I’ve played with creating a cutting garden over the last couple of years, but this year I’m definitely committed to it. In part that might mean creating another bed, but that’s probably not a major deal as we have one flower bed that needs (re?)moving anyhow.
The first thing to be sown for the cutting garden is Antirrhinums. Specifically the deep red Black Prince and white/pink Lipstick Silver. They’re now in the propagator keeping the many trays of sweet peppers and chiles company.
Today was onion sowing day. I sowed six module trays of red onions (Carmen) and five module trays of yellow/brown onions (Yellow Rynsburger), four seeds to a cell, so 880 (or thereabouts) in total. We do eat an awful lot of onions 😀
Not desperately exciting, is it? 😀
In somewhat smaller numbers however, I also sowed a tray each of two varieties of mustard (Red Frills and Golden Streaks) which might end up being the first plants in the main vegetable plot this year, as well as a couple of module trays of peas for shoots. These are left-over peas that didn’t get sown in previous years. When I’m done with peas (of whatever variety) each year I just throw what’s left into a box to use for shoots the following year. I fill a module tray with compost, press it down in each of the cells, drop three peas in each one and cover them up to the top of the cell. They’ll get planted out once they’re about 5cm tall and the shoots will be used in salads.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0lxkl3gd6jo
No further comment necessary I think.
Well, I don’t know. It’s a mystery.
If anyone knows what this is, please do say.
Is allegedly going to be eating plenty of fibre. Last year was apparently the year for protein.
Honestly, I just don’t get it. Why do these fads even exist? If people are so worried about their diet and health, can’t they just stop doomscrolling for fifteen minutes and actually plan to eat a balanced diet and consume less crap?
Says the man who is going to eat pizza for dinner this evening 😀 Though to be fair, it is pizza made from home-made dough, with sauce made from home-grown tomatoes and no ingredients that most people wouldn’t recognise or that require the use of a chemistry set.
My plug spawn arrived on Thursday, so today I have drilled out the logs I put to one side and hammered in the plugs. I don’t know if it’s just this willow, but once they were hammered in they became almost invisible so marking the spacings etc. is pretty much a requirement.
The two closest to the camera are Summer Oyster and the two furthest away are Shiitake.
For now, to shelter them from the wind, I’ve put them in our log store. I should probably label them so no-one decides to use them for heating 😀
I have one log left. I’m tempted to find some other variety to try to grow in it though I’m not sure what at the moment.
Ok, drill bits, if we’re being accurate. Since I found the three braces, I thought I might sort through all the old drill bits that were scattered around the workshop in various boxes and drawers.
As well as standard metalworking bits, it looks as though we have bits for a brace, masonry drills, morse taper bits, plug cutting bits, SDS bits, spade bits, fly cutters and at least one countersink bit.
I imagine they’re almost all imperial sizes, too.
This one is a mystery though. It possibly looks like a rasp, but why the teeth on the end if that’s the case?
#2 in an irregular series of “Tools that I have too many of”.
And what is the plural of “brace”, anyhow? Brice? Braceodes?
During “Operation Tidy Workshop”, I found these. They’re quite lovely tools, though I have no idea when I would ever use them these days.
Then I found a third, with which I assume it is also possible to drill around corners 😀
(No, really, I know it’s a ratchet.)
Our Ooni pizza oven sees quite a bit of use, mostly for garlic bread, pizzas and calzone, but we’ve even used it to cook an entire meal once when there was a twelve-hour power cut when we had friends staying for the weekend.
So it was a bit of a surprise when I put in the last of five pizzas a couple of weeks ago and very shortly afterwards hear quite an obvious snapping noise. There wasn’t much I could do at that point not least because it was dark, so I just continued cooking the pizza and then let the oven cool down.
Daylight revealed the horrible story.
I have no idea why the stone would have cracked, particularly after already cooking a number of pizzas. Obviously it’s a bit chilly at this time of year, but enough to cause significant thermal stress in the stone? Unconvinced.
Anyhow, Ooni were very good about it and arranged a replacement for us which we are going to test drive this evening.
Recently I had the opportunity to buy a second-hand but barely-used electric 20-frame extractor. As it was being offered a fair bit cheaper than the 12-frame model I was contemplating, it seemed like a no-brainer. The only minor issue was that it was a 250-mile round trip to pick it up and that turned into an adventure that I really didn’t need, but more of that later.
So here it is, complete with tangential screens. Obviously I’ve not had the opportunity to use it in anger yet, but it all looks very tidy and test drives just fine.
Hopefully there’ll be a worthwhile Spring harvest this year to test it out on.
