My Edible Garden

I've been gardening for most of my life and have been a devoted fan of organic gardening the whole time. It just makes so much more sense to work in harmony with Mother Nature than to fight her. Besides which it is better for the planet and better for our bodies. Here you can see what I'm planting and harvesting, with gardening hints and resources thrown in for good measure.

BUILDING A HOOP COOP FROM CATTLE PANELS

4 cattle panels, 50" x 16' $19.99 each at TSC
So of course with all the chicks I've hatched this spring I really need separate pens to grow out the different age groups and pretty soon to be able to separate the sexes. Something easy to build, strong, predator proof. 

More hoop coops would be ideal. I priced out the difference between building one the way I did my brooder coop, based on a pvc pipe framework and one made with cattle panels. The cattle panels won hands down for cost. So off I went to Tractor Supply Company and bought four of them, 50 inches tall and 16 feet long.

I still had some 2x6 my friends gave me. Of course none were 16 feet long so I doubled them up until they were that long and gave them  two coats of exterior paint. (Ace special oops, $5 a gallon). I painted some of my tool handles while I was at it.

And worked a bit trying to level up the area I planned to put the new coop.

Then I drug the panels up and used heavy fence staples to fasten the panels to the 2x6s. 

Now I had a real dilemma. Ideally the panels should be inside the frame work, so that under tension they would not pop the staples loose. Had I used a single 2x6 on each side I might could have flipped it over myself. But with them doubled I was having a hard time. After waiting three days for help that never materialized I figured out a way to do it myself.


I used ratchet straps to start bending the panels over. Yup I know it's upside down right now...











I just kept tightening straps and taking up slack until I got to this point.









Then I drug the boards around to get to this point.










Some pushing and pulling and it's sort of in the right place.  The end boards painted and screwed into place.










It's *almost* level, slightly out of square and the end framing is started. Maybe I'll get to work on it some more next weekend.

1 comment:

  1. John MarkMay 23, 2014 at 10:20 PM

    I use the hog panels with 4x4 squares, still 4 x 16. I'm using them as lattice inserted into wood and galvanized tin fencing. When I lived in San Antonio, Gardenwille used to sell tomato cages very similar to yours, except the edge squares were cut in half and rounded into a circle and each panels circles were brought together with a 18 guage wire going down the center of the side circles to hold together.cattle panels I bought for of them and have had them for years and are still in great shape. They fold into one piece for storage.

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