Your Questions About Gardening

GardenersCardiff answers:

If you can find a construction site nearby, ask them for cut-offs from the lumber and plywood they’re using. Many contractors will be happy to see this material picked up for use elsewhere ( it saves them some of the cost of disposing it somewhere, for one thing).

You can also get wood from old pallets, if you can get them home or tear them apart where they are.

A neat and potentially useful project would be to build 2 saw horses from these scraps.

You can find a number of How-tos at Instructables.com about building saw horses:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Strong-Light-Quick-Build-Sawhorse/

http://www.instructables.com/id/The-ultimate-heavy-duty-stackable-bullet-proof/

And
http://www.instructables.com/id/Sawhorse-made-from-pallets/

These will give you some practice drilling pilot holes and driving screws, if nothing else.

If you have a garden, you can make a wooden ladder trellis like the one shown here:
http://r24.imgfast.net/users/2412/12/27/03/album/squash15.jpg

To get some practice drilling holes, instead of screwing on the rungs shown in the above photo, mark out evenly spaced lines on the 2×4 lumber, drill 3/4″ holes a the center of the board, then cut a bunch of 3/4″ dowels to length and glue the thing together. Keep in mind this won’t take any serious weight, especially as the trellis ages, so don’t use it for a ladder.

GardenersCardiff answers:

Unlike today, during the great depression most of the USA was still rural. Everyone planted big gardens and grew most of their food, and canned as much as they could. Some, if they had enough land, or had use of borrowed land planted their own wheat for flower. Most had chickens, pigs and turkeys and maybe even a milk cow or two. They made their own butter. They sold any excess produce or eggs or milk to the local grocery store, generally the only one in town. They used the barter system a lot. There was very little money around but most country folk didn’t need very much. For instance painting the mechanics house for him to fix the car and payed a lot of bills with produce. The doctor and dentist ofter received bushels of potatoes or apples or even a pig for treating members of the family. They made their own soap and candles. Very little was thrown away until it was completely worn out. Most did all their own repair work around the house. There were a lot more horse or mule drawn wagons by four or five times than cars.

GardenersCardiff answers:

Go to your Lowes or HD, and in the same isle as the water sealant for your deck, is a deck cleaning solution. It is easiest to apply by a garden sprayer, let it soak/work for 15-20 min, this solution is breaking down the old stain, which will wash off with the power washer, but dont get the nozzle to close or you will forever be getting slivers fom the deck.
Allow the deck to dry for 24 hours at which time you can re-stain the deck, wait another 24 hours, and you should also put a water sealant on , the easiest way that I have found to apply Stains and Sealants is by using a garden sprayer, just make sure you cover anything you dont want stained, but it will cut the time required down to nothing compared to using a brush