Wood Lath ! $$$

Thanks Patch. Glad to know I am not the only one out there. I wish I had used the dumb woman card and said I didn't understand their pricing and just refused to buy it. Oh well, ya live and ya learn. Everytime I look at my bed I will comment on my bee-yoo-tee-ful and expensive grid system. I probably should paint it to make it last longer.

my beds that my hubby build last year, are too small to put lath...i used the lath in the new 4x4 i built. But for the more narrow container, i used my hubby's bright pink string he uses for laying things out in the house. Let me tell you..that photographs great!!! As soon as i get my computer and camera to play well together, i'll post pics of my hot pink string.

I use cloths line rope because I have it lol..I put an eye screw thingy (yup techy terminology! ) Like you use for latches, on the measurement marks. I run the line through and knot at each end. It is easy to do and I don't have to keep putting nails in lol...I was going to take the line off last fall...but It just didn't look like my garden without the grid

I don't think it is lathe if it came in a 14ft length... You most likely had a piece of trim.

Ahort, it was labeled wood lath .72

I was planning on using string for my very first SFG and tying it off to thumb tacks on each end...I am all about the cheap...er em...inexpensive alternatives

I used finish nails to mark the foot on the box boards, ran the string grid and capped the nails with slices of wine cork, lest I have one dig into my knee when I'm not paying attention.

Great idea....because as sure as SFG works I would put a nail or Tack in my knee the first day

cachecrashers4 wrote:We had a customer in the store the other day asking if she could take the plastic straps that come around our lifts of lumber for her SFG. I thought that was a very creative idea.

Howdy:

This is my second season using the plastic straps. Some of the straps are woven nylon or something similar that made great trellis webbing. Most of the woven tie straps are white - some of a different color and really stand out.

God Bless, Ward and Mary.

Agreed the lath is good for photography and a SFG without some grid does not look finished and proper. Lath type wood stuff will break, rot, be hard to work with and more expense than I think necessary. So my thought is some orange hay baler twine but around my place several larger birds love to scavenge string type stuff for nesting material. i don't want them tugging away at my grid and messing up my seedlings. They love to follow me around my regular garden and pull plant markers just to upset me I think. In the past whenever I left my row planting marker string in place there was a tug of war started over the string. So I am still in a quandary over how to become grid marker compliant. Help!

A really inexpensive option would be to consider venetian blind slats.
At GoodWill or Habitat for Humanity Restore or a similar place, you can purchase a set, remove the strings and cut into 4 foot lengths. Just remember they are very light, so you will need to secure them to your box or at least into your Mel's Mix.

That plastic strap idea is very interesting! I may have to look into that.

Just be careful if you're using the imported vinyl mini-blinds. I had remembered hearing when my kids were small that they contained lead, and I just googled and saw this article from 2010, seems they still might - according to the article, all the imported mini-blinds use lead. I don't know the source of this article, but you might want to research about it. Just a heads-up.

http://www.civilrights.com/defective-products/lead-in-vinyl-miniblinds

I used lath for one garden and some unused weed-eater line for the others...I already prefer the nylon line. I think string might degrade too quickly in the elements but I'm not sure.

Last year I used bright green yarn for my grids. This year I'm using red! I tie them to eyes, which still hurt when you put your hand on them, but they don't draw blood.

You must have gotten something else. I don't believe lath comes in longer pieces than 4', or at least not at our Lowe's. We live in an 1883 house and have come to know quite a bit about lath over the years. Ours is sold in the rougher pine section in bundles of various sizes for only a few dollars.

That really stinks that you had to pay so much!

I just read back through, and the plastic strips off the lumber made me think of something. When DH was working on plumbing, he used a white flexible plastic strip that had screw holes to hold up pipes. That would be perfect. It's about 1/2" wide.

I like the look of lath but had always thought it might be difficult to get your hand underneath or around if you had to, mix in compost, or harvest root crops, and with lath being wider, it would take up more space. I think I'll give the white plastic plumbing strips a try. It would also be easy to use the little screws to attach it to the box.

My house is 1879 so I too am well acquainted with lath and plaster having removed tons of it. Have never seen actual lath longer that 4' myself. You could rip any length board on a table saw to achieve a lath at whatever length needed. "Lath" is an all around hassle to me besides the painting required and cost then it is brittle too. No way i'm just not that fancy and don't have a garden staff to deal with it. LaFee had the best idea for me yet using plastic coated clothes line for durability and flexibility. My thought was binder twine from a farm store. Actually some kind farmer left 2 end of life spools of it beside a local recycle bin, Thank you kind sir. It has lasted me a few years and is what is used for my pole bean setup in my regular garden and a million other uses too. Basically whatever you can scrounge up probably will be fine. Besides officially making it a SFG It does add a nice accent to the SFG.

You all have given me great ideas. I'm not sure what I'll finally use.

But as far as the lath, I was thinking of making it removable for when I needed to add more compost or stir things around. Make the grid permanent, but just lay it on top of the box or something like that.

But now I'm leaning towards twine. I like the clothesline idea, but I think it might be easier to tack in the twine. String seems like it would stretch and deteriorate. But I'd want a thick enough twine so I could see it. Maybe an orange.

Anyway, thanks for the ideas.

if you don't attach your grid somehow, a big wind or a curious critter will take it off.

You could glue the lath grid together and attach it with 4-8 shorter screws, so you could unscrew it at the end of the season and store it if you wanted. I like hte idea of being able to remove it if you want to stir things around or add a layer of compost at the beginning of the season. I still havent decided what I want to use for the grid, but I'll have to soon.

I made a similar mistake. My grid material was marked .39 for 10 feet (or so i thought). turns out it was window trim and .39 per foot so it cost me 20 bucks. Newbie mistake #1.