Swimming, 2nd November 2020

Posted on November 2, 2020 by james

Well, the impending lockdown seems to have brought out all the people who haven’t been swimming since the last one ended. I think there were more people at the pool for my session today than I’ve seen since the day it reopened, and five (including me) were in my lane!

Given the number of people in the lane it was quite tricky to do my set on the correct interval so I had to largely abandon plans and just do the best I could. That meant skipping one or two and delaying swimming until there was enough space that I wouldn’t swim over a slower swimmer in front, or I was far enough ahead that I wouldn’t get in the way of the swimmer who was faster than me.

Not very satisfactory in the end, but I did 50m reps at my expected pace for about thirty minutes, then had a rest and finished off the session doing 25m reps.

Hopefully it will be a bit better tomorrow and Wednesday, which will be my last session before the pool closes for lockdown on Thursday.

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Must have been a bit breezy last night…

Posted on November 2, 2020 by james

When I went for a stroll around the garden at lunchtime I noticed some panes of glass missing from the end of the greenhouse. Closer inspection suggests that the wind must have flexed the frame of the greenhouse sufficiently to release the glass from some of the retaining clips, leaving it free to slide down between the uprights of the frame at an angle until it jammed. When the frame “unflexed”, the remaining clips were then stretched out of shape by the glass.

Fortunately nothing was broken so once I’d found a few spare clips I could replace everything. It was a bit of a surprise though. It’s been very windy here before and I’ve never seen that happen in the fifteen years or thereabouts that we’ve had the greenhouse.

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Veg plot 2021: Composting beds again

Posted on November 1, 2020 by james

After I ran out of light yesterday I’d not quite finished with the beds I was spreading compost on.

Last night the forecast was for rain all day today, but this morning it was all change (quelle surprise!) with only a little forecast for the morning and occasional heavy showers this afternoon, none of which have actually materialised, so I’ve spent a significant proportion of the daylight hours finishing off what I started yesterday. Now the only bed I can actually still put compost on is the one right at the back (which I also spent some time digging the perennial weeds out of) in this photo — all the others need us to finish eating what’s in them before I can progress any further.

I also noticed that something had been digging around the garlic that I planted a few weeks back, so I’ve put a cage over it to try to protect it a bit.

Whilst doing so I noticed that at least one clove has started to shoot, which is very pleasing (poorly focused photo though, sorry).

If the forecast is to be believed it’s supposed to get drier and a fair bit colder here from the middle of the week, so I’ll try to get that last bed done by the end of next weekend. We might even get a frost on Wednesday night. That might finally push the peppers in the polytunnel into dormancy in which case I’ll have to pot them up, put them in the greenhouse and give them a prune to try to get them through the winter.

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Veg plot 2021: More seeds

Posted on October 31, 2020 by james

This weekend I’ve been working through the list of what I want to grow next year and finding out where I can get the seeds I want. I placed an order for some seeds on Friday, mostly so I could get more garlic (to go in the polytunnel this time, as an experiment to see if it gets rust at all), making the order up to enough to get free postage.

Given our newly-announced impending lockdown however, I think I might try to get the majority of the rest of the seeds ordered just in case there are issues later on. I’m not sure I can see why there would be at this point, but it can’t do any harm.

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Swimming 2020, not much more left :(

Posted on October 31, 2020 by james

I had a couple of days off swimming at the tail end of last week, mainly because the timings of sessions had changed for half term and what was available didn’t fit in very well with work and other things I needed to get done.

Now it looks as though I should perhaps have tried harder. Assuming “Lockdown Mark 2” gets through parliament next week, swimming at a sports centre appears to be off the menu from 5th November. Just when I was getting back close to where I was at the start of the year, too 🙁

Normally I’d swim Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, but I’ve booked myself a slot for Wednesday now, on the assumption that I’ll get the first three days next week and that will be it. After that I guess I’ll just have to find something else to do for a month, or possibly even more given that we really don’t know what’s going to happen afterwards yet.

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Veg plot 2021: Composting more beds

Posted on October 31, 2020 by james

The weather has been fairly poor today thanks to a storm that I’ve already forgotten the name of, but I managed to get outside for a couple of hours this afternoon and started spreading out the remainder of our own compost from last year over more of the beds. I’m honestly not sure where some of my family get their ideas about what is compostable though, having raked it out. I found four lengths of 4mm round steel bar, about 50cm long, loads of lumps of expanded polystyrene (possibly used as crocks in pots?), a bed sheet, plant labels, foil packets for plant seeds, some still containing seeds and at least one not even opened, polypropylene rope, stones, lumps of mortar and large pieces of wood 🙁 Not quite as exciting as the small trowel and pair of secateurs I found when I emptied the previous bin.

I ran out of light before I’d quite finished, but I do now have one bed covered in compost for the full fourteen metre length of the plot, and half of another almost covered. To complete that I need to lift some spring onions that are in the way and aren’t ready yet and move them elsewhere. I may spread a little more of the bought in “green waste” compost over the top, but I’ll worry about that later, when I have more beds covered.

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Veg plot 2020: Second pick of winter salads

Posted on October 30, 2020 by james

I’m genuinely surprised I could do this so soon after the first (only five days), but the plants are growing nicely at the moment and even the mustards that were planted a little later than the rest had something to offer so I could pick a mixture of pretty much everything I’d planted.

Obviously I was going to need a new container.

Even that wasn’t sufficient however, as I filled it up twice. Clearly a much bigger container is required 🙂

I make that 280g of salad leaves in total — more than twice as much as I harvested last time, which I think will certainly be sufficient to accompany two meals over the next week. I look forward to seeing how the plants get on in terms of producing new leaves during that time.

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No dig polytunnel #2

Posted on October 30, 2020 by james

Yesterday we moved a trailer full of compost into the tunnel and spread it down the cleared side to make a bed about two feet six inches wide (it’s easier to work in imperial for this because it’s a fourteen feet wide polytunnel, but that’s about 75cm). We saved most of the existing wood chip on the main path and lifted the weed control fabric, partly because it’s now in the wrong place, but also because I’m going to do without it in the future. The new path could then be laid using the old wood chip.

This is pretty much as far as it’s possible to go for the moment. The peppers now need lifting so the other beds can be removed. However, I had some lettuce and radish seedlings that I’d planted in modules as a bit of a last-minute experiment and have been waiting in the greenhouse for space to plant them, so they’re now in the new “no dig” bed.

Sadly I have had to pinch some slug pellets from my father-in-law and sprinkle some around the new plants 🙁 The slugs are absolutely rampant at the moment, not to mention enormous. They’ve already demolished two of the leaf radish plants I put in on the other side of the tunnel and are well into a couple more. It’s not something I like doing, but I feel my options are a bit restricted until I can get the problem back under control. At least birds can’t get into the tunnel at the moment.

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No dig polytunnel #1

Posted on October 29, 2020 by james

Yesterday we began work on converting the polytunnel to “no dig”. It’s a little tricky at the moment as there are still plants in some of the beds, but fortunately they’re all on one side of the tunnel and the beds on the other side are all empty.

The first job therefore was to remove all the rotting wooden sides on those beds and remove the soil we didn’t need after leveling everything out.

Sadly darkness overtook us before we could get much further, though we did also manage to remove the bed on the other side where I stood to take the above photo, which meant a table we had in the corner opposite could be moved there. It’s actually the darkest corner of the tunnel so it makes sense to have it in its new position, leaving the lighter corner for plants.

The next step is to get some compost in to make the bed down the right hand side in the photo. Possibly the plants that I want to stay in the tunnel for the foreseeable future can be transplanted into that and once the peppers have exhausted themselves for the year I’ll remove them and pot some up in the greenhouse to overwinter which will leave the beds on the left empty and ready for removal.

I also have some lettuce seedlings that really need to go out in the polytunnel as well. Perhaps that can be done this coming weekend.

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Swimming, 27th October 2020

Posted on October 27, 2020 by james

Well, today was a bit of a disaster. Again I struggled a bit, but there were three slower swimmers in the lane (two significantly slower) which made the entire thing a bit of a mess. I swam over someone several times and couldn’t settle into a rhythm or leave the wall when I wanted to. In the end I just had to satisfy myself with doing as many reps as I could at the required pace in whatever gaps I could find.

It’s half-term week so perhaps more people are turning up to swim this week. If so hopefully it will go back to normal next week.

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