Swimming, 2nd November 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

More technique work today, not forcing the pace and plenty of rest between reps. Turning up the speed for the 25m reps is showing up a few problems, probably because I may not be completely flat in the water and as I rotate that’s creating unwanted sideways forces. I need to try to get rid of that.

Posted in Swimming | Tagged , | Leave a comment

No dig diary, 1st November 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

I went outdoors this morning after some fairly torrential rain and quite stiff winds that are predicted to get stronger this afternoon to find my runner beans plants at an alarmingly jaunty angle. I therefore temporarily abandoned the plan to plant out my lettuces and set about stripping the bean plants off the supports and harvesting the remaining beans before the whole lot ended up on top of the sprouts. It wasn’t too bad until the rain started again. Fortunately it was just a relatively brief shower so that’s all sorted now other than taking down the supports, which can wait for slightly more pleasant conditions later in the week.

Posted in Smallholding, Veg plot | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Swimming, 1st November 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

I feel I’ve had a difficult time with swimming during October and haven’t posted about it whilst I’ve been trying to get things sorted. I’ve started taking things apart and come to the conclusion that I need to go back to basics and perhaps correct a few issues with technique. One area where I think I’m probably weak is that I don’t have very much body rotation in my front crawl, so I’m going to try to deal with that.

I’m giving myself plenty of time between reps for the moment to try to avoid swimming whilst fatigued and am really trying to focus hard on every single stroke. I’m still doing a block of 50m reps followed by 25m reps, but I’ve cut back to attempting sixteen of each to fit into the time available.

The rotation feels very unnatural at first and the process is tiring, but there’s only one way forward 🙂

Posted in Swimming | Tagged , | Leave a comment

No dig diary, 30th October 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

A random list of what’s happened this week…

I finished the one remaining path around the veggie plot, using up almost the last of my saved cardboard in the process, as well as quite a bit of the woodchip.

I’ve decided the leeks are ready to go.

And I shelled the first tray full of runner beans that have been drying in the greenhouse for about a month. Now they’re shelled I’ve put them on a tray to dry out a bit more. I’d guess this is about a quarter of the total harvest, with another quarter still in the greenhouse and the rest still on the plants. The intention is to use them as butter beans, though they’re a little smaller.

This morning I picked every single tomato that was worth having from the remaining vines and then removed all the vines from the polytunnel.

I’d allowed the bed the tomatoes were in to dry out a bit to try to get the tomatoes to ripen faster, but now the vines are out I have the leaky hose turned on again to give the beds a good soak before I plant lettuces for the winter. I’m actually a little concerned about the existing polytunnel lettuces. They don’t seem to be doing at all well, despite being apparently healthy plants when they went in. I suspect there may be a problem with (relatively) warm humid days when there’s not so much light. Quite a few have just gone mouldy and died 🙁

And whilst I was doing stuff in the polytunnel I picked all of the sweet peppers, japalenos and cayennes. They’re all still green, but things aren’t going to get any better at this point I don’t think. The jalapenos I shall pickle whilst the cayennes can go into the airing cupboard to dry. The sweet peppers we’ll probably eat some of in salads and the rest we might eat stuffed. I wonder if they’ll freeze ok from cooked if they’re stuffed with rice and other vegetables? Perhaps there’s only one way to find out 🙂

After a few false starts it does finally feel as though autumn is actually happening. Leaves are beginning to fall and at least some trees are starting to turn yellow though the landscape is still mostly green. I would not be at all surprised if we get to December and there are still trees that haven’t shed their leaves. Things really do feel completely topsy-turvy this year. Bearing in mind that November starts on Monday, the chile plants that I picked today are still flowering heavily. The runner bean plants that I still have to harvest the beans from (like those above) are still mostly leafy and green. Yet nothing actually seems to be really growing. I have coriander that germinated weeks ago and has basically stalled at about 30mm tall. It’s as if many plants have entered some sort of state of suspended animation over the last six weeks.

Anyhow, tomorrow I hope to plant out the seedling lettuces and mustards that I have in the greenhouse in place of the polytunnel tomatoes. After that I think it’s all planning for next year. Strange that despite having almost no work for the last eleven months, this last year seems to have flown by.

Posted in Smallholding, Veg plot | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Apple and pear slices again

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

When the apples and pears were done in the dehydrator I took a few slices for a test drive. The Ashmead’s Kernel tasted pretty much how you’d expect, I guess. The Bramley was clearly apple, but with an obvious sharpness that wasn’t so strong as to be unpleasant. The pear slices were absolutely lovely and surprisingly sweet. In fact they were so nice that this afternoon I completely refilled the dehydrator with pear slices alone. As I stripped the tree of its remaining fruit this morning (they were starting to drop off anyhow) I might well do a few more batches after that and still have plenty left over. It’s a nice variety of pear called Concorde, which is a cross of Conference and Doyenne du Comice if I recall correctly.

I did discover that pears need to be just a little on the firm side if they’re to go through the peeler. I had a few softer ones today and they were much more awkward to use.

Posted in Orchard, Smallholding | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Apple and pear slices

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

I liberated about a dozen of the Ashmead’s Kernel this evening, broke out the peeler/corer/slicer machine and filled five dehydrator trays with apple slices. Then I started looking at the large numbers of pears sitting in the kitchen waiting for something to happen to them. Hmmm… Turns out it works quite well with pears, too 🙂 I did have to slice off the top 15mm of a few of the larger pears to fit them in and it’s perhaps a little wasteful because it takes out more of the pear near the neck than is strictly necessary, but then it’s quite efficient at removing the main part of the core, so quite possibly it all balances out. Ultimately of course, if I dry them then they’ll get eaten whereas if they get too ripe to be usable then they’ll be heading for the compost heap, so wasting a quite small amount to ensure that a far larger amount gets eaten surely has to be a good thing. I filled another five trays with those. There were still two trays left, so out of interest I sliced enough Bramley apples to fill them. As cooking apples they’re obviously a bit too sharp to want to eat raw (perhaps I should try some more cheese?), but if they’re ok once dried then there’ll be a lot more of those going into the dehydrator, too.

Posted in Orchard, Smallholding | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Apples, apples, everywhere

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

Today I finally got around to collecting apples for juicing. The apples haven’t been great this year, as I may have already said. We’ve only really had a decent crop on the ones that flowered late, which is mainly cider apples. However, there was a decent harvest of Ashmead’s Kernel (all on the right hand side in the photo) and a sackful of what was still left of all the other eating/juicing apples (quite a mixture — Blenheim Orange, Ellison’s Orange, Tom Putt, Sunset, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Charles Ross, Braeburn and possibly a few others).

I suspect there’s somewhere between 120kg and 150kg in total. If we get fifteen gallons of juice from that lot I’ll be very happy indeed (ten might be nearer the mark), but that will wait until my daughter is around to help.

I also picked crab apples until I got bored 🙂

They’re now in the freezer until we get some time to make crab apple jelly, and anything else I can think of. There are actually loads more crab apples, but harvesting them is so tedious. And they seem to go rotten within about thirty seconds of being removed from the tree (which is why they’re in the freezer now).

Posted in Smallholding, Veg plot | Tagged , | Leave a comment

No dig diary, October 20th 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

I wasn’t expecting much of today as rain was forecast for the entire day, but other than a few showers and a thunderstorm that woke me up at about half past five this morning it has not materialised. Possibly the sky has just run out of rain for the time being, having bucketed down most of yesterday evening into the early hours. Instead it’s been quite sunny, if a bit breezy, but still comfortable to be outside in shorts and a t-shirt. I’ve therefore taken the opportunity to get more compost and woodchip down on the new bed and in fact have managed to finish it all.

The area of woodchip at this end is quite large because it means there are no awkward corners to mow into around the end of the raspberry canes (which are out of shot to the left), but I didn’t want to extend the bed any further because it would either make a narrow point in the path or I’d have to taper the end of the bed. I could still do the latter if I end up putting some fruit bushes in; it’s hardly a huge amount of work to do.

It’s possible that I’ll add a little more compost early next year, but we’ll see how it goes with what’s already there first. Otherwise there should be no more work required until I start planting some time towards the end of March, I guess.

I do have some clover to clear up at this end of the path on the left. If I can’t dig that out I’ll probably mulch over the top with more cardboard and woodchip. And speaking of cardboard, I reckon I probably have about enough left to finish the path I still need on the other side of the plot, so it looks to have worked out quite nicely.

Posted in Smallholding, Veg plot | Tagged , | Leave a comment

No dig diary, October 18th 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

Today started with a fine drizzle. Nothing major, so I pulled out some more cardboard and laid it on the grass and collected together my tools at which point it started to rain properly 😀

I had to stick at it until I’d got enough compost down to keep the cardboard in place, by which time I was more than a touch damp. At least I’ve got about two thirds of the bed done now, although it could happily have a couple more barrow loads of compost on top so it’s as thick as the part I did yesterday.

The forecast suggests that most of the day tomorrow will be dry, so I’ll try to get more done if it turns out to be correct. It may well be the most significant change I make in the veggie plot this winter, so it would be nice to get it sorted. Otherwise it looks as though I shall be stuck with indoor jobs. Not that I’m short of those…

Posted in Smallholding, Veg plot | Tagged , | Leave a comment

No dig diary, October 17th 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

After mowing the apiary and doing a bit of watering in the greenhouse this morning I found a larger pot to transplant the pineapple into. The roots weren’t actually as large as I was expecting given that it was bowing the sides out in the 3″ plastic pot it was in. Hopefully it will be happy in this one for the winter, in the kitchen window.

The dull green leaves are the original plant, with the three brighter coloured new ones growing around it.

I ran out of time to harvest apples, but as I really need a lot of my saved cardboard shifting (it’s in the log store blocking access to the logs which we’ll quite possibly be wanting to get at in the next few weeks), I did start work on the asparagus bed, which is going to go right here:

It’s going to be another 1.2m wide bed about 15.5m long. I marked out the bed and path and then mowed the grass as short as the mower would allow. I went to fetch a shovel and fork from the “two-holer” (our veggie plot toolshed genuinely is a disused outside toilet) and found that some squatters have moved in.

The air was full of them, too. They kept landing on me and getting caught in my hair or falling inside the collar of my shirt, which isn’t very pleasant when their reaction to stress is to release a foul-smelling liquid 🙁

Anyhow, I loaded up the trailer with some of the larger pieces of cardboard and covered about half the area of the new bed.

Then opened up compost heap #2 which had developed an interesting case of mushrooms

The compost was still slightly warm so clearly it hasn’t finished breaking down yet, but I needed to spread it on the cardboard to keep it in place and I shan’t be planting anything there for at least four months and perhaps nearer five, so I’m sure it won’t do any harm. I’ve spread it quite thickly for this bed (the suggestion seems to be to use about 4″ on a new bed, but I’ve probably got at least 6″), and tried to even out a bit of a slope in the ground.

Hopefully I can get the rest of the bed finished tomorrow. Then I’ll put at least one more layer of cardboard down on the bare section to the right (which is going to be the path around the outside) to try to stop the grass and weeds getting through too quickly and cover it with a decent layer of woodchip. I still have another path to make on the other side of the plot too, so perhaps I can get that done at the same time.

Some of the seed companies sell ten each of early, mid and late varieties of asparagus crowns which seems like it might be a good way to start. I might be able to squeeze three plants across the bed depending on the spacing requirements, but even if I just go for two rows I’ll probably only need half the length of the bed. I can’t decide at the moment whether I’ll grow some more plants from seed (because it’s a lot cheaper), or maybe use the rest of the bed for something different — possibly some currant bushes and blueberries/gooseberries or something like that.

Posted in Smallholding, Veg plot | Tagged , , | Leave a comment