No dig diary, 30th March 2024

Posted on March 30, 2024 by james

Such a pleasure to have a day without rain!

I was on a mission today, starting with planting out all my onion seedlings. I reckon there are in the region of 700 plants, a mix of red and brown onions. That took a fair while 🙂

Once they were done I build the supports for the peas (for pods) and planted those down the middle of a bed, with some clumps of radishes in the space alongside. Some of the peas were really far larger than they ideally should have been, but given the weather we’ve had, what can you do? I’m a bit concerned that pheasant or other pests might try to eat the seedlings, so I’ve made a wall of mesh cloches around them which I’ll leave in place until they’re established.

The rest of the day was construction, making up the supports for sugar snap peas and sweet peas. They’re ready to go out as well, so that’s tomorrow’s job. Hopefully I can get through a few others that need doing, too.

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Memory Lane, 30th October 2022: Not much room left

Posted on March 29, 2024 by james

I’ve often wondered what triggers this to happen…

Given that we’ve lived here almost twenty years, it’s common to see mushrooms pop up in roughly the same places each year. And there are some that appear where I’ve been spreading compost recently, which is perhaps no surprise given that it may contain a certain amount of woodchip.

And then there are these, suddenly appearing where I’ve never seen any before.

How did they get there?

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So I might build a “polycrub” sooner than planned

Posted on March 29, 2024 by james

Given the problems I’ve been having with my cheapy polytunnel, it struck me today that I could turn it into a kind of polycrub given, say, some recycled scaffold boards for the sides and six sheets of twinwall polycarbonate.

I don’t think I’d need to use particularly thick polycarbonate, but even so I am slightly unsure about how well it might bend over the relatively tight radius of the tunnel. But then it occurred to me that I might be able use the sheets horizontally and overlap the edges (like tiles). Where it comes down to the timber on the sides I might even be able to install gutters for collecting rainwater.

Even three metre sheets of 6mm twinwall polycarbonate aren’t exactly cheap, but I suspect it might be possible to get them and all the necessary fixings for around £300. I know there’s somewhere local that sells off used scaffold boards, too.

Can’t let it get too far up the priority list though. Need to get some other projects finished first.

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No dig diary, 29th March 2024

Posted on March 29, 2024 by james

You’re not going to believe this: we had a load more rain today. More than once I was forced to take shelter in a greenhouse or polytunnel to avoid the horizontal raindrops. I was watering in the polytunnel at one point at the rain was so hard that I didn’t dare leave!

There was a bit of lull this afternoon however, and I took the opportunity to finally plant out my Charlotte potatoes. Only two weeks after I planned to have it done. It was a bit unpleasant because the ground is so wet, but there are plenty of volunteer potatoes coming up so I didn’t think it was going to cause the new ones any major stress. So but for about three metres that’s one bed filled up already 😀

Hopefully I can get a lot more planting out sorted tomorrow, when the weather man has promised me on pain of death that it is going to be sunny all day.

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Memory Lane, 30th October 2022: Yes, we have no tomatoes

Posted on March 28, 2024 by james

We’ve reached that point. I decided that what tomatoes there are aren’t going to ripen any further on the vines, so I picked absolutely everything.

and then removed all the plants from the polytunnel.

I’d missed spreading compost on the beds earlier in the year for some reason, so I spread a bit about now the plants were out of the way (other than the peppers)

Oh, the luffa fruit were also picked and the plants removed

And then the Winter salads transplanted in around the pepper plants.

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What on Earth is a polycrub?

Posted on March 28, 2024 by james

I came across these for the first time today. A polycrub is, apparently, part way between a polytunnel and a greenhouse. It is (can be) a similar size to a polytunnel and has the usual hooped frame that a polytunnel does, but has a twin-wall polycarbonate sheet skin as might be found on a greenhouse where glass was impractical. The lower parts of the side walls might be made from timber.

Given that our weather is becoming more stormy and violent they might be a solution to covered growing that is preferable to both a greenhouse and a polytunnel. It’s not like I need any more project ideas, but it might be an interesting thing to try to build on a small scale to see how it works out here in the south-west UK.

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Is it possible to build an ark out of ply?

Posted on March 28, 2024 by james

Because I think I might need to 😀

Today has been possibly one of the most grim days weatherwise that I can recall here. My wife apparently woke up to blue skies and (unforecast) frost. By the time I’d dragged myself into consciousness it was raining. And raining. And raining a bit more. Oh, and some fairly serious winds, too. Mid-morning the gutters had given up any pretence of trying to cope with the volume of water and it was just pouring over the tops. I went outside to check nothing was too much amiss and discovered a small stream running down the drive and into the workshop. A gully that was dry but muddy yesterday was perhaps 45cm (a foot and a half) full of rainwater. Despite the fact that we live on the side of a hill and there’s really no level ground at all, water was just sitting on top of the soil 🙁

Like I said, grim.

Most of my day seems to have been spent putting the cover back on the cheapo polytunnel (four times, I think) and trying to work out how to make it stay put. More on that another time.

Now of course we have clear sky (at least partly), but it’s all good because more rain is forecast tomorrow. What a relief we’re not heading for a drought.

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Memory Lane, 26th October 2022: Is this the last of the peppers?

Posted on March 27, 2024 by james

I’m really not sure, to be honest. It’s not the last of the fruit on the plants and the weather is still very mild, so it may well be that they aren’t. We’ll just have to wait and see if there’s enough warmth left for them to ripen.

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More plywood than I know what to do with

Posted on March 27, 2024 by james

A local business generates a fair bit of scrap birch ply, mostly 5.5mm, but some larger sizes too. I’ve been exchanging small amounts of cash for their offcut sheets (which are often just under 4′ or 1220mm square and therefore aren’t useful for cutting a second part from) and building various beehive parts from them (more later). In the last week or so however they’ve apparently cut something like fifty sheets, so today I nipped down there and filled the trailer.

I now really do have more than I have any idea what to do with, or even places to store. More beehive parts may well be a start, but only if I get more colonies this year.

I also picked up a large plastic sack containing perhaps 30kg of sawdust which I’m hoping will come in useful once I get the compost toilet into use (more later, again).

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No dig diary, 27th March 2024

Posted on March 27, 2024 by james

The weather still isn’t on my side 🙁 This afternoon has been wet and windy, but before it got too bad I did at least get a few more wheelbarrows of compost spread on the beds in the veg plot. I also realised that of the main seven beds, two and a half were used for potatoes last year and have no need of a further dressing now as I used a second one last year instead of earthing up the plants. That actually saves me a fair bit of work, about which I am certainly happy.

Frankenstein’s Greenhouse still contains the strawberries that I am trying to get an early crop from. They’re a bit in the way, or will be when I start wanting to plant stuff in the beds. Today it struck me that what I really need is a long shelf along the back wall that I can put the pots on so they’d be out of the way. I’ll have to have a look at what’s in the scrap pile…

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