watched at the Scenery Solutions website made it seem so easy.
Well now, I take a look at the video again. Ha. They start the video with the joint pre-screwed onto the planks! Cheaters! Liars! For the life of me, I can't figure out why they didn't pre-drill the holes in the planks. Some of my planks are misaligned by 1-2 mm. I hope I don't see a lot of dirt creeping through the imperfections.
Tiny paper labels on the planks state that the material contains "less than 1% formaldehyde." Eeek. Didn't even know it had any formaldehyde at all. Maybe I should let it off gas a bit before I fill it with soil. These babies were backordered, which explains the big wait for the kit, so they would likely be fresh off the factory presses.
The planks are darker than I expected, and clearly look plastic, despite the faux wood texturing. They are difficult to drill through. I tried handscrewing to start the drilling before switching to my power drill, but eventually found that I needed to stand over the joint, laying it on the ground, and use brute force downward into the screw to make the drilling faster.
I laid the first 5.5 inch layer of planks on the ground to see whether I need to level the ground. It looks not too bad, but I was just sort of hoping that the ground would be level and I wouldn't have to do anything, because I didn't get any tools to help me with levelling.
Oh my... I have just received delivery of my soil/vermiculite/peat moss order and the vermiculite is... fine grade. I cringed as I sent the fine vermiculite bags back, knowing that this means another delay in getting my garden ready. The garden centre will be speaking to their supplier on Monday to special order the coarse or medium grade vermiculite for me. Or at least that's what they said.
So back to sourcing vermiculite again. Endless Google searches, and now finally I turn to Metacrawler. Still nothing. Looking at a website about Samaurai Gerberas leads me to a recipe mix including coarse vermiculite. I call to ask where they get their coarse vermiculite. The kind lady points me to Sumas Grow Media in Chilliwack and West Creek Farms in Langley. I call Langley and their office is already closed at 4:30 pm on Friday.
Monday now. Coarse vermiculite is not available here, as far as I can tell. West Creek Farms has only medium and fine grade. David Hunter has advised that they only have medium and fine. I am going with the medium, at $30 a bag. West Creek Farms sells the medium for $20 a bag but they are located in Fort Langley and I am not prepared to drive to save $40 for 4 bags, or to pick them up in Burnaby. David Hunter will receive my special order on Friday and will deliver them after. Sigh. Another week to wait before I can put in the soil.
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