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.

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.

Cardboard Mulch and Slug Pellets

Yesterday was a dry day!
I took advantage of the weather to get outside and do a lot more weeding of the strawberry beds.
There are two beds,each about 3 feet X 5 feet.
Originally,I had 3 strawberry plants and they have propagated themselves over the years so now there must be around 100 plants or so.
DS is tidying his room and produced some cardboard boxes that were just what I need for mulching the beds once the weeds were reduced.
Hopefully the cardboard will help suppress any more weeds for a while (im hoping for all of the rest of the year).
In the spring, I will remove it if it is still pick up-able and dig out everything and then plant the best of the plants in the newly cleared beds.

The slugs seem prolific and have been nibbling on the new clover plants much to my disgust.
Pellets have been administered.
The Phacelia is now starting to show in the 3rd Green manure bed.

Magnesium deficiency is showing still in the potato leaves.
I watered them with Epsom salts several weeks ago and that did help but with all this rain I guess it was time for another dose.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Not spending money

It is sunny and bright here today.
The garden beckoned so I ""trudged"" skipped down there

My Azada was super useful.
I have still got quite a bit of ground to clear but with my trusty digging tool ,it is not back breaking work.
I think I have cleared enough space foe the potatoes, the beans ,and hopefully Brassicas.
The onions are looking healthy and not too weedy still.

Lizard lodgers

In the compost bin,there were at least 6 slow worms snoozing away.
One of the big grey males was minus his tail.
They can break off their tail if they are threatened and it will grow back again.
You can see where they have grown them back because they are always a bit smaller in girth.
The females are browner and the babies are copper coloured usually with a little brown line down each side.
Slow worms are lizards not snakes and you can tell them by their little dark eyes and blinky eyelids.
Snakes don't have eyelids.
That bin is the slowest to decompose and I often find inhabitants of the reptilian sort.
They are harmless and beautiful.
If I water that bin well,they will find another place I expect but I like them so they can share the bin with me and I will just wait till they are not around before I take any compost from it.

Potting on

I find potting on rather tedious.
You must do it when your seedlings become too large for the original vessel.
Having sown many of mine in those little sectioned trays this spring, I had plenty to pot up.
I chose Brussels-sprouts and Broccoli.
There were about 30 of each which seems loads but they wont all make it .
The slugs around here practice speed eating.

The newly potted up plants are in the cold frame and will be joined by Kale in a few days.

Seedlings are beginning to pop up.
Leeks are poking out above the black mud in their pot.
Cabbages are beginning to appear.
The carrots I planted in loo rolls are not out yet and I have a second lesser sowing to follow them.
Tomatoes are not showing and neither are spring onions or lettuce.
There is no hurry.

I was pleased to see some pea seedlings and some of the pole beans have made a start.

I love spring and growing things.

Seeds ,knitting and 1st cutting for the grass

It was lovely and sunny yesterday, I couldn't resist getting the mower out.

We have a big hover mower that we bought when the kids were little ,it is a 30" cut with a grass box behind.
The grass was just about cut-able, a bit slippy where the shade was still on it but it managed.
It took me 2 1/2 hours to cut the back lawn and tidy up the edges with the strimmer.
I had forgotten that the cat flap was blocked so had to plug in round by the back sliding doors instead. The local cats get quite interested in our house so we do have to watch out else we find them scampering about inside.
I don't mind the scampering but they are almost always Toms and that means the spraying of acrid pong that goes with a territory statement.

If you remember, our own cat was killed 18 months ago by a neighbouring dog that was not secured properly in his garden,so we haven't really needed a cat flap but as it is a permanent hole in the wooden back door, it is handy for plugging in machines without having a door open.
I block it in winter as it is too cold to leave it.

All the grass went into the new compost bin that my Son made out of the old rotten shed. Usually the grass from one cutting will fill a Dalek style compost bin but this time ,it was only about 8" over the bottom of the new bin!

The knitting loom progress

I finished my knitted socks and am now almost finished one of a pair for DS who has the most enormous plates of meat,like a Hobbit.

Seeds and sowing soil

This weeks seed sowing was
Tomatoes
Cabbages
Spring Onion
Lettuce
Cucumber
Courgette
Pumpkin
Runner Beans
Early Peas
Main crop Peas

Last weeks were

Broccoli
Brussels sprouts
Leeks
Kale

I still have left to sow

Radish
Carrot
Chard
Beetroot
French Beans
Cauliflower

As usual I made the seed compost myself

I sieve compost and then add equal amounts of Earth and Sand.
This gives a nice light soil without too much water retention.
The pots are reused every year so cost nothing.

Next to do is make the Bean frame after clearing some ground for them.

Cheesy Grins

OH noticed that the co-op have reduced cheese when he is on his way home sometimes.
He has been keeping his eyes open and last week brought home 7kg
We used to buy Cheese in a huge block from Costco but we aren't members anymore because we found we weren't really recuperating the cost of the membership once the kids were finished school and with the Dartford Tunnel being a Toll road and petrol having soared in price.

Anyway, the cheese was all half price and we buy a KG about every 2 weeks so this is a very nice saving.
It will keep fine in the fridge as long as it is kept  airtight.

Getting ready for the new year of growing

I went into town yesterday to post off OH's Ebay parcel, he wasn't selling, he had bought a not quite working tablet and wanted to return it.
Easy ,since I have no paid work now, I can always get down to the post office.

Anyway, on the way there, I thought I would pop in to the pound shop and see what seeds they had.
I already have 10 new packets but no Brussels or leeks, so I checked the shelves.
They had leeks in a combination pack but no Brussels.
After posting off the parcel (over £5 without extra insurance!!), I went to the 99p shop and they had different packs of seeds.
I bought 1 pack with Leeks included amongst others and 1 pack with 3 types of Beans.
As I was passing the pound stretcher store I thought I would just pop in and check on their seeds.
They didn't have much of interest but then I saw the fruit trees.
These are about 4 ft tall and they had apple,pear,cherry and plum so I selected a cherry and a plum and parted with the money.
I got a few interested glances as I walked back through town with a tree in each hand.

We have 4 fruit trees already, 1 pear and 3 apples.
2 of the apple trees were from woolworths
The other 2 trees were from wilkos and were about 18" high when we bought them,they had a good crop last year.

The new cherry tree is a Morello cherry, they are quite bitter but you can cook them and they make excellent jam and pies.
The plum will replace the one we cut down about 8 years ago . That was a heavy cropper but was over 25 years old and got very heavily damaged in a storm.

Superscrimpers

This is a program on Channel 4.
It is supposed to outline different ways of saving money or at least, not spending unnecessarily.
The family featured , spent £200 a WEEK! on food for a family of 5(one child,the youngest  looked about 9).
They were challenged to spend only £50 for a week and they went off to Tesco and spent almost all of it.
Their bill showed they had made a saving of about £1.80 so they probably did spend all of it but incorporated a multi buy of some sort which brought it down.
Their dinners were planned out on paper and seemed to be chosen absolutely randomly based on how nice it sounded.
Their Sunday Dinner (they called it lunch) was beef and all the trimmings.
OH and I watched it with disbelief.
According to the presenter, they had 'managed' to produce dinner on Sunday for £16 !
What a Laugh!

Apparently the £50 was to cover only dinners or so I have heard.
That probably means school dinners and maybe breakfast club  for 3 kids and the adults both eat bought food for work.

Our Sunday Dinner this week was Chicken,potatoes,greens and carrots with gravy.
Mondays Dinner was 1/2 a bag of cod pieces from the fish and chip shop (50pence) made into a pie with a cheesy breadcrumb topping, rice and vegetables.
Tuesdays was Chicken stew with Barley
Todays will be Chicken bolognaise and tomorrows will be chicken and ham and pineapple pizza.
Fridays will be left over bolognaise for 1 person and curried left over chicken stew for the others.
There is left over cooked rice or cous cous for the curry eaters.
Saturday will be home made fish and chips using the other half of the bag of fish and chip fish bits(50p) and home made chips with whats left of a bag of mixed vegetables and baked beans.
Bread for lunches is home made at 30 pence a loaf and fillings are typically sardines,baked beans,spreads
we drink tea mainly with milk

Chicken was £5
Greens around 80p
Carrots around 78p
Barley (half pack)40p
Pasta 25p
Cous cous 1/3rd pack around 30p
rice 1/2 pack 20p
Small amount of frozen veg 30p
baked beans 60p
Sardines 50p
Cheese £2.50/ half kilo
puree 25p
tin of tomatoes 38p
Reduced ham 80p
Marg about 1/3rd tub 33p
tea 90p a packet (lasts about 2 weeks)
Milk carton of uht is about 50p so around £1
Oats for breakfast about 80p
Raisins for breakfast 25p at the moment
Bananas around 1.20
Fish bits from fish and chip shop(easily enough for 8 portions but we made it into 6)£1

£18.09......our whole weeks food comes to only a little bit more than their one sunday meal
But be fair OSD
....I will divide it by person
we are only 3 at the moment as DD is away at Uni so it comes to £6.03 per person
They have 5 people so 6.03 multiplied by 5 is £30.15
They should be eating like kings on £50 a week for only dinners but they weren't given a lot of guidance about actually cooking from scratch or choosing less expensive brands.

Rip off UK again 

There was also an article about extended warranty on electrical goods.
The presenter stood under a market awning with a collection of goods ,the price and the extended warranty price,alongside each other.
She pointed out that there are insurance companies that will cover your pricey electrics for less than these , however, she didn't once mention inbuilt obsolescence which the electrical industry is guilty of in this country.

The dirty truth is that in the rip off UK ,your washing machine is built to last 5 years and no more.
Once the parts are unavailable,you are screwed because how will it be mended?
Extended warranties are offered for .......oh yeah 5 years but the price tallies quite closely with the cost of a new machine .
It is like paying for a lottery.
Your machine goes wrong within the time and they will mend it or replace it, mending it isn't going to give you  a new machine, it is the same machine with one less 5 year life-span part. If it doesn't go wrong within the 5 years, you get nothing at all even though you have paid enough for a new machine.
If they replace it ,you won the lottery and we know how likely that is.

We stopped buying these warranties when our last washing machine but 2, died exactly at the 5 year and 3 days mark.
The warranty was useless and we had to scrap the machine because you could no longer get parts.

Our last bought one , died as expected and we replaced it with a free-cycled machine for free,the person who gave us the machine was getting a new one as the part for her one was going to cost almost a new machine, funnily enough, our machine was the same make but a lesser spec so we could remove the part needed to mend hers,scrap the rest and have a higher spec working machine .

I thought I would sign up to the super scrimpers challenge.

So far it is only day two.
Yesterdays challenge was ..have a no spend day.
I didn't,I had 5 no spend days last week.
Todays was...find somewhere where you can get your hair cut as a model, free or cheap.
Hmm, I cut my own, I use mirrors and scissors and for the last year I have been using a Robocut but I can do it without too. I haven't had my hair cut outside our home for about 3 years and then it was a free cut using a voucher from a newspaper.
Previously to that it was around 12 years ago and my kids said it looked just the same as when I did it myself.

OH is the same. I bought him a phillips self cut type hair clipper about 3 years ago and he cuts his hair about every 6 weeks.

A quiet weekend.

Our DD is gone back to university.
We are 3 again .
It means less having the dishwasher on, less cooking, less breadmaking.
I shall miss her chats though .

I am still reading my wheel of time ebook, only half way through, they are very long but worth the time .

Today I put the pull up bar back on DD's door frame and managed to do 4 each time I tried a pull up.
It will take time to build back up again.
I did a bit of indoor skipping too.

I am averaging 135 points a day on swag bucks which is nice as it is about £5 a week in Amazon UK vouchers.

I bit the bullet yesterday and ordered my vegetable seeds from the Us Amazon store where I accrue a few vouchers. They should be here by the end of the month.