Thursday I cut the weed membrane roll into a number of 2.5m lengths. Today ended up being the hottest August day in 17 years reaching 36.4C.
I knew the sun and heat was coming so I decided to get out in the garden early to work in the shade before the sun came around the side of the house and it gets way too hot. The objective was to cut as many blank 2.4m x 1.2m bed covering membrane sheets as possible for the new beds before the sun worked it's way down the garden and onto the patio.
Scaffold board set up on the arms of the bench, extension lead pugged into the outside utility store and the soldering iron primed and ready, I marked out the 1.2m width on the sheet with a silver paint pen and proceeded to cut along the length of the membrane laying on the board. You have to unstick or pull the edges off the board in order to move the whole sheet up as the board is only around 1.8m long.
Having now cut the sheet along the 1.2m line you are left with a 0.8m off cut. These will be used for paths and for the couple of 0.6m wide beds I've put in at the plot 1 Plot 1A boundary.
The first cut is marked with the silver paint pen along a line of the weave you can see that the weave is already starting to fray along the edge and become undone.
The soldering iron cuts and welds the edges so they don't fray and full apart.
There is something deeply satisfying about pulling the membrane off the timber it has stuck too. Once in a while there may be a small section that needs to be cut again with the soldering iron but only if you have not made sure the two sides either side of the cut are really de-bonded.
Yes I should have taken a photo before I cut it up for lunch for inclusion in a couple of BLT Sandwich but the Gigantimo tomato was nice, red and it just had to be harvested and put in sandwiches for the wife and I. It was very tasty and I will be growing them again next year.
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