Mid-Atlantic Gardening: Hypertufa Party at Critter's June 23, 0 by critterologist

critterologist wrote:
Heya! We've had some recent chatter about doing hypertufa & concrete workshops as an excuse to get together... I figured I'd pick a date & get the ball rolling!

I'm thinking we could get together around 2 pm, Saturday June 23 (not the 24th, sorry for the error!). Thas should give us plenty of time to fool around with the hypertufa, have some dinner (I'll either make something ahead of time or we'll get a bunch of pizza), and whatnot. If this date isn't good for you, not to worry... hopefully our first concrete workshop won't be our last! LOL

Please post to let me know if you can come, so I can figure out materials... I'm pretty sure I've got enough peatmoss & perlite, but I want to be sure we have enough concrete mix on hand. I've got gloves & dust masks and a couple of small mixing troughs, so we're pretty well set.

I think it's probably best to start with a little planter of some sort (using a dollar store container or a box as a mold)... maybe we'll try a few toad houses also, using Joyanna's sand castle molds... we'll chat about what we want to do.

So I can keep track, here's who has mentioned being able to come:
Terri
Happy (maybe Darryl, maybe Lee)
Sally (maybe Mark)
Catbird
Holly & Ric + friend
Vicki
Donner
SSG
neighbors: Carol, Heather, possibly 6 more + 3 kids for dinner, Judy +2 kids, remember to check with Rhonda


OK... figuring up workshop costs... 2 bags of cement, which should be about $10 each, 3 parts peat & perlite, about another $10... a dozen mixing basins from the dollar store, 6 bags of sand, concrete additive or fibers probably another $10...

I think we're looking at about $7 apiece for the 12 of us; make it $10 if we mix up a second batch of dry mix to take home... there might be another dollar or two of "incidentals" in there, but I'm not too concerned, just want to get the main part of the materials covered.

notes for myself on what I need to get together:
gloves, yes, masks, yes, nitrile gloves (might need another box of these)
mixing/work buckets from the dollar store, maybe a few extra bowls or planters, yes
box tops, produce boxes from Costco, yes
extra box of black plastic garbage bags, yes
box of gallon zip-locs for extra dry mix, yes
thin foam "board" pieces for molds... think I have a small stash of these...
bamboo skewers for molds, checking depth, yes
peat moss, yes
perlite, yes
portland cement -- 4 bags, yes
concrete fortifier and/or nylon fibers STILL NEED TO GET THIS (although it's optional on smaller items)
at least 4 more bags of sand, yes
chicken wire, yes
wire snips (have one pair -- maybe somebody can bring another)


This message was edited Jun 21, 2012 9:44 PM