No dig diary, 18th April 2021

Posted on April 18, 2021 by james

We have potato sign!

Having sulked in the ground for what seems far too long, this evening I noticed that the first early potatoes (International Kidney, planted out on 19th March) are just starting to break the surface of the compost in their bed. Hopefully they won’t now get knocked back by further frosts, though comparing readings from the weather station with the Met Office forecast I’d not be at all surprised if we did get one tonight. I’m very pleased to see this sign of life though.

It also looks like some of the radishes sown on 20th February and planted out on 21st March are ready to eat. They’re still under fleece so it’s easy to forget to check how they’re doing. I shall certainly be pulling some to eat with our next salad though.

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No dig diary, 17th April 2021

Posted on April 18, 2021 by james

Had things been going to plan, today was to have been filled with planting out of tomatoes in the polytunnel, aubergines and melons in the new greenhouse and perhaps even some peppers (probably split between the two). I chickened out though. Despite forecasts to the contrary we’ve had at least a week when temperatures have fallen below freezing each night (-2C has not been uncommon) and I’m far from convinced that the plants would enjoy being exposed to those sorts of overnight temperatures with less protection than they currently have. The forecast for the next week is improving so perhaps our weather will do the same, but I’m going to leave things for a week and see how we’re doing next weekend as I didn’t have much planned for then anyhow.

The only things I have done in the veg plot today therefore are some watering (we’ve not had any rain here for several weeks now) and sowing sprouts in modules in the greenhouse. Three different varieties of sprout in fact — some left over from last year (Maximus F1), some I bought for this year (Brodie F1) and some I bought from the Real Seed people as a bit of an afterthought (Sanda). I think I’ll probably cull them down to the best plants before planting out as I’m sure we won’t need so many. I wanted to try a few different varieties though. In fact I’ve sown three seeds per cell where I had enough (I was a bit short of the Maximus, but there were way more tan enough Sanda). I’ll gradually thin them down to a single plant once they germinate.

And on the subject of germination, most of the cucurbits that I sowed only a week ago have germinated and are growing well. The only exception is the courgettes, where only one seed has germinated so far. I have four seeds left over, so I may well plant those now as a backup.

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Chick hatching 2021

Posted on April 18, 2021 by james

It’s been a couple of years since we last did this. Today I put three dozen eggs in incubators today (a dozen each of Copper Black Marans, Cream Legbar and White Leghorn), so hopefully around the weekend of 8th May we should have some new chicks joining us. Hopefully the excitement should start around 5th May as they start to “pip”.

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Grow your own pineapple

Posted on April 18, 2021 by james

Well, ok, maybe 🙂

I’ve never done this before, so my daughter and I thought we’d give it a go as we have a couple of pineapples to be eaten this weekend.

The top had already been cut off, so we just pared away the remaining flesh, to leave the core and leaves, removed enough leaves to expose about ten to fifteen millimetres of stem and then cut off the core below that. What was left we put in a jar of water and stood in a sunny window.

If we’re lucky it will produce roots. At that point we can plant it up and then think about how we might persuade it to actually produce fruit, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves just yet. I’ll be amazed if we get as far as producing roots to start with.

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Trailure Failure

Posted on April 18, 2021 by james

It is alleged that there is an ancient Chinese curse that translates as “May you live in interesting times”. On Wednesday, I certainly had “interesting times” 🙂

My father-in-law had asked me to help him take his old freezer to the local tip, so we put it in his trailer along with a few other things that needed disposing of and off we went. On the way home I got him to stop at a local sawmill to get a load of woodchip to finish off the paths around the veggie plot. They dumped a large bucket load of chipped wood into the trailer, at which point I noticed this:

The tyre had completely deflated 🙁 We pumped it back up and it promptly deflated again. Fortunately there’s a spare, but we didn’t have suitable tools to change it. So, we left the trailer at the sawmill, came home and had some lunch, collected the tools together and went back. The swap was simple enough, but I noticed the tailgate wasn’t quite hanging properly. Never mind, we’ll check it out when we get home.

When we got home, the side of the trailer looked like this:

The frame rail on that side of the trailer has snapped 🙁 Good job we’d only had to travel a couple of miles to get home!

I’ve spent the rest of the afternoon shovelling out the woodchip and getting more of the paths laid to empty the trailer so we can strip it down and repair it.

I have actually been saying that the trailer needed a good looking at for a couple of years because I wasn’t completely happy with it. It’s only a few years younger than me and I don’t think it’s had much attention in the last twenty. I think we could be looking at a major rebuild…

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Swimming, 15th April 2021

Posted on April 18, 2021 by james

The initial post-lockdown frenzy appears to have died down already. There were only five people at the pool for my session today and one of those left after no more than thirty minutes. To be fair, the water was genuinely quite cold compared with most pools. The duty manager said it was 27C, which is competition temperature, not “adults having a gentle swim” temperature.

Anyhow, same sort of thing as earlier in the week, but generally less horrible to do 🙂 I can’t swim tomorrow, so next week I shall start setting proper targets and initially work on reducing the recovery time. It would help though if the pace clocks were both working. At the end of last year they were out of sync with each other, seemingly by random amounts each day. I don’t know what’s been done since then, but one of the clocks now has no hand at all so it’s completely useless, which is not altogether handy when it’s almost impossible to see the other clock from the deep end of the pool.

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No dig diary, 13th April 2021

Posted on April 18, 2021 by james

On the basis that one should always yield to temptation as it may not pass one’s way again, I stopped off on the way back from swimming this afternoon and bought a second packet of sweetcorn seeds. I’ve just been out to the greenhouse and sown enough to bring the total up to probably far more than I could ever hope to have space for, so as long as they germinate. In fact I could have 25% fail and still have enough, likely as not. At least I won’t be moping about in September wishing I’d planted more sweetcorn, anyhow 😀 Perhaps if I get too many I’ll just plant a block somewhere out of the way and leave them for the birds to take, though maybe it’s not entirely wise to encourage them to feed on plants I want to grow for our own food.

I’ve been saving up sprout and other brassica stalks until I had enough to make it worth firing up the shredder and feeding them through so they compost more easily. Today was that day. It’s amazing how an entire wheelbarrow full of stalks can be reduced to a mere couple of inches of material in the bottom of a bucket.

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Swimming, 13th April 2021

Posted on April 18, 2021 by james

Pretty much the same thing as yesterday, though it didn’t feel quite so painful and I think I’m remembering how to do tumble turns now. Cold water again though. I’m guessing they’re still heating it. Low overnight temperatures probably aren’t helping. The complex is almost fifty years old now and not at all well insulated.

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Swimming, 12th April 2021

Posted on April 18, 2021 by james

Well, what an adventure! My first swim since 30th December. It felt very strange to be back in the water (which wasn’t very warm, either).

For this week I’m just going to try to get back into the feel of things, so I swam 50’s for about 35 minutes, took a short break and finished off with ten minutes worth of 25s at a faster pace (though by no means fast). I could really feel it in my lats, pecs and triceps. It’s quite obvious I’ve become used to not doing this stuff…

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Swimming tomorrow!

Posted on April 11, 2021 by james

The pool is open and my first swimming session is booked for tomorrow afternoon! In fact I have four sessions booked next week, though the Friday one is at 9:30am which could be a bit of a shock to the system. I’ve been looking forward to this for so long — my last swim was on 30th December 🙁 I already know it’s going to be tough for the first few weeks. Will I even remember how to tumble turn? I’ll just have to wait until tomorrow to find out…

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