markyscott
Imperial Masterpiece
66 degrees and sunny - low humidity. Fall days like these are wonderful in Houston. Many plants here will continue to grow well into December.
Our short dormant season is the period I use to make soil for repotting. Some of you routinely sieve your soil as part of this process - others don't. I always sieve and on a nice day like this with a hint of fall in the air, I start to think of the task ahead (even though it is still a couple of months away). Like many of you, I started with these:
This set of sieves I've had for over 20 years. I bought them when I was in the Sacramento Bonsai Club while I was at school at UC Davis. But as I've grown older, my trees have gotten bigger (probably a mistake there), and my collection has grown larger (definitely a mistake). In a heavy repotting year, I can go through 30 gallons of soil. Sieving 30 gallons of soil a scoop at a time is tedious backbreaking work. What was fine for a small collection of trees (a couple of gallons of soil a year) became a major headache with a larger collection. I figured that there has to be a better way. So about 10 years ago, I made these:
Or at least the predecessors of these. For those handy folks out there, it's a simple system and quite inexpensive to build. Most of the wood I've used is reclaimed - I think the sides came from pallets. Here's how it works:
The wood frames holding the wire screens are reinforced at the bottoms by 1x2s that have furniture casters screwed into their corners. The mesh frames are then placed on a second frame that sits on top of a wheelbarrow:
Because of the casters, the sieves can be rocked back and forth in the outer frame quite easily. I can sieve a 25# bag of soil at a time with this system (a full bag of akadama). That which used to be a full day exercise, I can now finish in an hour or so and I can do a better job with less back pain after I'm done.
Here are the plans:
It's important that the furniture casters on the mesh frame ride on top of the 2x2 rails on the wheelbarrow frame without rubbing the 1x4 sides, so test fit your parts before final assembly. Building these is a full day job for me, but I'm sure there are those of you who can power through this much more efficiently than I.
I use three mesh sizes with hole diameters of 3/8", 1/4", and 1/8" to make two soil grades discarding grains sizes less than 1/8" and greater than 3/8". *But you can substitute whatever hole diameter mesh that you prefer. *I purchased the wire mesh from the Bellville Wire Cloth Company (http://www.bwire.com/index.html). *They have everything you need for whatever soil sizes you prefer.
I hope some of you try it - there are those of you out there much handier than I and I look forward to seeing what changes you can envision to make them better. I'm ready for soil sieves rev 3 and I'm looking for ideas.
Scott
Our short dormant season is the period I use to make soil for repotting. Some of you routinely sieve your soil as part of this process - others don't. I always sieve and on a nice day like this with a hint of fall in the air, I start to think of the task ahead (even though it is still a couple of months away). Like many of you, I started with these:
This set of sieves I've had for over 20 years. I bought them when I was in the Sacramento Bonsai Club while I was at school at UC Davis. But as I've grown older, my trees have gotten bigger (probably a mistake there), and my collection has grown larger (definitely a mistake). In a heavy repotting year, I can go through 30 gallons of soil. Sieving 30 gallons of soil a scoop at a time is tedious backbreaking work. What was fine for a small collection of trees (a couple of gallons of soil a year) became a major headache with a larger collection. I figured that there has to be a better way. So about 10 years ago, I made these:
Or at least the predecessors of these. For those handy folks out there, it's a simple system and quite inexpensive to build. Most of the wood I've used is reclaimed - I think the sides came from pallets. Here's how it works:
The wood frames holding the wire screens are reinforced at the bottoms by 1x2s that have furniture casters screwed into their corners. The mesh frames are then placed on a second frame that sits on top of a wheelbarrow:
Because of the casters, the sieves can be rocked back and forth in the outer frame quite easily. I can sieve a 25# bag of soil at a time with this system (a full bag of akadama). That which used to be a full day exercise, I can now finish in an hour or so and I can do a better job with less back pain after I'm done.
Here are the plans:
It's important that the furniture casters on the mesh frame ride on top of the 2x2 rails on the wheelbarrow frame without rubbing the 1x4 sides, so test fit your parts before final assembly. Building these is a full day job for me, but I'm sure there are those of you who can power through this much more efficiently than I.
I use three mesh sizes with hole diameters of 3/8", 1/4", and 1/8" to make two soil grades discarding grains sizes less than 1/8" and greater than 3/8". *But you can substitute whatever hole diameter mesh that you prefer. *I purchased the wire mesh from the Bellville Wire Cloth Company (http://www.bwire.com/index.html). *They have everything you need for whatever soil sizes you prefer.
I hope some of you try it - there are those of you out there much handier than I and I look forward to seeing what changes you can envision to make them better. I'm ready for soil sieves rev 3 and I'm looking for ideas.
Scott
