She’s still there 😀
Not looking like flying much today, possibly because it’s actually been quite chilly and breezy. She just seems to be curled up under the ridge waiting for a warm day. There’s an enormous spider eying her up for dinner too by the looks of it. That could turn into King Kong vs. Godzilla.
Looks like I might have to start knocking her nest down every few days once she starts building it, until she gets the idea that it’s not a good choice of home.
Yay! More weeding today! This time the polytunnel and Frankenstein’s greenhouse thanks to the day being distinctly cooler. Given that these are covered structures and that I’ve weeded them twice already this year I don’t entirely understand where the weeds are coming from, but they were clearly in need of attention. The polytunnel still has the stragglers of our Winter salads growing, so I can’t spread compost in that just yet, but I probably can do in the greenhouse as they only things in there are the potted strawberries.
And on the subject of strawberries, I also took the sides off the raised bed that used to be their home. Disappointingly I couldn’t find any timber that was worth recycling. Most of it was rotten on the inside and several pieces just fell apart as I lifted them off.
I’ve been thinking ahead to a time when we might need to put the chickens into covered housing for the Winter because of bird ‘flu. It struck me that a polytunnel would probably do the job, but we’d need a second one because we will have our winter salads growing in the first. During the Summer of course it could be used for food crops and having the chickens in after that would hopefully get rid of any weeds as well as fertilising the soil for the next year.
I looked around and found a whole range of cheap ones on that South American river place and decided that I’d give one a go. They all seem to be much of a muchness, though door designs and bracing sometimes vary. At the same time I ordered some additional galvanised rebar “hooks” to hold it down as we’re a little exposed to the elements here.
When it arrived I can’t deny that the frame felt rather lightweight, but assembly went quite easily despite the instructions not being entirely stunning.
To make life a little simpler, I spread cardboard and compost inside before putting the cover on.
And finally the cover. It doesn’t have a sufficiently long “skirt” to allow it to be buried in the ground so I weighted it down with concrete blocks instead. The ties inside are a bit naff too: they’re made of the same material as the cover and don’t tie very neatly. There are also some velcro ties which do appear to be better.
I plan to use it for squashes that are a bit marginal outside this year (and even have them in the ground already). We’ll see how it goes.
I completed the last bit of outdoor weeding today, at long last. And in fact then completed the spreading of compost on the main veggie plot in the bed I had just weeded. I really should have got that done ages ago, but that’s how bad the weather has been. It feels like something of a milestone, anyhow. Hopefully there’ll be something to plant in it soon.
I weighed the trays of eggs in the incubators this morning and wasn’t happy with the results. They’d both lost twice as much weight as they should have. Investigation of the pump for the first incubator showed that the water tube had sealed itself together, so I replaced that and made sure it was working, raising the humidity inside at the same time to try to limit the weight loss a bit more. The other incubator is more basic, so I just added more water to the trays inside.
I then closed up the vents on each to further raise the humidity. Hopefully that will be sufficient to get things back on track. I’ll check again in two or three days.
Today I dropped over to take supers off some of my hives that have been next to a field of oilseed rape. I’m a bit late with this and it may already have crystallised, but we’ll see.
It’s a quite unbalanced harvest. Clearly some colonies are doing much better than others. One had a full sealed super and had started on a second whereas another had nothing at all.
Harvested today, a variety I’ve not tried before but thought I might as well give a go because I’m struggling to get hold of any International Kidney. These are Red Duke of York.
They seem to be perfectly acceptable to me, but I’m not really sure they’re up to International Kidney as far as my wife is concerned.
I went to hunt for some kit in my bee shed today and as I turned around to close the door afterwards almost had my head taken off by a queen hornet leaving. I hung around for a while and she went back to a position under the ridge of the roof, behind a gusset that I added to give the roof more strength (presumably why I didn’t see her in the first place). I can’t have her setting up home there. She doesn’t seem to like the door being open, so I’ve propped it open for now and we’ll see what happens. If she doesn’t want to move on voluntarily then I might have to be a little more firm.
My concerns about one of my colonies potentially swarming were not helped today by far more action around my bait hive. I tried to follow the flight paths of the scouts though and they seem to be heading off the property to the north west so (crossed fingers) they’re not mine. I guess we’ll find out for sure soon.
Well, I’ve run out of compost for sowing at the moment, but I can buy a little time perhaps. I’ve not sown carrots nor parsnips yet due to the weather, so today was time to get on with them. I was going to experiment with multiple sowings of parsnips, but it’s way too late for that now so they all went in together. There’s still time for more sowings of carrots though, so they didn’t 🙂
I also got a bit more weeding done and spread more woodchip on some of the paths that still need doing. I had something like eight dumpy bags full of woodchip when I started and now I’m down to the last two because so much needs redoing. The old stuff has just been swallowed up by the mud.
