Comfortable Bench For Working In The Garden

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Convenient bench for sowing, weeding and harvesting in the beds

I want to share a successful solution to a simple but very important question in the life of any gardener - how to build a bench for the convenience of working with the beds.

The story is as follows. Most of the work of women gardeners is related to the beds: sowing vegetables or flowers, thinning the seedlings, weeding the plantings, etc. etc. You can work in an inclined fashion, but in your youth and not for long, but you really want to do these works slowly, sitting on a comfortable bench. At first we used old metal breadbaskets for this, but in two seasons they rusted, and it was a little low to sit on them. Then they bought a plastic bench, but it also broke down in one season, and it was too tall.

The retractable folding chair cut deep into the ground and was too small. I had to make the chair myself. The model immediately turned out to be successful, and the whole season there was a struggle for its use. At the end of the season, my wife said, "This is my personal item and no one will use it except me." Since there is patriarchy in our family, we had to do the second. In the next season, the granddaughter “drove up like a fox”: “Granddaddy, you know how all these weeding are disgusting to the young, and if it’s uncomfortable to sit, then the love for the garden may completely disappear”.

And in order not to ruin the young talents, I had to give up the second one. By the last season, everyone was provided with comfortable chairs, but a familiar woman-gardener came and looked somehow strangely at the fact that we all were sitting comfortably on our benches in different parts of the site. Maybe I should have made another one?

But this is all a preface. Now the technology itself, or rather its features, which make the structure stable and comfortable (see Figure 1):

• two battens made of a 20-30 mm bar are attached to the side walls "D" and "E" (plywood 4-6 mm);
• the middle of the walls "D" - "E" and "B" - "C" are connected in the middle by a cross of the same bars (this is the main condition for stability);
• all parts are connected with self-tapping screws (screws and nails will have to be constantly tightened or knocked out);
• walls "D" and "E" differ by 3-5 cm from the walls "B" and "C". This adjusts the height of the seat and relieves the fatigue of the spine during prolonged work (turn the bench more often);
• it is better not to put side "A" (where the slot for transfer is) on the ground, since the ground hardly spills out; paint the bench in bright colors, as a result, they will be visible from a distance (guarantee that you will not leave it in the rain - plywood does not tolerate exposure to water);
• the dimensions are individual and depend on the height of the user and the width of the narrowest passage between the beds: for men - 40x26x22 cm (plywood 6 mm), for women - 38x24x20 cm (plywood 4 mm);
• if there is a problem with cutting a hole for transfer, then make wall “A” of two halves (see Figure 2).

The work, despite its apparent simplicity, requires a lot of painstaking work, but the result will pay off all efforts.