chopping down the clover field

Well it isnt a field at all but I liked the sound of it.
I chopped the clover that has been growing in the onion beds.
It stays in the earth and helps to improve the structure of the soil.

The Phacelia still has bees buzzing to and fro so I will leave that for longer and then chop and dig it in , in the same way.

I still havent got the new onion beds sorted.
Yesterday I dug over half the spud bed (the half that is now empty).
The onions and garlic will go in there to over winter.

OH bought me and himself new (2nd hand) leathers for the motorbike.
Mine are a very fetching white with green and purple zigzags.
His are black and have a wolf logo.

We are going to look the Bees Knees next time we go for a ride together.

I canned quite a lot of Pumpkin on Monday.
The biggest pumpkin yielded 11 jars .
Then I roasted the seeds which are quite like crisps (to snack on).
I did mine with no oil by using a browning plate in the microwave.
You are supposed to use oil but they are much healthier without .
OH tends to glutton-out on anything the least bit snackable so I put them in a screw top jar and whisked them away out of sight .

There are 2 more pumpkins out there but I don't know if they have time to ripen off as we are already getting ground frosts in the morning.

Indoors it is about 15 degrees c in the mornings.
The front room warms up to 17 once the sun hits it.
I brought the greenhouse heater in so that we could give the bathroom a 10 minute zap before bathing or showering, rather than turn the heating on all over the house just for the same effect.
The heater is from OH's work and was being thrown away but is really for a greenhouse.
It would be far too expensive to run it over the winter for the amount of food I might produce from the greenhouse.

The greenhouse is now empty of plants except the box of carrots.
It becomes a store room over winter.

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My online earning is going well.
Today I cashed out 10 pounds in Amazon vouchers from Ipsos
There is a 25 pound voucher to cash in from another survey site and nearly 30 pounds from one other so Christmas and the last birthday of the year are accounted for.
We are lucky with birthdays as they are evenly spaced across the year.
I go on Mccains site once a week and play their games which pay in spud shillings.
The shillings go towards a voucher and I am hoping to have 10 pounds to redeem in a couple of weeks.
Sadly they are winding up their voucher earning scheme in december .

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At the moment I am reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo which you can find on Guttenberg
I'm also reading Micah Clarke by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (free on Amazon).

Les Miserables is very long and a little hard going with its turns of language and descriptions.
If you think Dickens is too descriptive, you wont like this one but if you don't mind long detailed outlines,you will most likely love it.

Micah Clarke is one of Doyles Historic Novels which are by far his best genre and although they are very prose filled, they have a huge lot of history and factual information also.
This one is about the Monmouth uprising (after the English Civil war).  

Battery bits and bobs

Oh got his new CMOS battery in the post today.
He got it from china via ebay.
Some people would baulk at ebay stuff from china but if you think about it, nearly everything we used in the 1970's had 'MADE IN HONGKONG' printed on it.
The computer itself is made in Taiwan after all.

OH managed to dismantle and install the new battery with minimal help which pleased him and me as he now knows he can dismantle and reassemble his lappy himself and I now know he can too :P

He even had to do a little bit of soldering as the end connector was slightly different.

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The garden is a muddy green expanse at present.
The runner beans are still producing well.
Brassicas are strong looking.
I have seeds from Spinach,rocket and nasturtiums for next year.
The shallots I put by to replant, will be going in sometime this month along with some garlic from last year and a few new bulbs.
I bought new golden onions as we have eaten most of the ones I harvested this year.

The leeks are embarrassingly like spring onions still but may pick up some once the weather cools more.

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I have been doing a toothpaste trial this week.
Cant say which paste but it was quite good for making them feel clean and smooth.
Must look out for it when it comes on the market.

I quite often do trials for goods for companies.
You sign up with a company that does surveys and every now and then they will ask if you will do a trial. Sometimes they dont send anything afterall ,I suppose because they have enough people to choose from and you dont get picked but often you do.
They will ask how it went and you can usually keep the rest of the item to use up at home.
I love giving my opinion on new things.

whizzy peecees and muddy spuds

I spent my birthday money on 4gb of memory for the new lappy.
It now has 8gb which is more than any other pc in the house.

We have a LOT of computers in this house.

There are 6 that belong entirely to me. 3 laptops and 2 Windows machines and a Mac.
OH has a further 2 macs and a laptop,netbook and a tablet.
DS has a laptop and a desktop and DD has 2 laptops and a desktop.
Then there are at least 2 spare pcs and 2 amigas in the roof.

When I was about 18, I bought my first computer so I feel like I have grown up with technology as mich as the kids have.

The extensa laptop has been running puppy linux and is pretty nippy for an oldun.
I decided to combine one of the old extensa batteries with a battery from the old aspire.
I had to take the Aspire battery apart and do some soldering but it works so far.
I can get about 1.45 hours out of the combination .
The second extensa battery was better to begin with and is now giving just over 2 hours of running time.

So 3 more or less dead batteries have been resurected and mean I can run for 3 and 3/4 hours.
The charging is done on economy 7.

The new lappy has a newer battery and can run for around 4 hours all told.

I have dug up another load of spuds.
They are about a months worth and now only half of the spud bed still has spuds in so hopefully another 2 months of spud are still to harvest.

The Pumpkin is picked.
It is pretty big and heavy.
There is another one out there that is still dark green but nearly as big and a smaller one about 7" diameter.

The harvest

I dug some of our spuds up last week.
I have dug about 1/5th of the whole crop and possibly have 6 weeks supply for 3 adults (2 will only eat them under shotgun circumstances anyway).

Have you tried marrow and ginger jam making?
I did some for the first time this year and it is like eating ginger beer on toast.

My birthday this month was lovely.
OH bought me a brand new laptop!
He also bought me a lovely green cover with a little light  for my ereader .
DS bought me some vouchers to shop with online and a big chocolate birthday cake!

We had fish and chips as a birthday tea too:)
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OH has decided to give up on his OU studies.
He announced yesterday that he had given up as he wasn't able to understand how to do it all.
At the time, he was attempting to recover his computer, having messed it up with a bad update install and I thought he was talking about that.
Really and truly, I have no idea why he had ever started the course in the first place.
He has spent 4 years banging his head in frustration over it while all the time admitting he had no thought to use the resulting qualification in any way.??

Actually I do wonder if it was more about trying to keep up with various sisters who had taken on courses and finished the studying.
One sister who shall remain nameless here (as usual) proclaimed that she was now better than other people who did not have a degree (much to my disgust as you can imagine).
Unfortunately, that is the attitude of quite a lot of snotty people and they live in ignorance of the skills and ingenuity of people everywhere who choose not to go get a piece of paper to 'prove' they can think,talk,breath  and write all at the same time.

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DS, who incidentally has spent 4 years getting his degree, still has no job after 14 months of looking.
DD, having graduated this year, is looking too and so far, nothing, after a false start with a firm who specialized in chugging turned out to be a bunch of sweat shoppers under the guise of charity fundraisers.

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Preserving stuff

I have been harvesting a fair bit this last week.

The dehydrator has been busy every night drying Beans, Kale, Courgettes, and  spinach .
We also have a Vacuum sealer which has helped keep the freezer from overflowing because it compacts things into flatter shaped bags.

Yesterday I decided we needed the bottom shelf of the freezer back (it is only a 3 shelf under-counter style ).
There were 6 Seville oranges and 4 lemons in there waiting to be made into marmalade.
I sorted through the saved empty jars to find enough with lids.
It took about 1 1/2 hours to chop them all up and boil it down in the microwave.

Last week I made Marrow and Ginger jam using ground ginger.
The result has turned out quite sloppy as there wasn't enough pectin despite a goodly amount of lemon juice.
I can see it being mostly used as pie fillings but no matter.

There are about 8 good sized marrows under DD's bed now.
Hopefully they will last w while without needing to be dried or frozen.

Tiny toms and preserving produce

We ate our first two red Tomatoes today.
They were dinky little things.
I cut each one as small as I could and DS and I had them in 1 sandwich each !

I have been dehydrating this week also.
Not bodily, I am drying produce.
The L'equip machine I bought a few years ago is still going strong.
This weekend I dried about 9 courgettes on Saturday, 9 on Sunday
Monday I dried about 5 and around a cupful of runner beans
Today was 6 trays of Spinach
Tonight will be 3 more trays of courgettes(about 5 or 6 fruits) and a cupful of runner beans.

When they are dry, they are put into screw top jars till we use them.

Drying is an efficient way to store produce and takes up less room than most other storage.
Also it is cheap fuel wise as it is an overnight job to dry them and then they don't use any more  until you cook them which you would have to do anyway.
We still have a jar of dried onions from about 3 years ago which is perfectly edible.

I pickled a large jar of onions for Christmas.
We  have 2 jars of pickled beetroot from several years back which is fine still.

I looked up courgettes online and discovered Asda selling 4 fruits for a whole £1

The Kale is now edible and very flavour-some after a couple of months of just spinach interspersed with Molokia

The row nearest the camera is the Kale. I am used to curly leafed Kale so was it took a while to realise that this plant was really Kale and not just a mis-labeling error for which I am notorious.

The carrot bed did turn out to be mostly grass pretending to be carrot seedlings sadly.
I have resown but don't know if it will be any more successful this time around.
There are about 7 actual original carrots remaining.
The box in the greenhouse is looking quite leafy.

There are actually carroty ends showing which look about 1/2" thick!

Just as well with the price of grub at the moment.

I was cleaning my bike up yesterday and found the panniers we bought for it in Holland.
They are sturdy and well made ,not like the rubbish you can buy here.
I fitted my bike rack on and then added the panniers and bungeed the lock to the rack between them.
Inside one were 3 or 4 receipts for sainsburys from 2003.
Carrots were 40p a kilo and brocolli was not much more.
Milk was about 29p for a litre of UHT


On Friday,I finished clearing the next bed of weeds.
It is sown with Alfafa which I think I remember is from the bean family.
This will get chopped off and dug in in a few months time the same as the clover and phacelia.

Green everywhere

The good weather has helped things along in the garden.

This is the view now and the one back in April looking over the fence dividing the lawn and the veg plot.

The peas are doing much better than expected.

About 6 of the plants were transplanted from modules and the rest are direct sowings.

The courgette/Zucchini bed is about 3 feet tall and lush with growth.

I am picking them and dehydrating as there are too many to eat .

Outdoor tomatoes have picked up well. There are fruits on some which is rather suprising considering they were the left overs from those that are living in the greenhouse.

Here are the outdoor plants with the newly cleared ground  that I have been working on this week beyond.

Here are the washington cherry in the greenhouse

and the marmande with their unusual shaped fruits

Behind them is the old window blind that I had to incorporate yesterday due to the ridiculous 50 degree heat in the greenhouse with the windows wide open and the fan running for hours.

This is a quick snap of the strawberry beds with the cardboard mulch.

Most of the strawberry plants seem to have strawberry leaf spot but it didn't effect the fruit at all.

The cardboard should help to keep it contained.

I will have to keep my eye on them though because I don't see any runners yet and I might need to train them into pots as they cant very well root into the cardboard.

Carrots,weeds and Strawberries

The Carrot bed is full but of what?
Many of the grass like seedlings actually might just be grass after all.
I weeded and weeded and now there are a few actual positive sightings of carrot tops but most of it looks like little grasses.
However on pulling one up,there is a distinctive carroty niff so I replanted it and have left well alone.

The strawberries are finished fruiting and I am hard at work weeding the grass,Nettles and creeping buttercup out .
The two beds are crowded but they are beginning to take up some semblance of a strawberry patch as opposed to a miniature jungle.
Many snail and ant eggs are uncovered along with their parents.

I have sown clover in two of the onion beds and phacelia in the other.
These are green manures to improve the soil.
The clover is already up .
Amongst the Strawberries, I found several vetch seed pods and collected a few as they are supposed to be useful also as green manure.


Last week I bought a berry picking tool.
It looks like a Dustpan but the bottom is a comb rather than solid.
To use it ,you have to sort of scoop at the berries which become caught in the comb and drop into the pan.
It is an ingenious contraption, simple and effective.
I remember Ray Mears featuring a similar tool in one of his episodes.
It has sped up the berry harvesting by about 90% as previously I could spend an hour an evening on just harvesting raspberries and red currants.

My poor Berries are very crowded with weeds and will get a proper clear out once they have finished fruiting.
The Cleavers,Rogue Blackberry brambles and Bear Bind are everywhere.

On the harvesting side...
We have had quite a few courgettes and a few French beans and even one or two runners today.
There aren't many peas but they are lovely when we have had any.

Today was spent in weeding  the strawbs and in hunting indoors for DS'  document folder in which he had put all his qualification details and then mislaid the whole lot.
I found it .
The rain has been persistent.
There is fruit on the tomatoes but I don't know if they will ripen with so little sunshine.

We cheered ourselves up with pork chops and chips for tea.
The chops were courtesy of Lidls who were selling them half price this week.
The green veg was all from the garden which is satisfying.

Long trips,Fish'n'chips,soggy drips

We traveled this week.
All the way to Scotland (nearly 600 miles) to see our daughter.
She had her graduation ceremony.
It was also the first time we have met her boyfriend.
He seems a nice young man, very polite and calm.

We ate at the pub for a treat.
Their fish and chips was nice but not the huge plateful you get down south.
The following day we tried a different pub.
This one took a whole hour to serve us and we had to reorder twice due to their having run out of various things. The eventual food was quite nice but it was so long in coming that the kitchen was closed before we could order dessert.

The return journey (by train) was long and a bit dull apart from the drunken revelers and the delays because of the floods which have been causing havoc apparently in the midlands .
We had almost no rain on the three days we were away an hadn't seen or heard any news or weather forecasts so we were quite surprised to hear about the delays.
Luckily,it was only an hour and a half longer to get to our destination than usual.


The garden is looking greener.
There are 4 new courgettes coming along.
Beans are reappearing on the French bean plants.
The Spinach is trying to bolt but I keep cutting off the flower heads as soon as they appear and so far the taste is still okay.

The Carrot bed is looking a bit more carroty and a bit less weedy.

I picked two punnets of ripe raspberries.

On Tuesday I made a rain pipe for the greenhouse.
I used an old rubber watering can hose minus the perforated part, as a hopper, then a piece of plastic tube for the down pipe and a little piece of copper pipe on the end of that to divert it into the bucket at the bottom.
There was a lid for this bucket so I cut a hole to take the piece of pipe.

It has about a 4" depth of water in there now.


Today I harvested the Japanese onions.
There are loads and they are big.
10 containers were chopped and frozen .
A big bag of onion tops was also frozen for use in stews.

Tomorrow if the weather allows, I must harvest the red onions and maybe the shallots.

The beds holding them will be green manured after I tidy them up with the Jalo.

Weeding with tweezers

Yes really!
The raised carrot bed has loads of little carrot seedlings in rows but also about a million weed seedlings.
I have spent about 6 hours on it so far.

We are going to be absent for a few days so I have rigged up a drip feeding affair to add to the capillary matting.
DS will be here but he isn't very good with remembering to water plants.
The drip feeder is actually just two redundant bread maker tins with sponge cloth for drip wicks.
They last a few days.

I have a smaller version over the greenhouse carrots which is a washing up liquid bottle and the same foam.

Make simple drip irrigation for your greenhouse

Cut the bottom off a plastic bottle.
Using the lid with a hole in or a squirty top, thread some foam rubber (washing up cloth) through to use as a wick.
Fill with water and suspend over the plants.
I have two wire shelves set up in a tent shape over the plants and the bottle is sitting in one of the holes.
You could tie it or wire it to hang from something.
It will drip slower as it empties.
Yesterday it was dripping at about once every 8 seconds and today when it is about half empty,it is dripping at around once every 30 seconds.

The bigger tin drippers are hanging from two pieces of pipe threaded through the handle.


The garden is doing well.
Onions are big and fat.
Toms are getting taller and most have flowers.
Courgettes are appearing on the plants.
Peas have pods.
Runner beans have scarlet flowers.
French beans have pods.
Spinach is  trying to bolt but I keep pinching out prospective flowers.
Brassicas are becoming taller and I have separated 16 plants of Kale and Broccoli and put them under cloches to keep the birds off.

The spuds were showing magnesium deficiency so have been watered with epsom salted water.
Runner beans have been soapy sprayed to remove aphids.

We have the usual cherries which look like most like Raniers variety than anything else.
The birds eat most of them as they are far too high up to reach.

Rasps are getting red and sweet.
Strawbs are nearing the end and have been abundant as usual.

We have had far more than the initial outlay in fruit over the years.
There must be pounds and pounds of the last two in the freezer .

I have bought several green manure seeds to sow after the spuds and onions are done.

In the later part of the year when the fruit is over, I will clear the area as it is becoming hard to keep under control and replant strawbs ,rasps etc.

Comfrey


I have 11 out of 12 comfrey plants showing!
The HDRA cuttings I bought some years ago were disappointing  but these new ones bought from ebay have thrived all apart from one.
I am happy though because I only paid for 10 and the offer was for a minimum of 10 cuttings.

Moving a bed can take all week

I decided that I really needed to move the raised bed that has been hidden under a pile of weeds for the last couple of years.

This would

• Allow me to sift earth into it to use exclusively for growing carrots.
• Utilize the area beside the Rhubarb which is going to waste 
• Try out the little seeder again without stones to spoil things.

The bed is made of Breeze blocks.
I first of all had to wrestle them free from the blackberry bramble that had them in its clutches.
Then carefully, so as not to get covered in mud, slugs and dirty rain water, carry them one by one to their new sunnier, flatter position.

The area was covered in corrugated cardboard and then each scratchy Grey stone was placed on top in a rectangle.
I was quite tired by the time they were all in position.

Next day ,I began to fill the bed with rotted compost.
I say fill but really, I managed to cover the bottom to about an inch.

The following day, day 3, I dragged the old dustbins off the weed heap Bonfire and dug it up.
Then I sifted the weeds and stones,plastic and bits of metal out and filled the rest of the bed.

Day 4 was sowing day.
I had to wash the plastic seeder first to get rid of gritty little bits of seed left over from its last outing.
Then filled it from the new packet of Nantes carrot seed.
The seeder worked perfectly.
I did about a 3-4" spacing per row because that is how far it was between the right most wheel and each new furrow.
The whole bed was sown in around a minute and there was a half a packet of seed left.

Last of all, There was the great cat deterrent.
That is another name for the net that I stretched across it to keep the wretches from using it as a giant litter tray.

The other raised bed is also mainly breeze blocks.
I have 3 sorry looking cucumber plants floundering in that one.
The soil is topped with a 6 " deep layer of compost. Quite strawy looking but hopefully conducive to cuc growing.
I really must get around to sowing something else in there too.


On the harvesting front...

We have been eating Strawberries and Rhubarb.
Rasps are just turning.
Spinach is doing well.
Lettuce is cuttable about once a week (cut and come again).
There is some rocket beginning to thrive outdoors.
The indoor stuff is pathetic.
Spring onions are almost pull-able.

Japanese onions,red onions and shallots are very good this year.
Hopefully I wont have to buy any in all year.

This morning I took delivery of a huge roll of wed suppressing stuff.
We need to keep the side area next to the shed clear as it gets so overgrown that the plants grow into the shed and right up to the roof.
As we get older,that will be harder to keep down so it is worth future proofing.

For the same reason  I have been more interested in gardening machines this year.
It is all very well crawling along on your hands and knees when you are 20, weeding, sowing etc, but once you get to the other end of the time-line, you want to get results without crippling yourself if you don't have to.

The Tomatoes are unleashed

I spent all Saturday afternoon mowing our lawn,then strimming the edges.
 ( We call 'weed wackers', 'strimmers' in the UK) .

We bought a much longer electric flex a couple of weeks ago because OH is slowly erecting a fence and the cable we had was much too short for him to use an electric drill. At first we thought we would just see if we could borrow the extension cable from a neighbour but then I realised it would be better to buy one ourselves as then I can use the strimmer and the hedge clippers in the veg plot and beyond as well.

Anyway,the plan worked well because I lopped off a lot of bramble and nettles straight after we bought it and this week,the strimmer helped hugely in tidying up the paths and weedy growth down there.
The whole thing from getting out the mower, to putting away the Strimmer, took about 3 1/2 hours with a short 15 minute intermission while I discovered why the power wasn't getting through towards the end of mowing.

It turned out to be a break in the wire where it fits into the plug ,invisible because it had broken inside the  plastic cover of the cable but not too frustrating because having eliminated everything else,it was the only thing left .

On Sunday, I got out the 2 Wheel hoes again.
First I used the cultivating teeth to loosen up my latest cleared bed, then the little rake (it's actually a bit too small) was fitted on, to clear the roots.

Lastly,I made two furrows with the ridger,one on either side of the bed.

The Tomatoes were then spaced out in the furrows and their pots put alongside them.
A bamboo cane was planted on the other side and I covered each plant using a trowel so I could right the plants individually and make sure the pots didn't get filled with mud.

I ran out of canes but there were plenty of branches lying around under the trees from our hedging escapades so that was no problem.

It rained quite hard for most of the rest of the day so they got a good watering in. Eventually they will be watered through the pots,hence their being planted beside one each. 

The idea is that the roots are the part of the plant that needs the water and if you water straight into the pot, it gets there, rather than evaporating . We have used this method before to good effect.

I haven't grown tomatoes for a couple of years. 

One year we had blight which usually affects a whole area as it is air born.

Last year I didn't grow anything at all because of  working from home becoming all encompassing.

Next I used the stirrup hoe on the other wheel hoe to weed everywhere it would fit.

I can sort of weed the onion beds with it but when I planted them out last Autumn, I forgot to measure how wide the Jalo was and so there are a few bits where only a hand hoe will fit.

The Comfrey is beginning to show at last!

It is that little bright green leaf beside the umbrella-stay which I put there to mark where each piece of cutting was planted and hopefully keep OH's giant cloddies off it ,not to mention the cats.

There are 12 pieces in there and so far 6 are peeping out.

In the Autumn,I will make cuttings myself from the older clump that was planted about 5 years ago.

I wanted that clump to be well established before dividing it because despite having bought it from the HDRA and receiving 10 cuttings, only 3 or 4 came up.

Eventually I hope to line the edge of the plot using cuttings as it is so useful and because we have the Russian Comfrey variety, it is non invasive.

After the weeding,I whooshed the Jalo up and down between the spuds and then with the ridger still on the other Jalo (hence the usefulness of having two).

I swooped between the rows again and tidied them up.

That may well be the last earthing up they need this year because the canopy of leaves will soon meet overhead and once it does,the weeds are not such a problem.

Here they are from about 2 weeks ago. They leaves are much more prolific now.

The weeds on the right are strimmed off now too and the left hand path is strimmed.

More about the Victorian seeders and the Jalo Gardener Hoes

I managed to get a picture of the inside of the victorian seeder at last!

This is looking down with the front of the hopper at the top of the pic.

The hopper is bottomless and there is a sliding plate below,on which it sits fairly snuggly.

It isn't really easy to see but there is a bullet shaped hole on the sliding plate .

This is set to almost fully open in the picture and the white shape at the bottom is the floor of the shed seen through the bullet shaped hole and the seed chute beneath.

Here it is from the side.
The Wheel has prongs all around the hub.
There is a metal pointer which rests on the prongs and when the wheel rotates, the pointer is forced up and down.
At the other end of the pointer is a bolt with an adjustable knob.
The bolt is connected to the slider plate with the bullet hole in it.
So when the pointer is forced up and down, the plate must push backwards and forwards under the hopper.
A strong spring makes sure the pointer stays against the wheel prongs.

When the plate is in the forward position,the hole is shut because it is no longer under the hopper.
When the plate is back, the hole is open and depending on where you have adjusted the knob, it allows a seed or some seeds to drop through.
There is no adjusting for distance between seeds but as the plate takes longer to expose the complete hole when planting bigger seeds, the distance is further apart.

My French beans were around 4" apart when they emerged. There were a few skipped places but the cats had been in and scratched up a lot of the bed during the night and I had to keep pushing seeds back in for a few days.

Originally I didn't have the cardboard in it but the seeds got left at the back of the hopper too often so the cardboard is sitting on the little prong which is on the slider plate behind the hole (I assume to stop the plate from shooting out too far).
The cardboard shoots forward as the sliding plate moves and that helps to bounce the seeds to the front.

It needs a lid else the seeds sometimes leap out of the top due to the springy action.so I cover it with a plastic bag and hold it on with elastic. This works very well as you can see when it is empty and if you lay the seeder down,the seeds don't all tumble out.

The seeder in the picture is probably the older of the two as it has' Le Butt of Bury St Eds' on the side.
The maker is Josiah Le Butt who invented it in 1869.
I made the hopper on this one as the original had broken off and was gone.

The other one is not branded at all and the wheel rim is flatter. The original lid and hopper are still strong.


I have a metal shelf fitting for a stand for the two seeders and the Jalo wheel hoes.

It means they can all stand in the corner of the shed near the door and not take up too much room.
In the picture, the stirrup hoe is still bolted to the older Jalo and the Ridger is fitted onto the bracket I made on the other one.
The Hoe with the ridger is now painted and de rusted and looks much better than it did when I got it.
What I originally thought was a thicker handle ,was in fact just layers of thick blobby paint .
The two hoes are almost identical now it is painted.
The only difference I can see, is the wheel on the one,has a star pattern (you can just see it in the photo ).
The other is smooth.

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

Sunshine and seeds and slug proofing

Well it has been a very nice day!
So sunny that I had to rig up some temporary shading in the greenhouse.
It is an umbrella without the skeleton.

The Beans are all planted out in the garden.
Some are runners or Pole Beans.
I let the seeder sow a few rows of french beans.
It wasnt perfect but then it is 130 years old.

Today I planted out the Cucumber,Courgette(Zuccini) and pumpkins.
Then about 16 Pea plants.
I sowed some Peas too with the other seeder which I thought wasnt quite as good.
Surprising really as it was the one with more original parts.

My slug repellant is Aloe Vera ,watered down a bit in a spray bottle.
The greenhouse is starting to look a bit less crowded but there is a bit more watering .
Spuds got another earthing up today.
They get one about twice a week at the moment.

The veg plot is starting to look more like its old self again.

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.

Free grub just lying there

Yesterday I discovered 2 big mushrooms growing in the compost.
One was about 4" across and the other a little smaller.
I picked them and brought them indoors,got out my mushroom and toadstool identifying book and found the ones that it looks like.
There were 4. One is not really edible but wont kill you, it goes yellow when you bruise it and smells of carbolic if you boil it,the worst thing it does is make you throw up.

I found the right one.
It is called abrupt bulb mushroom.
I nibbled a couple of little bits just to make double sure.
(I wouldn't have done if the 4th mushroom had been fatal,it would all have gone to the rubbish bin.)
We had them chopped up in our chicken stew.
The two mushrooms chopped up, were enough to fill a family sized christmas pudding bowl.

I also added a big bag of Molokhia which grows in our hedge and has done for all the years we have lived here.
I only recently discovered it is edible.

Comfrey

This morning the postman delivered some Russian Comfrey root cuttings.
I already have a couple of plants but didnt want to risk digging them up and dividing, until I had some more established.
A few years back, I bought the first lot, 10 cuttings from HDRA .
I planted them all in the shady bit under the trees and almost all of them disappeared for ever.
The three that emerged eventually,were moved before they too died.

Of course it is raining AGAIN so I have potted them up for now until I can get out long enough to get them a good site prepared.

The reason to use Russian Comfrey is, it doesn't seed itself.
It is only root dividable. Therefore,where you put it to grow,is where it remains.

Plant destruction

Yesterday being only the 2nd sunny day this spring,I spent all afternoon chopping down a rambling rose that used to have a Trellis to hold it up.
The Trellis has sagged to nothing.
There was also an Elderberry tree growing up amongst it and some Sycamore.

The rose was hanging down into next doors garden as well as ours and is a nuisance so needed sorting.

It took me from 12.30 until 4pm to get it chopped down and then another hour and a half of shredding.
I have a huge pile still to shred but we wanted our tea and of course, it rained as soon as Tea was over.

With all this rain, the outdoor jobs just pile up and there isn't sufficient time to do everything when the sun dries it up enough to have a go.

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.

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 .