Blustery ,wet and weedy

Well I don't know where the time went!

Today is so windy that I haven't done anything in the garden.

I bought an automatic window opener for the greenhouse a couple of weeks ago.
It was getting hot in there very quickly each morning and sometimes I don't think I was down in time in the morning to cool things down by opening the window.
The opener works on the heat of the sun and so opens and closes as needed.

Its closed right up here as it is blowing a gale outside.


I also made a capillary matting watering system.
I used old cotton shirts for the matting.
Some old plastic wrapping underneath it so my staging doesn't get rusty from being damp
and
3 large containers for the water.

You can just see the water reservoir bottom left. Its an old plastic aquarium that the kids used to have gerbils in.

It is quite useful for a day or two of keeping things moist.

In the very hot weather,the matting was drying out after about 24 hours despite the water containers but in the cooler days, it lasts much longer.

Next month we have a 3 day trip to Scotland to see DD's Graduation so it will be handy then.

The water butt was almost empty last weekend and then we had a night of battering rain which yielded about 8 gallons in my water catching buckets and presumably filled the big water butt back up.
I decanted the 8 gallons into plastic gallon containers and it rained the following night yielding another 6 cans worth.

The runner beans are planted and one has some red flowers already.
Courgettes are all planted and showing their yellow flowers.
The peas are struggling but not dead.
Spinach is looking well for all the rain.
French beans are looking quite strong, I planted some from the greenhouse and sowed another packet straight into the garden.
The  direct sowing was done with the victorian seeder which did quite well where it didnt skip seeds too much.

This is the seeders as I received them from the ebay seller.
They were both rusty and the lower in the picture was absolutely seized.

This is the top seeder now. The gaffer tape is holding some corrugated card in place.
The card helps to keep the seeds towards the front part of the hopper where the chute is.

This one has a new hopper made from an Aluminium Apple mac case,cut to shape with the Dremel and then a lot of folding and gritting of teeth to get it to the right dimensions. I use a plastic bag over it to stop the seeds jumping out. This also has gaffer tape to hold a piece of corrugated card in place.
I made the spring for this one from an old  Bicycle caliper brake spring we had lying around.
The row coverer is a bit of old foot pump with a strip of  the stuff you join flooring together with at a door.
The handle is from a very old knackered Tripod.
This is slightly better for accuracy of rows than the other more original seeder.

Inside each hopper, I have marked off the seed sizes. There is a gnarled knob to change the seed size and you have to look into the hopper to get the hole the right size.
The graduated chart goes from Beans at the top, to carrots at the bottom.
I will get a picture of the actual seed chute etc tomorrow ,my battery gave out just when I was about to photograph it today.


I have sown some brassicas out direct also as the greenhouse plants nearly all died.
I was left with only 3 brussels sprouts and one broccoli of the earlier pot sowings.

I sowed pak choi and radish using a newer seeder (Danish) which was not bad but did seem to be oddly marked for spacing so I managed to sow about 8" of radish then an 8" gap then another 8" which I then had to thin out substantially once they showed.
I think I will write my own instructions for it once I get used to it more.

The direct sowing of brassicas was done with the less original Victorian seeder

Amateur metal working

I have been making bits for my wheel hoe.
Well , one bit really.
It is an oscillating hoe.
A lot of the new wheel hoes have them and I thought I would try my hand at a home made one.

Mine is made from a strip of iron bar we had, and 11 inches of a 24" steel rule(OH's late father had them everywhere so we had a surplus).
The steel rule is the blade.

So far I have had it working but the oscillating bit needs some fiddling to get it right.

I needed to bend the steel and used some pieces of wood and my own weight and a club hammer.
Once bent into two Stirrup shapes,one bolts to the other and all are bolted to the wheel hoe.
The oscillating bit is a little piece of metal that has a small space for the blade to wobble within so that it swings ever so slightly as you push back and forth but not enough to let it erode the metal or the bolts.
The deliberate agrarian has a few pictures of his own that he makes to go with his 'planet Whizz bang hoe' so that was a handy guide.

Also I have been playing with a couple of Absolutely ancient seeders.
They are from the late 19th Century I think as the only info I could find on the WWW was for one made around 1879 and is very similar with the same makers name.

They came as a pair because they were incomplete but there was enough there to make one whole machine with a bit of fiddling.
It seemed a shame to just discard the other parts so I have been fabricating my own replacement bits using the Dremel, a hack saw, a drill and several old bits of metal from things we had lying around broken.
I have one working and needing a new handle and paint the other is working,needs a better handle and paint.

The one with no handle has part of an old wooden one still stuck in the metal handle bracket so I have some work to do to get that out,the screws holding it in are stuck fast.
The other has a thin handle I connected to it rather weedily and although it does work as a handle, it isn't robust enough and will need replacing.


This morning I dug my bean trenches (finally).
The weather is still one long round of drizzle or mizzle or just thin rain.
Grey clouds and cool wind.
The beans are becoming taller and are going to need to go outside in about a week, so the trenches are dug and comfrey is laid in them thickly to act as a fertilizer.

The spuds are just starting to show their leaves.
The row with the shop bought seed potatoes anyway.
The others will show up in their own good time. They were not as far along in the chitting when they went in so will be later to surface too.

Everything in the garden is nestling in a cloddy mess.
The strawberries have loads of flowers and the rhubarb is doing well.
They don't mind the rain although it does encourage the slugs as well which means keeping an eye on the strawberries as they will hollow them out if they can get to them.

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.

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 .

Chilly Mondays, more books and the new TV Box

It was pretty Snowy last week.
We thought it was well and Truly over, only to wake up to a new sprinkling on Sunday.
The DS was narked because he has a Driving test this week.
OH was narked because he wanted to Motorbike into work instead of driving up there, it is more expensive for petrol for the car.
I was narked because I usually drive to the big supermarket on Sunday but I wont drive in snow.

So anyway, OH drove me to Asda and it turned out that our road was snowy but almost all the main roads were clear.
We live in a cul-de-sac which means that there is no through road to go anywhere , consequently the council never grit our road or the one leading to it as they aren't heavily trafficked.   I believe this is a mistake as we and many other residents of the town,there are numerous Cul-de-sacs due to the estate layout, must still get our vehicles TO the main roads in order to benefit from the gritting.
OH needed about 100 yards of clear road to get his Motorbike out last week and only managed it on Friday when the thaw began.
Today is warmer and we are set to have mild weather this week so hopefully DS will get his lessons and test after all.
OH buzzed off happily on the bike and said he might even get a cycle in .

R.I.P. (rest in pieces)BT Vision box

On Friday, our new free-view box was delivered by the courier. This is a non subscription box that I bought from Amazon.
It does everything that the BT vision box did , except,because it doesn't access the internet, it cant get BBC Iplayer. We can always hook up a laptop if we want to watch Iplayer though.
DS connected it up when he finished his driving lesson.
It took about 10 minutes.
We had to move the TV table forwards,de- cable the BT box from ethernet, TV out,TV in and scart.
Then we put it on the floor, put the new box in its place and reinserted TV out, TV in, scart and plugged it in to the power.
THE TV in comes from the Aerial, TV out goes through the DVD recorder, The scart goes to the Big Monitor on the wall as far as I remember.
Anyway,we turned it on and it just worked.
No faffing about.
We scanned for channels and it has the same channels as BT when you watch freeview.
The remote works and now we can use the volume control (BT's volume control was useless),instead of having to get up and go to the HIFI and turn it down.
Our HIFI is the volume on our TV because the screen is a Monitor not a Television.

The old BT box is on a table in my bedroom. I have opened the case and there is an IDE hard drive inside.
That will come out ,I will most likely salvage all the motherboard components using the Dremel and the rest of the box can be scrapped.

Tomorrow we switch over to sky for our internet and will plug in the new modem we got on Thursday and set that up.
We have a phone ready for getting our calls and can discard the rubbish that BT  were allowing us to pay £36.25 a month to use despite the fact that both home hub and phone were faulty units.
Ironically we have had a few calls on the BT phone and haven't been able to answer any as it cuts out the minute you remove it from the hub. I do hope they were from BT with offers to keep our custom.

Bookish Monday

This weeks book is Thief of time
By Terry Pratchet

I had a bit of a struggle getting into the first chapter as it seemed quite disjointed but once past that, it falls together quite well.
Each scenario fits a time-line and you must see them in entirety before you can really get into the story.
One of my favourite Pratchet Characters is DEATH.
He turns up in every book I have read so far and leads away the dearly departed whether they like it or not.
In this book ,he is a little more active and I just love that.
He even has a tiny little helper of sorts.

Anyway I mustn't spoil the story

Tools rediscovered

I went on a little shopping expedition Saturday morning.
First stop was Hobby Craft.
It is a big warehouse type outlet selling everything hobby based.
I bought a helping hand tool for when I am soldering or gluing or painting,all of which I do every now and again.
A little pot of clear ceramic paint for adding a protective layer on top of my hand painted mugs.
A packet of Bits for the Dremel rotary tool that I salvaged a couple of days back.

Hobby craft is not always the cheapest option but often has everything you need.
Todays purchase was £3 off the paint so worked out about the same as buying the whole lot on-line would have,plus I didn't need to pay postage.

There are 60 pieces in the Bits set which was £13.99 as opposed to a 100 piece Dremel set in Wickes who wanted £29 !! When you consider that a lot of 'pieces' are actually things like a circle of sandpaper,a shaft to hold a blade, a soft circle to polish things, I think there was just as much useful stuff in the Hobbycraft set.
I wont buy lots more bits for it, some will be fabricated to incorporate the shafts that came in this set.
No idea what the thing that was stuck in the Dremel originally was, it appears to be a shaft with a nearly smooth end so possibly it was worn almost smooth over time. As it wasn't something you could remake , just having some new empty shafts is enormously advantageous.




This set will now be used to fabricate new blades for my mini bandsaw which I have rescued from certain death out of our Narnian book cupboard.

Pull ups today 40 in all,longest continuous 10
One legged Pistol squats 72=3x24 each leg