No dig diary, 24th February 2024

Posted on February 24, 2024 by james

Sowing day again! Not that much this weekend though: calabrese, red cabbage, more antirrhinums and more ammi majus. The rain has reached quite depressing levels here. I think we’ve had at least double the long-term average rainfall for February, even with most of a week left to go. Today however, it was bright and sunny, if a little cold, or rather, more like the temperature February ought to be. In the greenhouse it was so warm that I had to take off my coat. Hopefully that’s a good sign for the plants as temperatures are forecast to be close to freezing this evening. I was looking at pepper seedlings in the propagator and thinking that they need to be moved out, but I think for the next couple of days they can stay where it’s warm. It’s supposed to bucket down tomorrow according to the forecast, too. There’s no getting away from it 🙁

Elsewhere in the garden the strawberries seem to be settling in well and the new raspberry canes that I planted in December look to be producing shoots. Not all of them yet, but it’s early days yet.

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Memory Lane, 6th July 2022: Ouch!

Posted on February 23, 2024 by james

Ahem.

Beekeepers may find it easy to guess how this happened 😀

I have a couple of colonies that are, shall we say… a little feisty. I shall be doing something about them as soon as possible. I normally wear an Oz Armour suit which has an unzippable veil so it can be folded out of the way to have a drink. Only I didn’t realise after using it that I’d not completely closed up the zip 🙂

One darling little worker from one of the feisty colonies found the hole and got inside my veil and after a little bit of mental torture stung me on the left temple. The photo above is from the same evening. The next day my left eye had almost entirely closed up. Surprisingly it really wasn’t that painful, but I couldn’t drive or anything useful like that. It took a few days to return to something resembling normal.

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Fun (and irritation) with Qt Designer

Posted on February 23, 2024 by james

I’ve been lining up a possible new project today, thanks to stalling a bit on the work I was doing on Deep Sky Stacker. It’s more C++/Qt development, but in this case I thought I’d try to create the entire UI using QT Designer.

After several false starts I discovered that if I have, say, a main application window and want to put a QTabWidget inside it, the new widget doesn’t shrink or grow as the main window size changes (when the user resizes it, for instance).

It took quite some time to reach the understanding that some widgets, in particular the central widget of a QMainWindow and the main part of a QTabWidget require a layout widget to be associated with them before their contents will expand and contract with the outer window. But much of the time, Qt Designer doesn’t allow such a widget to be added.

I have discovered that what can be done to work around this is to start with (for example) the tab widget, add some random widget such as a pushbutton to it. After this is done it appears to be possible to set a layout for the container widget, add more widgets that I actually want, and throw the pushbutton away afterwards.

I had to take a similar approach when I wanted to add a layout to the layout of a tab widget.

I assume this must be some sort of bug in Qt Designer as it’s perfectly acceptable to create such things using code, even if it doesn’t allow them. I did wonder about editing the .ui file by hand, but hundreds of lines of XML? I’m not really up for it. I suspect that I might have found one or two other issues with the Designer too, but I haven’t put the time in to confirm those yet.

Meanwhile I shall get back to my design, now I have a clue how to beat Designer into submission.

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No dig diary, 22nd February 2022

Posted on February 22, 2024 by james

More dark, windy, rainy weather today, and cold with it, too. So no actual progress in getting stuff done. Lots of seeds are making progress however. Chiles and peppers are starting to appear, together with (I think) antirrhinums and busy lizzies (at the front).

Aubergines (back right) are looking pretty good, too.

It won’t be long before the broad beans need to go out in the ground.

And possibly not the sweet peas either, though I can’t say I’m that impressed with the germination rate in the tray nearer the camera.

Finally, peas for shoots will be wanting to be in the ground soon, too.

I discovered some saved seed today. Looks like I could be getting a lot of calendula this year 😀

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Memory Lane, 3rd July 2022: Floors in manufacture

Posted on February 22, 2024 by james

Next job for the new table saw…

My bees tend to fill mesh floors with propolis, suggesting to me that they’re not very keen on them, so I’ve decided to move back to solid or sealed floors, and to kick things off I decided to make some new ones using timber from my “probably waste” pile. I didn’t go with the common design though, opting instead for an “under-floor entrance”. These are becoming more widespread as beekeepers find out about them and should prevent issues with mice because they don’t have an entrance large enough for one to fit through. They’re also claimed to be less attractive to wasps because there are more opportunities for them to encounter guard bees before they actually get amongst the frames. Potentially I guess they’re also less draughty because the breeze can’t blow straight in.

So here’s my first batch after being given a coat of preservative. The bees drop down onto the landing board (which doesn’t need to extend beyond the front of the hive — I just like watching them sometimes) and come up through the 8mm wide slot into the middle of the hive. In these ones, the back rail is not full depth, so the landing board of another floor can be pushed in behind for transport.

I’m thinking of modifying my mesh floors to have the same style of entrance (and a slot-in base to seal the floor from the wind and cold) and I may also add something like a 20mm high rail around the tops of these ones to make room for a hole through which I can vape oxalic acid. I’ll see how it goes.

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Bee inspections

Posted on February 22, 2024 by james

Never mind the fact that “it’s still winter”, we’ve had very few days below 10°C recently and earlier this week when the Sun was out I was watching the bees in my home apiary flying strongly. I got to thinking that if the weather continues in the same vein I’d have to seriously consider doing some inspections in the not-too-distant future. Unlike last year, when I put it off and off again because “it was way too early” and then ended up with hives rammed full of bees by the time I first cracked them open.

But it seems I shan’t be in such a hurry after all. Today temperatures have dropped way back from “shirtsleeve weather” and it’s really quite cool. The forecast predicts that it will continue the same way for perhaps as long as a week. Time to stand down.

“Shirtsleeve weather”. There’s a thing. What does it actually mean? It’s a common phrase in beekeeping, particularly referring to when it’s ok to open up the hives to inspect for the first time. I suspect it’s an expression that’s been around for many years and actually refers to a time when beekeepers might take off their coats or jackets and work in a waistcoat and long-sleeved shirt. They were probably a bit more hardy than we are today, too. So if I can go outside and work comfortably in a sleeveless jacket and t-shirt then I reckon we’re probably there…

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Memory Lane, 26th June 2022: How green is my garden?

Posted on February 21, 2024 by james

Everything in the veggie plot looking lush. This sort of view makes me feel so happy 🙂

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Temporary halt on Deep Sky Stacker port to Linux

Posted on February 21, 2024 by james

I think I’ve reached the point where I can’t do much more with this for the moment, unfortunately. Unless I fancy creating a BITMAP-type library for Linux so I don’t have to port all of the code that uses Windows bitmaps to use QImage or something similar. Otherwise I’ve reached the limit of my knowledge of Windows (probably some time ago, to be fair) and can’t push things forward without someone who knows more to help me.

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No dig diary, 21st Feb 2024: Biblical rain

Posted on February 21, 2024 by james

Yesterday I chipped some tree branches that had been pruned off a few trees, leaving the woodchip in the trailer. Today I realised that I was going to need the trailer for something else, so I needed it empty. Oh, well, best spread it on the paths around the new no dig beds then…

It had rained overnight, but perhaps I didn’t entirely appreciate how much. The mere act of stepping on the ground turned it instantly to mud and I was slipping about all over the place. Even the tractor (towing the trailer) was sliding about despite its heavily-cleated tyres. I really shouldn’t have done it, but equally I really needed the trailer.

So, some of the paths look a bit better now the job’s done. Some of the grass however looks rather the worse for wear.

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Memory Lane, 22 June 2022: Putting the box joints to use

Posted on February 21, 2024 by james

Now my new table saw blade has arrived I can get on with testing it out for making box joints. First, a test run using the jig I posted about a few days ago.

Confident that it would do the job nicely, I then made up two new beehive roofs (or rather, threw away most of two worn out existing ones and re-used the roof covering for my new ones. The most tricky part was keeping the opposite ends of each piece in the correct orientation so the fingers interlocked instead of finding that the fingers were in the same position on ends that were supposed to mate. Not that I ever made that mistake. Oh no 🙂

I’m very pleased with how this has turned out, so I shall certainly be attempting more beehive parts.

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