No dig diary, 7th August 2021

Posted on August 17, 2021 by james

I think I need some practice at plaits 🙂

That’s probably about a quarter of the garlic harvest this year. Perhaps a touch more, but not much.

Despite the rubbish weather I have also been out in the garden a bit. I’ve lifted most of the netting off the brassicas as they were getting too big for it, and been out on caterpillar patrol. I’ve also sown more lettuces, and planted out the ones I sowed a few weeks back.

In the polytunnel I’ve tidied up the butternut squashes so they’re not taking over quite so much. I’m a little concerned that I can’t see many fruit, though that might just be down to the amount of foliage. The cucumbers are certainly not having a problem in that respect. I removed a dozen and a half of the older ones to just leave the more recent fruit. Not sure what I’ll do with them yet, but if all else fails the chickens love them. The coriander that I planted for leaves and left when it started to flower now has lots of seeds, so I’ve cut the heads off and removed the plants. I might have to make a paper bag to put the heads in just to dry them off before I separate the seed for use in the kitchen.

One mystery I have yet to solve is what’s eating my basil. A lot of the leaves suddenly have large holes in. I’d suspect slugs or snails, but it’s not really a friendly environment for them in there as the surface of the compost and path is very dry.

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Swimming, 6th August 2021

Posted on August 17, 2021 by james

Last swim of the week. Only three this week because the timetable has been changing too much 🙁 It didn’t feel good though. The lane was quite busy and I felt I was struggling to find a rhythm as a result. In the end I missed the last two 50m reps because getting the timings right just wasn’t working out.

(50m) 42.35, 43.00, 43.51, 44.11, 43.91, 43.59, 44.12, 43.80, 44.03, 44.29, 43.30, 43.68, 44.45, 44.92, 44.81, 44.97, 45.65, 44.50

(25m) 18.63, 18.69, 18.5, 19.01, 18.8, 19.06, 18.46, 19.12, 19.33, 19.06, , 18.87, 0.29, 18.46, 19.33

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Swimming, 4th August 2021

Posted on August 4, 2021 by james

Whilst the lifeguards told me the water was still at 30.2°C today, it definitely felt cooler in the pool than it has done for the last two weeks which was a huge relief.

It really showed, too. My 50m times were so much quicker than they have been, and I managed to complete the full set for the first time since the pool became too hot. I think I can do a little better because I messed up a couple of turns mistakenly thinking someone was on the wall as I came in, but for the moment this is my best performance ever.

Unfortunately as we were a little late getting to the pool there wasn’t much time left for 25m reps. I feel as though I’m struggling to improve with these. I know I can go faster, but perhaps attempting them after a set of 50s doesn’t really help. If the pool sessions were longer I could take a longer rest interval which might improve things. I could also work on reducing the interval between my 50m reps, but whilst I seem to be improving with those I’m slightly reluctant to do so. I guess I ought to though. With the new watch I can time intervals more accurately than going off the pool pace clock which does give me the opportunity to reduce the interval in smaller increments, potentially making it easier to do.

(50m) 42.19, 42.40, 41.77, 42.04, 43.81, 42.11, 42.90, 43.02, 43.13, 42.42, 42.59, 42.76, 42.71, 42.84, 42.66, 43.30, 43.28, 42.52, 42.30, 41.67

(25m) untimed, 19.48, 18.87, 19.23, 18.53, 18.97

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No dig diary, 3rd August 2021

Posted on August 3, 2021 by james

“Looks like we’re gonna need another compost heap!”

Hopefully it will sink down over the next few days, but actually given the volume of material that’s now going into these, I think starting up a third is pretty much inevitable. Come October we’ll hopefully be pressing apples and there’s plenty of waste from that. The chickens can’t eat all of it. The thermometer in the centre is well below what’s been added in the last week. It’s still very warm in there.

I’m guessing that if it’s too hot then it’s pretty much a self-correcting problem — the thermophiles doing the initial breakdown will presumably produce lots of heat, right up to the point where it gets too hot for them to survive, at which point the amount of heat generated drops off as they die out. Once it’s sufficiently cool then more will migrate in from the cooler areas of the heap and it all kind of balances out. I guess 😀

We’ve been eating tomatoes from the polytunnel on an “as needed” basis so far, but today I took the first major harvest of the larger varieties. These will get turned into sauce for pizza or pasta.

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Swimming, 2nd August 2021

Posted on August 3, 2021 by james

At last the pool is a little cooler. Not much, certainly, and the lifeguard was a little coy about the actual temperature when I asked, but whilst it didn’t feel as though it was back to normal, it did at least feel cooler and I had a better session even if it was a little truncated thanks to arriving slightly late.

My times were:

(50m) 44.11, 43.68, 43.31, 43.46, 42.90, 43.71, 43.55, 43.11, 42.59, 43.31, 43.26, 43.67, 43.09, skip, 42.86, 42.47, 43.07, 42.36, no time, 41.91

(25m) 18.80, no time, 18.91, 19.00, 18.94, 19.06

I’m very pleased to see so many times back below 43s for the 50m reps. Hopefully that can improve further as the pool cools down.

Again there are limited numbers of afternoon sessions this week. I’m wondering if this is the new school holidays timetable. It’s not ideal if it is. I’d consider swimming at one of the other local pools if they have more convenient session times, but the main choice is ridiculously shallow 🙁

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No dig diary, 31st July 2021

Posted on August 3, 2021 by james

This morning I cut lots of broccoli heads, some of which we’ve given to my parents and siblings who we saw in the afternoon. The rest may well be turned into soup or pesto. It looks like they’re not the only thing we have a glut of either: I reckon we could have cucumbers for breakfast, lunch and dinner at the moment and still have some left over. It’s a tricky one, that. Two plants might well be sufficient for our needs, but if you only start with two and one dies that’s not good, but if I have three or four established plants then I hate to pull some of them out 😀

The large and small white butterflies are out in force at the moment (I counted nine all on the same verbena plant at one point) and I really need to take the netting off some of the more mature brassicas that have been in the ground for a while such as the sprouts and earlier plantings of cabbage. I know Charles Dowding sprays his brassicas with a bacterium that attacks caterpillars (bacillus thuringiensis), but despite being freely available on that long river place (amongst others), it appears that it’s not actually certified for non-commercial use in the UK (and therefore not legal to sell as a “domestic” pesticide, I believe) so I’m in two minds about the idea of using it. The butterflies have shown no interest at all in my nasturtiums this year. I’m wondering if that’s because the leaves are variegated rather than plain green. I’ll have to try a different variety next year.

I also made a first sowing of mustards and other leaves for winter salads (from memory, mustards Golden Streaks, Red Frills and Pizzo, salad (not wild) rocket, leaf radish and corn salad). It’s possible these will be ready too early for the winter, but I intend to make a couple more sowings every fortnight to see how they go. I sieved some of my green waste compost through a fine sieve (about 6mm?) to use as a planting medium. If that works I’ll be very happy as it avoids both peat and coir. It certainly looks good enough, so I’m feeling hopeful.

When I started on my “no dig” adventure last year, I wrote myself a sowing plan for each month (each week of each month, in fact). It’s quite shocking that we’re now back to where I started with August. I can’t believe the last twelve months have gone by so fast. I’m really not sure quite how that happened.

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No dig diary, 30th July 2021

Posted on August 3, 2021 by james

It is said that all actions have quinsequonces…

I went out to the greenhouse this evening to collect my kale plants with the intention of planting them out, to discover that having quite successfully netted all of my brassicas and kept the pests off, butterflies have repeatedly raided the greenhouse in retaliation and the eight kale plants were smothered in caterpillars ranging in size from perhaps as much as 40mm down to barely visible 🙁 I picked off as many as I could find — about seventy of the little blighters — and planted them out anyway, but I’ve sown another batch just in case as they’re a pig to find, being almost the perfect colour match for the kale leaves.

I also planted out another batch of spring onions amongst the lettuces that are almost ready. We actually have a few left of the ones I sowed last August and over-wintered, but they’re now “proper” onions. Once they got too fat for normal spring onions I thought I might as well let them grow on and we’ll use them with the rest.

The main veggie plot is looking a little wind-swept in the aftermath of Storm Pervert (or whatever this one is called). Fortunately the beans are still vertical, but a couple of the sweetcorn have fallen over and will need staking upright tomorrow I think. We had a self-seeded sunflower next to the greenhouse as tall as me that my daughter had adopted, but sadly it has snapped at the base and will now have to be sacrificed to the great compost god.

It’s not all bad news though. In the polytunnel I found these hiding away at the bottom of one of the aubergine plants:

And in the no dig greenhouse there are fruit on both varieties of melon at last. Hopefully they’ll ripen fully.

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Swimming, 30th July 2021

Posted on August 3, 2021 by james

Final session of the week! No improvement in the water temperature, but the manager was at the reception desk when I came in so I discussed it with him. It turns out that some work has been done on the heating system and as a result it is more efficient, but that’s meant the water temperature is now too high (no kidding). They’re apparently getting someone in at the weekend to look at it, so perhaps it will be better next week.

Times for today were:

(50m) 43.05, 44.28, 44.36, 45.36, 45.23, 45.45, 45.69, 45.12, 45.68, 44.27, 45.80, 44.95, 45.36, 44.82, skip, 43.56, 43.65, 44.42

(25m) 18.80, 19.52, 19.62, 19.51, 19.11, 19.49, 19.11, 18.65, 18.55, 18.85

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Swimming, 29th July 2021

Posted on August 3, 2021 by james

Another warm one 🙁

There was a bit of a strange group in the fast lane today, too. A couple of girls who weren’t even in their teens, another girl who might have been late teens, and someone I took to be her dad. The two younger girls weren’t slow, but did randomly change strokes which was awkward at times. The older girl wasn’t quick though, and her dad was even slower, and did breaststroke every other length.

Surprisingly my times for the session look much better than they have been since the pool got so warm. It was still insanely hard work though.

(50m) 42.12, 43.38, 43.39, 44.75, 43.49, 44.24, 44.18, 43.79, skip, 42.18, 42.43, 43.81, 43.40, 45.31, skip, 44.02, 45.12, skip, 42.68, 43.68

(25m) 18.79, 19.47, 19.12, 19.43, 19.13, 19.13, 19.15, no time

I know I should have stopped after the third skipped 50m rep, but given that I’m so far off where I should be anyhow I didn’t think there was much point. I’m really just trying to get through this until the pool is a reasonable temperature again.

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No dig diary, 28th July 2021

Posted on August 3, 2021 by james

It’s a veggie day today and we’re eating loads from the garden for dinner this evening, including the very last of the peas.

Also on the menu this evening is broccoli (calabrese). This is a vegetable that I need to get my head around a bit better. It very much seems to be “all or nothing”. I’ve made a few successional sowings, but I reckon the plants near each other must be communicating somehow 🙂 A quick count up last weekend gave us fourteen heads ready to eat and obviously they don’t hang around very long. I can’t complain as I’ve never grown so much good-looking broccoli before, but next year I think I’ll have to go a bit mad with the successional thing, perhaps sowing and planting out two or three plants every couple of weeks and even then investigating ways to use it so it won’t go to waste. I’ve just seen a recipe for broccoli and stilton soup that sounds quite appealing, so I might have to try that later this week.

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