Memory Lane, 26th October 2022: A different kind of harvest

Posted on March 26, 2024 by james

My compost bins have been slowly gaining a roof of corrugated plastic sheet and a gutter to collect the run-off. Today it was time to play with the 3d printer again, and produce this

It’s a downpipe rain collector/filter. (Hopefully) clean water comes off via the yellow hose, whilst excess and rubbish should get washed out of the bottom via a downpipe that I have yet to connect. The water from the yellow pipe is collected in this old 1250 litre (275 gallon) oil tank that I picked up from Freecycle.

At present it is supported on concrete blocks so the tap is high enough to get a bucket/watering can underneath. I don’t know if that will be stable enough, so I may need to change it later.

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No dig diary, 26th March 2024

Posted on March 26, 2024 by james

It appears that I may have an muscle injury impinging on a nerve for my left arm, which has slowed me down today. On the positive side it doesn’t really stop me doing anything, but it is constantly nagging at me and causing random pains up and down my arm. Still… stuff gotta get done…

So, starting off with something easy I got rid of all the volunteer potatoes that had sprouted in one bed. It’s a bit shocking how many I missed last Summer, really. I lifted a few bunches of salad onions that have over-wintered too and sorted them into ones that weren’t big enough to eat (which went on the compost) and ones worth keeping. I have a couple more patches too, and I’ll get to those shortly otherwise they’ll start to fatten up. After that I spread more compost on the beds. Not much more than that, but it’s progress. One positive note is that some beds had two dressings of compost last year, because I used the second to “earth up” the potatoes. So I needn’t do those again, which reduces the area I need to cover by almost a quarter.

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I’ll just leave this here

Posted on March 26, 2024 by james

I don’t believe any further commentary is required.

North Korea TV censors Alan Titchmarsh’s trousers

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Memory Lane, 26th October 2022: Zombie caterpillar

Posted on March 24, 2024 by james

I’ve not noticed this before, but it seems to have been a pretty good year for Large White caterpillars and therefore presumably for their predators. I was confused as to what was going on at first, what the little yellow “eggs” were and why the caterpillar hadn’t pupated.

After a bit of research I discovered that the “eggs” are not eggs, but pupae cases themselves, for Cotesia glomerata, a small wasp that parasitises the caterpillar. The parent wasp injects its eggs into the caterpillar and when the larvae hatch they “take over the mind” of the caterpillar. Having had it take them to somewhere “safe” to pupate, they eat their way out of the caterpillar and it even defends them from predators until it finally expires.

Quite horrifying in a way, but I often feel that Large Whites particularly don’t deserve a good end 😀 Even more astonishing perhaps is the fact that the wasp in question is also parasitised by two additional wasps.

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No dig diary, 24th March 2024

Posted on March 24, 2024 by james

I already feel so far behind with this year thanks to the weather. But what can you do when the veggie plot makes the Somme look like a Forest School mud kitchen? So despite the fact that I should already have planted out the early potatoes and the peas, this afternoon I finally got around to preparing the bed they’re going to go into.

I spread a 50/50 mix of council green waste compost and my own home-made compost over the bed, raking it to around 5cm/2″ deep. The forecast rain tomorrow should settle it down and if the weather is better then I can start planting later in the week.

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More grass to the compost

Posted on March 24, 2024 by james

And my son’s GCSE notes, as it happens.

Poor weather is forecast for tomorrow so it was a major rush just to get through a first cut of all the grass today. But we managed it. Sadly, whilst I was tidying stuff out of the way whilst my daughter followed on with the mower, I disturbed this (robin?) nest hidden inside a discarded tarpaulin

I reassembled it as best I could, but I suspect I may have been too late. I’m not sure it would have survived anyhow unfortunately, as it was not very far off the ground and once the chicks hatched and started making a noise the cats would have been all over it 🙁

All the clippings went into the compost bin mixed, as I said, with my son’s remaining GCSE notes which he doesn’t think he’ll need any more given that he’s finishing his degree in a matter of months.

I left it an hour and put the thermometer in.

I imagine that’s going to be pretty toasty tomorrow morning.

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Last of the 2023 apple juice

Posted on March 24, 2024 by james

It’s not done too badly. Pressing was late November, and whilst I did press quite a bit of juice not all of it was frozen for drinking straight. But today I opened the very last bottled. No more until the Autumn. I’m slightly sad.

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Memory Lane, 20th October 2022: Beekeeper to the rescue

Posted on March 23, 2024 by james

I received a phone call from the owner of the farm where I keep some hives. The council have been cutting back some trees between his hedge line and the road. In particular, this oak which I think was partly dead.

I imagine the tree surgeon doing the work (from a cherry picker) got something of a surprise when he cut off one of the limbs, right into a hollow that was occupied by bees, hence the call from the farmer. I arrived to find the branch lying in his field about ten metres away from the tree.

There were none left around the tree, so I assume they’d found there way back to the rest of the colony. Remember that “three feet or three miles” rule? I’m beginning to suspect that it’s “mostly guidelines”.

Closer inspection showed plenty of bees inside the hollow, and comparing that part of the branch with the piece that had been cut off first clearly the tree surgeon had the incredible fortune to cut through right at the very top of the cavity, leaving no sign in the other part, meaning there was probably a fair chance of a queen being present and in good health.

I felt there wasn’t much I could really do that would make anything any better so late in October though, so I closed off what had been the top of the colony with some ply and added another piece to try to keep the rain off that. If they make it through to the Spring then we’ll see what can be done then.

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No dig diary, 23rd March 2024

Posted on March 23, 2024 by james

Yesterday, much of which was spent chipping bits of tree was a lovely day to be outside. Today was, well, barely describable. We had high winds, rain, hail, sunshine and probably a load of other weather (though not snow, as some people had) in rapid and repeated succession all morning and into the middle of the afternoon.

“Stuff” really needs to get done though, so I braved the unpleasantness and got on with making more of the paths around the new beds in the veggie plot using the wood that I chipped yesterday. There wasn’t quite enough to finish the job, but I got a lot of the important bits done.

I was planning to sow seeds today, but I’ve just run out of space. I must have a dozen and a half or more trays of plants in the greenhouse that I have been delaying planting out because the weather has been so poor. Some of them desperately need planting out now though. I think I might have to crack on with that tomorrow and put mesh cloches over them with fleece laid on top. I’ll see what’s possible.

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The compost bins will now start filling up

Posted on March 23, 2024 by james

Despite the fact that it’s still more than a week to the start of April it’s become necessary to start cutting some of the grass which has grown ridiculously long over the mild Winter. During the same period the compost bins always fill quite slowly as there’s not much “waste” from the garden, despite the inclusion of two dead roe deer that turned up in our yard and orchard a few months back. From now on I suspect we’re going to have a lot more to go in which means I need to get on with emptying the existing compost out, something that would normally have happened by now, but hasn’t happened because of the sheer amount of rain we’ve had over the last few months: the ground in the veggie plot has been impossible to work on most of the time.

I think we’ll be seeing much more of this over the coming weeks.

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