Today I stripped the pea plants of the last of their pods. In the end there were far more than I expected.
Shelling them was pretty tedious, but they’re now all in the freezer. The space the plants occupied will be cleared and be used for planting salads and winter brassicas.
I wrote that yesterday’s session felt quite good though I had no concrete way to judge as my stopwatch, err, stopped. Permanently. Fortunately I have a spare (a spare spare in fact, as my son was using my first spare) so was able to use that today.
How little I realised yesterday. Of my 50m reps I had a couple of 42s and one of 43s when I had to avoid another slower swimmer at the turn, but sixteen of the remaining reps were 41s and the last was 39s — the first time I’ve ever been lower than 40s when I’ve done this set.
My reps in my 25m set were still all in the 18s which was a bit disappointing by comparison, but given my earlier performance perhaps that’s to be expected. I’m certainly not at all unhappy. Quite the opposite in fact. Overall it’s my best performance ever.
This morning I made up a temporary drying rack for the onions by laying some 15mm mesh plastic netting over a large piece of weldmesh. This is all of the onions I lifted yesterday. I think I’m going to need more space.
It’s tempting to look at building some sort of open-sided shed that can have drying racks suspended inside.
This evening I measured the temperature of the compost heap again, after adding all that material to it yesterday…
73°C! That’s a new record for me, but seems completely crazy.
I also lifted the remaining onions, other than those that I planted early this year when I panicked a bit that we didn’t have enough. They’re still a bit small so I’ll leave them longer. Otherwise though, I’m all done now.
A far higher proportion of the onions than usual (particularly the brown ones) attempted to bolt. I’ve been thinking on this and wondering if perhaps it’s that sowing them before last winter meant that they were sufficiently mature during the spring that when April was so cold they behaved as it it was winter again, thus developing as if they were two year old plants once it warmed up again and trying to flower. It’s the best guess I have for now, anyhow.
For whatever reason it was relatively quiet at the pool today. Irritatingly though my Sportcount “Yellow” stopwatch decided to die on me. It was working fine on Tuesday when I last used it. I think water must have found a way in. I wonder if the screws on the back can work loose over time.
I’ve had several of these over the last five years and whilst I object to the fact that they often seem to end up leaking I’ve not found anything as convenient. And in fact Sportcount now do a model targeted at pace training, so I’m going to give that a go.
Anyhow, I did my current set but without reference to a stopwatch. It felt pretty good, but who knows?
Over the last few days I’ve cut back some overgrown sycamore branches that were getting in the way and fed the smaller stuff into the shredder, the intention being to mix it with grass clippings as I’m running a bit short of other stuff to cut them with.
Today a fair part of the grass got mowed so I’ve been doing just that. Out of interest I decided to measure the temperatures of both heaps I have at the moment — the one that was started at the beginning of last winter, and the current one that has probably only been going perhaps six weeks. The first has reached half of its maximum volume and is still doing quite nicely inside.
32C doesn’t seem bad to me considering that it has been open to the elements since it was started.
The current heap as a little warmer.
50C now, but we’ll see how it looks tomorrow when all the stuff I’ve just put on it gets going. And a fair bit there was. In fact my four 6’x4′ trailer loads of sycamore that were shredded has now been reduced to this.
I’m going to need to find some more from somewhere. I have actually considered picking up some wood chip from the local sawmill and feeding it through our shredder which should chop it smaller.
Also today I started lifting the onions. I’m about halfway through so far.
I’ll try to get that all finished tomorrow.
The fast lane got a bit hairy today. When we arrived there was already a dad and his two daughters using it, occasionally his son too, the two of us and another lady who arrived a few minutes late. The girls weren’t slow, but they were probably only around ten or eleven years old and often swapped strokes which made them a bit unpredictable and I worried about hitting one of them at the turns.
Despite that my performance was considerably better than many of my recent sessions with most of my 50m reps being 43s, one 42s and two 44s. The slower ones were generally when I had to do an open turn because I wasn’t sure who was where on the wall. The 25m reps were all below 19s and mostly in the low 18s. I can be happy with that for now. Knowing I can do more faster reps I’d like to get back there though.
I found it quite tough to keep the pace up today. I think perhaps all the stuff I was doing at the weekend wore me out a little more than I realised. Initially I couldn’t get my 50m reps below 45s, but over the course of the set they dropped into the 44s and I ended on a 43. The 25m reps were all 18s.
Out of random interest, I took my pulse after the end of my 50m set and then again after the end of my 25m set. It is claimed that a rough guide for maximum heart rate is 220 less one’s age, so mid-160s for me. My heart rate after the 50m set was about 140 (could be a little bit either way as I was counting for 15 seconds and then multiplying up), or about 83% of maximum, which I have to admit surprised me given that I’m maintaining that exercise level for almost 30 minutes. Not quite as much of a shock as measuring a rate of 164 after my 25m set though 😀
At around 18s a length plus the rest interval the 25m set doesn’t take very long — I’d actually attempt more reps but for the fact that I run out of time in the session, but I doubt I could maintain maximum heart rate for that long without my head exploding or something, so I suspect the actual case is that my real maximum heart rate is not as low as the rule of thumb suggests.
I took a few photos in the evening just to keep track of how everything is going in the veggie plot…
I grew this for fun from seed years ago, but we’ve never actually eaten it. It’s still quite pretty though (not to mention enormous). I guess I should harvest a few if we are going to try eating them this year.
The entire length of the polytunnel:
Aubergines on the left hand side, and behind them dill and coriander that I’m allowing to run to seed, and in the back corner butternut squash, loofah gourds and cucumbers. On the far right are peppers that are really not doing well. Tomatoes in the middle, along with calendula that have run rampant. They’re supposed to get to 60cm tall according to the packet. They’re about twice that. Nice to pick the petals off to have in salads though.
A better look at the squash and other cucurbits. On the right is wild rocket. I gave it a savage prune when it started flowering about a month ago and it’s grown back very nicely.
Plum tomatoes, waiting to ripen.
And some Costoluto Fiorentino:
One of the cucumbers. These ones (Marketmore, I think) have little spiky bits on the skin that need rubbing off.
And a baby butternut squash.
Ripe tomatoes this time. If I recall correctly these are a small plum variety called Floridity, but they might be Apero. I can’t recall which I took the photos of off the top of my head.
These are Orange Paruche, planted specifically for the in-laws.
In the no dig greenhouse, most of the vegetation you can see here is basil. A few melons are trying to escape across the path and need tidying up.
And out in the main plot, this is a Uchiki Kuri squash growing amongst the sweet corn.
And finally, yellow courgettes, not far off being ready to pick.
Today my daughter and I shredded another trailer and a half of sycamore before rain stopped play. I reckon there are about three trailer loads left of what I cut yesterday, but that will have to wait for another time. As will lifting the onions, and planting out some swedes, kale, radish and lettuces. It’s not been a dead loss though as I’ve been in the greenhouse sowing more lettuce, spring onions and beetroot. I’m going to have another go at the “salads in a mushroom tray” thing this winter (though I probably don’t need to as I should be able to use the new greenhouse and polytunnel) and because the red chard didn’t really do that well until getting into early spring, I suspect because it didn’t develop sufficiently before winter really set in, I’ve also sown some seeds for that — last year I didn’t sow it until the end of August. I might sow more in three weeks time and then I can compare how they do.
In the polytunnel we have cherry tomatoes that are just about ready to pick. I’m looking forward to eating some of those this week.
All this shredding has made me think again about buying something more powerful that will handle thicker branches, as there’s stuff left over that’s really too small for firewood. It would be really useful, but on the other hand I can buy a trailer load of woodchip from the local sawmill for less than £25 and in fact Western Power will leave a load for me every few years when they come to cut back the trees near the power lines (and the subcontractors they use are happy to deliver whatever they have if they’re working in the area because otherwise they have to pay to dispose of it).
I’m hoping to lift most of my onions tomorrow, but I’m not sure there will be time. Today I have been playing with the “chainsaw onna stick” trimming back some of the overhanging sycamore and now have huge piles of it to feed into the shredder so it can go on the compost heap. It’s quite fascinating in a way that branches that are way beyond reach in the winter can be pulled down to within a few feet of the ground when in full leaf during the summer. Who’d have thought leaves weighed that much? I still have plenty more to do, too. What I’ve done today is just the stuff that gets in the way of my father-in-law when he’s using the ride-on mower. I have a whole load that are growing over the compost bins and around the northern borders of the orchard to do at some point.
I did however pick my first cucumber today, to have with lunch. I know the in-laws want one in the next couple of days, but it looks as though there are at least a couple more that are close to ready to eat. We finished off a shop-bought cucumber at the same time. Even the children remarked on the fact that the shop-bought one was far more watery and bland than the one I had grown.
Actually there’s an odd thing going on with the cucumbers. Mine are doing well enough, but all but one of my father-in-law’s died. The one he has left is just sitting in a decent-size tub of compost, resolutely refusing to grow. It’s still green and healthy-looking, but it has totally failed to produce new leaves or grow any taller than about six inches. In the tubs where the plants died he just planted some of my spare tomato plants and they seem to be doing fine. It’s very strange though not entirely unlike some of my peppers, which haven’t died, but just don’t seem to want to put on any growth at all. I have no idea why.
There are other anomalies in the veg plot, too. The peas I sowed this year are supposed to grow to a maximum height of about 90cm, so my supports are set up just a little taller than that. The plants however are now about twice their expected height and collapsing over the top of the supports. It’s not the end of the world, but they’ve not behaved this way before. I can only assume it’s down to the bizarre weather, but it would be nice to understand why.
