Jackie Frobese

I had all the same questions as you. In my case the bulbs were small because a spring planted.

In regards to the "babies"; according to garlicstore.com "You can also opt to plant the smaller cloves, which grow outside the bulb, called corms. When planted, corms produce a non-flowering plant in the first year with a single large clove. In the second year, the clove will begin to separate into multiple cloves."

As for why your bulbs were small, no idea. Maybe have a soil test if its a new bed?

Here's a series of pictures showing the fall mulching ...

I build my beds using culled/reclaimed lumber. Each one was first lined with cardboard then filled with whatever organic matter I could get my hands on including sticks, logs, leaves, grass clippings, pine duff, horse manure, aged chicken manure, rabbit manure/bedding, hay, home compost, and seaweed. I also included any soil that may have been dug up from projects elsewhere on the property when it was available.

I build the beds 2 each year, rather than all at once making it easier to get enough to fill them. And continue to add a heavy mulching to top them off each year. I heap this mulching at leas 6 inches over the top of the sides as filling the bed with only organic materials leads to significant shrinkage of the soil level each year.

Some of the beds are lined with hardware cloth (wire mesh) underneath to keep rodents from digging up into the beds. I found this to be most important in my strawberry beds (which are also covered with bird-netting over top).

Whenever I can get my hands on wood chips I use them (with cardboard underneath) to line the paths in between so I don't have to mow or weed between the beds. Every few years I dig the composted (now rich soil) woodchips into the beds and bring in new wood chips for the paths. This has the added benefit of being a great winecap mushroom growing area. with new "food" for the winecaps each time I renew the chips.

In another area of the yard I created an herb spiral containing all of my perennial herbs. I used whatever rocks I had at hand. For this I had an old garden bed, where the herbs used to be, that I used the soil from. I also layered in my home compost. You can see in the pictures that I then layered cardboard and shredded leaf mulch north of my herb spiral to make a space for a green bean tipi.

Amy Gsrv Mn wrote:How much does a liner weigh?

I assume you mean to ask how much the water inside weighs when the tote is full? The tote carries about 275 gallons, so that's about 2290 pounds.

The plastic tote itself is relatively light, I can pick it up myself (very awkward to lift because of size) it can't be more than 10 pounds.

The tote was not destroyed I managed to catch the problem in time and empty it.

I put it free on the side of the road after this, as I was given 3 new totes with the cages (I love free things)!! and BONUS I got to meet a super cool neighbor when she stopped to take the old tote from the side of the road... just bought some freshly skinned/cleaned rabbits from her last week.

I wonder what they are resenting?

It was a fail in the end…

About 6 weeks after the tote was filled the screws began pulling free and/or snapping off.

The severity of the fail is not well seen with a quick glimpse at these pictures, but if you take your time to look closely, there are at least a dozen crews that have given out, the boards are pulling away completely at spots, and the tote itself is collapsing at the bottom.

If any one succeeds at building a cage I’d love to see it. I did not succeed.

Here it is full and holding. I’d say this framework is the minimum one could get away with. If you are thinking of duplicating I recommend adding more support. Larger pieces of wood and more of them.

Once the tote reached 2/3 full (about 200 gallons) the whole thing looked ready to fail. Several screws were pulled out, the plastic at the bottom was bulging. I decided to empty it so I could reinforce more. I’ll post pictures once the reinforcing is complete.

It’s raining… you can see my tote is about half full now. The bottom is definitely bulging on all sides. The lowest support on the front where the spigot is has started bowing. So far it’s all holding. I make a major miscalculation by failing to screw the center post on the house side into the pallet. You can see in the last picture it has pulled several inches away from the pallet. I failed to place the crew because of inaccessibility. I do t have a tractor to be able to move the whole setup myself so I built it in place😫☺️. Let’s just hope and pray it won’t be a fatal error.

The cross members on the front side are thicker, wider, and I used longer screws. Interestingly I did not intentionally put those ones on the "outside" of the corner posts. That's just how the whole assembly fit with the pallet below.

I do see what you all mean about the fact that they are outside, being a potential weak point. Since I can't easily move them inside, I think I'll add  vertical straps of wood over the ends, and screw them into the corner posts to reinforce the whole side.

Ill be picking up a flexible downspout today so I can begin collecting water.

As I was building this I had the top lid off with a piece of screen over the opening. I kept smelling what reminded me of dawn dish soap. I think there may be some soap residue inside the tank. I recall my neighbor (who purchased the tank, and is only using the cage for firewood) saying something about the tank being rinsed out and cleaned by the seller. Although this soap residue isn't optimal, given the mild nature of the scent I'm not thinking it'll be a real problem. I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts about that.