Memory Lane, 16th June 2023: It’s a red deer, dear!

Posted on May 23, 2024 by james

A few candid shots when this one turned up in the field behind our house today. I assume it must have come down off Exmoor looking for food. It’s quite rare to see them here.

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What to do with the old strawberry bed soil?

Posted on May 23, 2024 by james

Having taken the sides off the old strawberry bed, the problem remained of what to do with the soil it contained — probably about half a tonne. The bed was next to a concrete pad with a dwarf wall of concrete blocks around it. I think it used to be the base for a large dog kennel. I put an old garden table on the pad and used to use it for standing plants on, but the table succumbed to terminal rot and is now on the bonfire.

I decided that life would be much easier from the point of view of maintaining the veggie plot and accessing the compost area with the tractor if I got rid of the pad altogether. I almost wish I hadn’t 😀

The blocks forming the dwarf wall were buried about a third of their height in the ground. I had to dig around the outside of many of them so I could dislodge them, and being old “proper” concrete blocks, they were very heavy. Eventually I had removed enough of them to discover that the pad was concrete laid on brick rubble and about 5″/125mm deep. I couldn’t break it with a sledgehammer as it was.

Eventually I noticed a crack in the pad and managed to free a corner and drag it away. That spurred me on to see if I could somehow break some more. I ended up with a couple of very large pieces that I used the digger to lift by the edge and lay back down on top of some of the removed blocks. That allowed the sledgehammer to be used to rather better effect and after much effort I managed to break the rest into pieces I could pick up.

After clearing the area I started to drag the soil from the bed back over the top of the hole I’d made, at which point I found absolutely loads of bindweed. I did my best to get it out. I reckon I had several kilos of roots by the end of it.

That done, a little “smoothing” of the soil and in a few weeks no-one will ever know there was ever anything there…

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Queen hornet update

Posted on May 23, 2024 by james

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.

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No dig diary, 22nd May 2024

Posted on May 23, 2024 by james

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.

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Memory Lane, 14th June 2023: A cheap second polytunnel

Posted on May 23, 2024 by james

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.

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No dig diary, 21st May 2024

Posted on May 23, 2024 by james

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.

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Chicken hatching update

Posted on May 23, 2024 by james

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.

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Spring Harvest

Posted on May 23, 2024 by james

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.

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Memory Lane, 14th June 2023: First new potatoes of the season

Posted on May 23, 2024 by james

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.

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Well, that’s hornet!

Posted on May 23, 2024 by james

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.

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