Backyard Nursery Tools of the Trade.

Over the winter I spent some time building/inventing a few things that I needed to make the nursery run smoother and my life easier.  Some of these are interesting, some are kind of boring, but here they are.

Mike’s Legless potting bench now has legs.

Originally this was my “Famous Legless Potting Bench” but once I bought a frontend loader it was no longer stable enough to just dump a whole bucket of soil on so I added legs and made it mobile.  The simple plans for building the bench are here.  It’s one sheet of plywood.

So over the winter I broke out the welder and made an axle with two rubber tires that we can slide under the potting bench to easily move it from place to place as needed.  You have to watch the movie to see it in action!

Homemade garden cart for moving small nursery plants.

The next thing that I invented was a little garden cart for hauling around our $4.97 plants.  I wanted it to be light weight so I just used 3/4″ plywood, some two by fours then I put metal rods in the corners, welded a washer on top of the rod to keep the chicken wire from slipping up.  The chicken wire keeps the plants from bouncing out and it allows us to stack plants two high in the cart.

Mike McGroarty’s Heavy Object Mover.

This is simple and simply genius if I must say so myself.  A piece of plywood, two heavy duty draw hooks and a piece of cable.  You have to watch the movie to see how great this thing works for moving heavy objects.  I really built it to move my Troybilt tiller around so I don’t have to walk behind it at a snails pace.

Now my original plan was to put an axle with two wheels in the front so it wouldn’t dig into the ground.  But before I could finish the job I suddenly needed it to move some railroad ties so I figured I’d give it a try without the wheels.  Worked perfectly!  Those ties slid around like they were on butter.  Watch the movie!

Japanese maples for sale at Mike’s Plant Farm in Perry, Ohio

This is what I was using the railroad ties for.  I put them on edge, along the edge of my sunken container area, then laid down black plastic, and placed all of the balled Japanese maples that we have for sale on the plastic and covered the root balls with leaves.  The plastic is to keep the roots from the balls from rooting back into the ground.  The burlap on the trees is actually a poly burlap so it won’t rot.  The trees should be perfectly happy there for as long as it takes to sell them.  Come winter we’ll just add more leaves.

Japanese maple sales area.

Adirondack chairs at Mike’s Plant Farm in Perry, Ohio

My last project was to make some Adirondack chairs.  I wanted these for inside the Donkey Pen so I made them out of untreated wood since the Donkeys eat most everything they see.  But I haven’t put them in the pen yet because I’m not sure how long they’ll hold up to Donkey Shenanigans. 

Don’t ask for the plans, I didn’t really have any.  I just printed out a photo from the Internet and started sawing and screwing pieces together.  I pretty much guessed at the curve for the seat and when I put the backs on I only put one bolt in then sat in the chair to get an angle that was comfortable the added the second bolt to hold the backs up.

They turned out okay.  Not perfect, but okay.  Questions or comments post them below.