First sunny day for weeks!

It has been dry all day.
This morning I took all the failed pots from the cold frame.
There are still a good amount of plants remaining, except for the Kale so that will be replaced from my resowings which are coming along. Always sow and pot on more than you are going to use because the slugs and weather will soon deplete them .

I kept my fingers crossed for a dry afternoon as the lawn desperately needed cutting.
Our lawn is very big, around 45 feet wide and maybe 90 feet long.
Anyway I got it all cut and composted.
The old strimmer tidied up the edges.

Then I fiddled about with a flymo strimmer that we had inherited from OH's dad and got that working again.
It can flip around to edge the lawn apparently but I had had enough grass cutting for one day so that will have to wait.

No veg garden work today as I was too busy with the lawn.
It was about 12.30 when I started and 4pm when I finished.

Molokhia

We have  Molokhia growing in our garden.
We have always had it but I have only just discovered that it is edible.
Another name for it is Jews Mallow.
It is a bush and gets little yellow pom pom flowers in the spring.

Anyway having discovered its edibility, I picked a good bunch and we had it with rice,chicken,mushrooms and onions for tea yesterday.
It was yummy.
OH who didn't know it was an new experiment , said tea tasted very 'clean' today.
That IS a compliment LOL

Finally Pics of my Jalo Gardener Bracket !

We have had rain for days and days.
Today I actually got out into the garden with my phone which has a camera on it.

I got some digging done with the Trusty Azada.


The junk lying on the ground  is all the stuff I have got covering the 'cleared but not working on at the moment' earth.
The blue thing at the far end,is the old car cover thing that was left here when we moved in 24 years ago.
It is thick plastic and quite heavy.
From there on,is all weeds and trees.


It was quite cloddy but I pesevered.
This more ploughed bit is hopefully going to be for the beans.
The bit of wooden fence was chucked into the garden by a neighbour in the houses along the bottom behind a 6ft fence. I have it for walking across the mud at the moment.

Next I got the new Toy (A Jalo with cultivating teeth/Tines YAY) and gave that a try.
I was looking on Ebay for the tines for my other Jalo and found this .
Often you will see either Jalo or planet junior hoes with various tools very cheaply because they are collection only but I was lucky with this one as the owner had offered delivery too.

The last one I saw with many tools, went for about £90 and there is one up there today with about 5 days to go, that will sell very well despite being collection only I think, as it has every tool that Jalo produced  apart from a seeder.

This one was £27 . I thought that was a bargain because 3 Tines from America (only place selling them new) is about £53. I paid £ 15 for the delivery and it came in 2 days so that was very good value and far cheaper than driving half way across the country to collect it.

The Tines are in very good nick with only light surface rusting which was easily removed with a light rub down and the handle of the machine could really do with a rub down and paint just to smarten it up.




The teeth work well and go quite deeply after the Azada has broken the ground.
I have 5 teeth or tines for it but have only got 3 on it in the 2nd picture as it is so muddy today.
Then I changed the teeth to the plough fitting (which I bought on Ebay a few weeks back for £12 delivered) and ploughed for a while.
I forgot to get a picture of the plough .

Last of all, I got the other Jalo out of the shed to take some pictures of the new bracket that I made last week.



My Bracket made from a  cut down  Satellite dish bracket .

I made this because you don't often see single tools for sale with delivery for the Jalo.
You have to look for weeks and weeks before one turns up and then of
course you must bid for it.
That can push the price up too far.

We have a few wolf multichange tools that we bought before we moved here and I have one or two newer ones ,they are the type that all fit into one handle ,so the bracket has furnished me with all the other tools I might want for my wheel hoe.

The wolf tool handles slide into the rectangular tubing,with a small slither of rubber just to make it a firm fit.
Then just do up the bolt.

It works perfectly and I can fit the wolf tools into the bracket and have it set to any angle along one axis ,so that it can be for deep or shallow use.
That is massively improved on my first bracket which was just a tab to hold the wolf handle steady against the frame.
The first attempt worked perfectly too but I had no depth control except that of lowering or raising the handle angle by holding it differently which was awkward.

The Bracket simply unbolts from the Jalo if I want to use it without.
No drilling or cutting on the trusty old tool.
 

These machines really help with a vegetable garden ,especially if you are tackling the work single handed.. They take a lot of the slog out of the work.
I think it is because you are pushing and pulling like you do with a mower but you are not having to also take the weight of the tool. Even the wolf tools are easier because you have two hands to do the propelling rather than one.

shredding and ploughing

OH cut next doors and our hedge .
It is ours but he has to go next door to do the other side.
There was a lot of debris.

Luckily,we have a new toy.
It is a shredder.
We had one once before that we were given by someone on Freecyle but that one did tend to cut out at the least provocation so after a while we passed it on to someone else.

This one is a Bosch and is much much better.
It handled almost all the branches from the hedge and some of the old plum tree remains.
Some bits were as thick as a broom handle and it had no problem making them into little bits.
Then I had rather a lot of mulch to distribute and so , the fruit beds were added to.

I have also been busy working on my Wheel Hoe.
I wanted to make an adapter so that I could use wolf tools on it and it took all weekend of fiddling.
I did make one a couple of weeks ago but it was rather basic,comprising of a tab to hold the wolf handle still whilst bolted to the hoe frame.
This new bracket is able to be adjusted for depth and angle and is much stronger.
I got the parts out of the dustbin.
OH had thrown away a broken satellite dish that we found lying in the road but the recycling bin men wouldn't take it as it is the wrong kind of thing to put in our recycle bin.
I fished it out and saw a new use for it.
The dremel came into its own again as it was the only thing that would cut holes in the thick metal.

All we need now is for it to stop raining long enough for me to get some use of it.

I may even get some pictures up later in the week. No chance today due to the rain .

Books


I am reading 'A hat full of sky'.

I cant decide as yet if it is a saying of the 'Nac Mac Freegle' (the wee free men)
or if it is referring to a vacant space where your brain ought to be.

Grinding and Blending

The boys went to Gillingham today in the car to get a post hole digger.
OH reserved it online before they left but when they arrived, it had vanished from the store so they went elsewhere and found one instead.
So much for reserve and pick up!

The garden being very long, we have been in need of a new fence or any fence for a long time.
Now we have new neighbours, it's time to start fencing it properly.
Our old neighbour didn't mind that it was not fenced and I don't think the new one does either as it is at the bottom end beyond a lot of trees etc but we have always said we would fence it properly one day.
We went down to look yesterday and discovered that the fence along the path (right of way rat-run leading to a council estate one end and a field the other) was demolished,so all the more reason to get fencing underway.

While they were gone, I used my grinder to powder some rice and some lentils for cooking.
They make excellent thickeners for soups and stews.
Then I got out the blender and made Peanut butter using two small packets of salted peanuts and 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil.It fills a 1lb jar and will last several weeks.
I like it after exercising as it seems to stave off any lack of energy surges .

I have a self assessment request from the IRS which is odd as I haven't been employed at all this year.
Trying to get through to HMRC on the phone is as usual a Joke.
They must meet with an awful lot of frustration and irritation on the phone lines mostly due to their constant revolving of musak and the line 'thank you for ringing HMRC,an advisor will speak to you shortly'  which are alright for the first minute but after 10 minutes have the listener wanting to fling the phone across the room.

My first attempt took me through 3 menus before the revolving torture, my second attempt was the 3 menus and then the ' line is unavailable' tone. I will try again tomorrow when hopefully I will have more luck.

UPDATE

I did finally get through to HMRC  and the man at the other end of the phone line, decided after I had explained about the circumstances , that there was no need for me to fill in a self assessment form.
Apparently they will write to tell me not to do so...
As yet ( April 26th ),they haven't written at all ..

Pictures of the garden

I thought it was about time I got the camera into commission once again.
So here it what I have been up to these hols.

Cherry Tomatoes just coming up,they are a variety called cherry Bell that I haven't tried before.

The cold frame with a make-shift cover

5 rows of potatoes and beyond that you can see the onion beds.

Cherry blossom on the right.

The fruit bed is beyond the onion beds.

The bent over green frames are the tops of the old plastic greenhouses,now used as supports for netting to keep the birds and foxes off the strawberries.

Runner Beans ,Scarlet Emperor (I potted these on yesterday)

Rainwater in Gallon cans ready for watering.

Carrots in loo roll tubes. I have a second lot started and will add to them every 2 or 3 weeks.

I didn't get a picture of the inside of the cold frame which is filled to bursting, as it was raining and I didn't want to get the camera any wetter.

Yesterday after lunch,the postie brought my new toy which is a plough tool for my wheel Hoe.

I found it on Ebay and managed rather jammily to get it for £12.50 delivered.

I have been using the hoe a bit more this year so I spent quite a long time a few days ago,making a bracket for it using the Dremel and some Aluminium from an old Apple Mac case,fashioning  an adaptor for Wolfe tools so they could be used on the hoe.

I managed to make one that would fit all the ends and so all that is needed is to slot the end in and do up a bolt. This works well with the cultivator end and the tiller with the oscilating hoe on and has made it much quicker working the soil. The flatter hoe is unfortunately not angled and so wont really be useful as a wheel hoe attachment .

The whole potato bed was cultivated in about 1 hour from bare earth and then ploughed to take the spuds in about 15 minutes.

Then it was a slower job to bend over and plant all the potatoes in the furroughs.

Last of all ,a swoosh along each furrough and the spuds were covered again.

It was raining by the time the spuds were laying in the earth and so they got a free watering to get them going.

I'll try to get some pictures up of the wheel hoe and its new tools once it is a dry day again. Today is overcast and it has rained and I haven't cleaned off the mud caked plough tool due to the rain becoming rather heavy and me being in it .

Muck spreading

Well mulch spreading really !
I took a large amount of rotted grass clippings and daubed them all over the fruit part of the veg garden.
My strawberries stand out now and the Rhubarb looks a bit more lively.

My neighbour inadvertently mentioned how well my Raspberries do considering I pretty much ignore them once they have finished fruiting.
It's true *Shrug*. They rarely get cut down after they are finished.
The new canes just grow and the old ones die and snap off.
No point fussing about trying to 'help' them, they know what they are doing.

I bought two full 2.5 kg bags of very small potatoes on Sunday. They were reduced to 76p and I am guessing it was because they are unwashed and golf ball sized.
No-one wants to fuss about cleaning such small veg.
I wont. They are going to be planted as they are ideal as seed potatoes.
This enterprise will happen next week I think once I am finished preparing their resting place.
Hopefully ,all those potatoes will see us through the year from about July onwards.

Cheap grub

Yesterday we had fish pie made with fish and chip shop scraps(boneless cod bits),left over bread made into crumbs and some reduced cheese blended in.

Todays dinner was home made fish and chips with the better bits from the fish and chip shops bag of scraps.
The bag costs £1 and does 2 meals for 3 people.
The chips are almost always home made.
I have a metal chip cutter bought in a boot fair for 50p years ago.
I never bother peeling potatoes,the skin is good for you.
I use a basic deep fat fryer, the kind you sit on the hob and watch till you see the smoke rising.

It really doesn't take very long (25 minutes ?)and no having to go out and get them.