Another visit from the roe deer

Posted on December 3, 2020 by james

It seems to be getting quite relaxed here, though prefers to back off to a distance when humans are clearly in sight. But as long as we stay out of the way it appears very happy just to sit around and take life easy…

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Could be time for another greenhouse

Posted on December 1, 2020 by james

My current greenhouse is a 12’x8′ aluminium frame on top of a single block high dwarf wall all on a concrete pad. The wall gives it a bit more height, which makes it more comfortable to work in, and the concrete base is helpful because it’s flat and level making a good base for pots, trays and staging.

What it’s not always great for though is growing plants through the season because they have to be in pots or tubs which means watering can be inconsistent and they may not have access to all the nutrients necessary.

Some time back I acquired another greenhouse frame (so long ago I can’t even remember what size it is at the moment) and I think perhaps the time has come to set that up purely for growing plants and keeping the other for propagation and the sort of thing I’m doing now with winter salads. I’m thinking I might stand it on something like railway sleepers (or fake ones) to gain a little more height and then go “full no dig” on the inside, laying sheets of cardboard and covering over the top with compost.

First I need to find all the bits of the frame and make up some of it so I can find out what size it is. Then I can look at prices for the requisite number of sleepers and decide if perhaps I wouldn’t prefer to find something less expensive 🙂

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Veg plot 2021: More compost spreading

Posted on December 1, 2020 by james

I thought I’d take advantage of this morning’s sunshine to shift a bit more compost around to the veggie plot and spread it on the beds for next year. I got a little sidetracked by other jobs that had to be done, but managed to move another three trailer loads in the end, which is probably a little more than is required to cover another two half-beds. I got it spread out on one, but ran out of time and light to finish off the other. That will hopefully be a short job tomorrow though.

Once that is done I should have two beds completely covered and four more “halves” also done, leaving one complete bed and four more halves to do as they become free. If I work around some of the remaining cabbages I could probably do another half bed now, but I might see if I can get more of the polytunnel done first and then look at what compost is left (if any) after that so I can decide if I need to order another load (almost certainly, I reckon).

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Tasty apples, obviously

Posted on December 1, 2020 by james

I’ve seen footprint in the compost in the veggie plot and even seen the animals themselves at a distance, but it seems that one relatively young roe deer couldn’t resist coming a little closer to the house yesterday afternoon to snack on some windfall apples. It was quite happy there and didn’t seem at all jumpy. Perhaps hunger got the better of it.

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Veg plot 2020: One more sneaky winter salad pick

Posted on December 1, 2020 by james

We ran out of salad and wanted some to go with our veggie lasagne last night, so I scavenged what I could off the plants, though pickings were considerably thinner than has been the case up to now. I managed sufficient for the four of us even so:

Allowing for the container that’s another 98g, so we’re now (just) over the kilo for our running total with 1034g. There’s pretty much nothing left that’s ready to pick now though. I can’t see us getting more than two more picks between now and Christmas.

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Veg plot 2020: A little more coriander

Posted on November 27, 2020 by james

Having done a bit of research it appears that coriander plants create new shoots from the leaf axils and can therefore be cut back to just above a leaf axil after which they’ll regrow from that new shoot.

This is exactly how some of my plants look. Others however appear to have no shoots growing from at least the first four or five leaf axils and somewhat predictably these are the taller ones that I’d like to cut back a bit as they’re getting rather tall and leggy, to the point where they’re struggling to carry their own weight.

So, as they’re liable to collapse anyhow, I’ve experimentally cut some of those back to a couple of leaves tall to see if that will promote some new growth now the original leader is gone and we’ll see what happens over the next few weeks.

In the process I’ve harvested another 25g of leaves which I’m going to credit to my winter salads experiment even though they’ll actually probably end up being frozen and eventually used in a curry recipe. That gives me a running total of 936g of salad leaves so far.

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Veg plot 2020: Fifth pick of winter salads

Posted on November 23, 2020 by james

Only eight days since my last pick, but we needed salad for dinner this evening so I went out and took pretty much everything I thought I could.

The coriander is getting rather leggy. I don’t know if that’s just because the light levels are reducing or if I can clip it back closer to the compost and it will regrow from lower down. Only one way to find out I guess, so I might try that tomorrow.

The salad rocket and lollo rossa lettuce are lagging behind a little. I hardly picked any of them today. The other lettuces, leaf radish and red chard seem to be doing ok however, and I have no complaints about the mustards.

I ended up with 125g (90g for the container), giving me 911g over the four weeks I’ve been picking so far. We have given some to my in-laws, but that’s actually quite a bit of salad we’ve eaten in four weeks 🙂 Sadly it is the least I’ve had from a single picking, so I think it’s definitely time to leave longer between picks now.

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And here’s my turned compost

Posted on November 23, 2020 by james

The cardboard on top is what’s left of the stuff that was stopping everything falling out of the front of each of the bins. I thought I’d just leave it there to break down.

I don’t think it looks too bad given that I’ve been trying to stuff every viable piece of organic plant waste into them this year and I wasn’t sure I’d really got enough brown material in. However, mixing grass clippings with cardboard seems to have worked reasonably well. There were a few clumps of grass still identifiable and a small amount of cardboard too, but most of both had broken down and disappeared. The bin we were still filling only a few weeks ago was even still warm and producing clouds of vapour when disturbed.

Now I just need to persuade people to stop putting plant labels, secateurs, polypropylene string, lumps of fence post, foil seed packets and crocks from plant pots into it…

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Turning compost

Posted on November 22, 2020 by james

It seems to be a matter of debate as to whether turning compost is really necessary or not, but this weekend I’ve turned ours just to try to make sure it’s properly mixed up — there were some quite sludgy patches and some very dry, and turning it has allowed me to try to spread things around more evenly.

Turning perhaps as much as three tonnes of compost isn’t too exciting, but in the bin with the older compost I found these:

(with a £2 coin for comparison).

I’m fairly sure they’re grass snake eggs. I know we have some snakes around. Apparently grass snakes are known to create “nests” in compost piles because of the warmth. Hopefully it’s a sign that a number of snakes have hatched and disappeared off into the countryside.

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Grow your own loofah

Posted on November 19, 2020 by james

It’s probably been thirty years since I last saw a loofah. Perhaps they’ve fallen out of fashion a bit. Today however I discovered that it is possible to grow your own. (I have to admit that I hadn’t really internalised that they were a plant in the first place!)

Knowing that such a thing is possible put the idea into my head that it might be worth seeing if we can replace some of our sponges and similar cleaning implements with loofahs, thereby removing another source of waste plastic. And of course at the end of their useful life the loofahs could just go on the compost heap.

A quick hunt found me a source of seeds, so I’m going to add them to my list of things to try to grow next year. Definitely a polytunnel plant I think. Possibly even one for the greenhouse, though it sounds like they get fairly big so the greater space in the polytunnel might be preferable.

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