Perfect Garden Path Tips
What To Do When You Dig And Discover Mushy
Ground
Sometimes when you dig down in preparation for laying the substrate
for your garden path, you
find that the ground is very soft.
The good news is, you don’t have to keep digging to find hard
ground. If you’ve come across
mushy or peaty, wet ground, just use one 60 kg. bag of Portland
Cement to every sq. yard or
meter of surface.
Spread the dry Portland Cement evenly over the surface, and rototill
it 6-8” into the soil.
Smooth the surface as desired. Let it set up overnight. (No wetting
required.)
And, by the way, you don’t have to worry about whether you’re
measuring with yards or meters
– the proportion doesn’t really have a set ratio, because every
individual’s garden soil varies.
This is just a good general and generic guide to go by.
However, you do need to mix your Portland Cement evenly into the
soil. Using a Rototiller
(which you can rent at your local Home Improvement or rental store,
if you don’t have one) is
the most effective way to do it.
A Key Point About The Grade
Your first excavation needs to slope away from the house – and it
should be at least a 3” slope.
It also needs to be the exact replica of your ultimate finished
surface.
You do this with stakes and strings. (Garden stakes, construction
stakes, bits of wood –
whatever works for you to peg into the ground. Don’t get hung up on
details, but do observe the
basic principles.)
Making A 90° Angle: The “3-4-5” Rule
When you want to make a 90° angle with only a flat surface for a
reference point (such as the
wall of a house, or the sidewalk), use the “3-4-5” rule.
Measure out 2 marks, at 4” (or feet, meters, yards – any other
multiple of 4”) along the straight
edge of the road, wall or whatever your reference point is. (Make
sure your reference point is
straight.)
Measure yourself out 3 units from one of those marks.
If the distance between your new mark at 3” and the other end of
that 4” mark is 5”, you are at
exactly a 90° angle.
To Check If Two Objects Are Level To Each Other
You’ve decided to make a path, put in a shed, build the base for a
gazebo, or some other project
where you’d like it to be level with another large object (like your
house). You’d like to check
if your two objects dead level, but they are really far apart. They
just don’t make a tape
measure big enough.
Well, apart from the fact they probably do, there’s a simple way to
get around this...
1. Get some garden hose, and insert a smaller piece of clear garden
hose at each end.
2. Tip up both ends vertically: one near the reference point, and
one near the point you’re
wondering about.
3. Fill the hose with water so that the water rises visibly in the
vertical clear hose at each
end.
4. Those 2 water levels will be perfectly level. Make your marks
accordingly.
Since two garden hose ends are involved, and you need to keep them
both upright, it’s a good
idea to have one or more helper.
If you have to do this alone, simply tie one of the vertical clear
hose ends onto a stake.
I hope these tips have helped further to de-mystify the process of
making a perfect Garden Path.
About the Author: D. Benjamin is the owner of
iapsales.com LLC - a family business specializing in HVAC products. We
are distributors of
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electric tankless water heaters,
bathroom heaters,
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