It’s getting very tempting to inspect

A few warm days and the bees at home are flying far more. I’ve seen a few visiting celandines, but I’ve no idea where most of them are going at the moment. I’d not be surprised if they’ve found willow trees providing a good source of pollen, but our damson tree and may of the blackthorns are already in flower. Seems crazy to me, but I guess humans only have themselves to blame.

It’s been making an early inspection of the colonies very tempting, but it looks as though night-time temperatures are due to drop, possibly close to freezing, this weekend, and in the day it’s forecast to drop from the mid-teens (°C) of the last few days back into single figures, so I shall hang fire for the moment. I might be tempted to have a peek through the top of those hives with clear crownboards, but I don’t be cracking them open this week.

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Strange women … distributing swords

is no basis for a form of government, so Monty Python would have us believe, but some people apparently believe that Penny Mordaunt’s ability to hang on to a sword at Charles III’s coronation is worthy of her becoming the next Prime Monster. Perhaps those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it, badly.

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Oh! The irony!

Donald Trump can’t raise a $434 million bond so he can appeal his fraud sentence:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68600093

Meanwhile, Ethiopians are able to withdraw far more money than they have from their bank accounts:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-68599027

Anyone seen Trump attempting to book a flight to Africa?

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Memory Lane, 8th October 2022: Getting a bit chile

The weather is definitely starting to feel autumnal now and it’s time to harvest what I can from the polytunnel as and when it’s available. So these may be the last of the cayenne peppers, or if it’s mild I might get a few more. We’ll have to see what happens.

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No dig diary, 18th March 2024

I thinned out some of the lettuce and brassica seedlings that I sowed a few weeks back today. The lettuces haven’t done very well in terms of germination. I’m wondering if slugs/snails might be to blame. I found a snail on the frame of the greenhouse close to the module trays containing lettuces, so evicted it. I’ll sow some more tomorrow.

Planning is quite an important part of growing vegetables using the “sow in modules & plant out later” method and it’s one I still haven’t entirely got the hang of. Throughout the main part of the growing year it’s not too bad, but now, as the first batches of plants go into the ground, it’s a bit more tricky. I want to have space between my different pea varieties, for instance, so hopefully they won’t cross-pollinate, and I need to be able to plant sweetcorn in a block across two beds so that they will cross-pollinate. I’d prefer that all my potatoes and onions are planted in a single group of plants, but they’ll each take up most of a bed and I still have winter brassicas suchs as PSB and swedes occupying space that I often end up wanting to use.

I try to draw a plan up every year and I’m getting slightly better each time, but I think it’s going to be a while yet. If it weren’t for the intention to keep the ground productive all the time it would be easy, but then I’d end up with a lot of space that wasn’t doing anything for six months of the year or more.

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Memory Lane, 8th October 2022: Winter salads

With the melons and aubergines removed from one of the greenhouses a couple of days ago it was time to get the Winter salads in — some radishes that may or may not do well, winter-hardy lettuces and mustard leaves.

Along with a few more that will go into the polytunnel, these should keep us in salads for most of the Winter once they get going.

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No dig diary, 17th March 2024

No sowing to do today, mostly just tidying up of plants (quite a few brassicas) that are no longer productive and dumping them on the compost heap.

I did however take the time to dig a hole about 300mm deep in my “herb” bed, cut the top and bottom off a twenty litre “jug” that used to contain dairy hypochlorate and sink it into the hole with about 30cm above the ground. Inside the jug I have planted some mint plants that were left over from last year, the idea being that the walls of the jug will stop the roots spreading elsewhere in the bed.

I have more of what I believe to be mint in a couple of pots that somehow started spreading through the beds in the main plot a couple of years back. Last year I transferred some to pots and then attempted to eradicate it completely from the beds.

It isn’t really big enough for a reliable attempt at identification yet, so it can stay in the small pots for a few more weeks. Once I can tell what variety it is I’d decide whether I want to keep it (and do the same again) or heave it onto the compost heap as well.

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Memory Lane, 8th October 2022

The hives have already moved from the old apiary to the new one, so it was time to move the shed and fix the damage done by recent storms.

The pre-fab shed came apart fairly easily, but first I needed a new floor to sit it on as the old 9mm OSB floor was seriously past it. I made a new floor from 3″x2″ timbers and 1″ thick boards that I pulled up tight to each other with some clamps before screwing down. I also made the new floor somewhat larger than the original shed — about 8’x10′ whereas the original shed was 8’x6′. This allowed me to extend the shed to 8’x7′ and (since I had to replace the roof, too), some fiddling about gave a covered sort of “verandah” area for equipment storage.

I wasn’t about to put rubbish felt back on my new roof, so I used EPDM instead, which still needs cutting to size and fixing down at the edges.

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So how does the table saw measure up?

Having built the gauge to test the accuracy of the setup of my table saw, I might as well get on and use it.

The blade (of which I forgot to take photos) varies from front to back by about 0.2mm. That sounds like it should be correctable, so I’ll have a go.

These are from the right-hand T-slot to the left hand side of the fence.

Looks like it bows away from the slot (and therefore the blade) by about 0.2mm in the middle when compared with the ends? I’m not sure how I deal with that for the time being.

And the left hand T-slot and right hand side of the fence.

Looks like that side is also bowed, but more out at one end than the other.

I’m really not sure what to make of this for the moment. I guess the second set of measurements aren’t a big deal as I almost never use the fence on that side of the table. A bow of 0.2mm doesn’t sound like a lot, and in reality probably isn’t, but it’s enough to show in a joint.

More consideration required.

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No dig diary, 16th March 2024

I’m backing up a few things thanks to the weather — sowing parsnips has been delayed a few weeks, and today I had planned to sow carrots and onions for pickling, but the ground is just too wet.

I could still get some sowing done in the greenhouse though — coriander, romanesco cauliflowers and beetroot, followed by some flowers for the cutting garden — rudbeckia, salvia and bupleurum and finished off with petunias for my wife’s patio pots.

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