Planting Day
While potting up plants that I can’t plant because I’ve run out of compost, the thought hit me: A new tact. The Garden will have an open day in June or July and have a plant sale. Hence the ‘plant the whole packet’ mentality. My super vigorous mung beans will be available in individual pots. I may even sell the buckets of potatoes and shallots that are growing well in tunnel.
The gutter population has just jumped; cauliflowers, celery, loads of swedes and ASDA’s parsley have all been planted.
These are cracking beans, black turtle yinyang and brown orca beans, all planted this morning.
Bricks
After three load in my carpet lined boot of the Kia Sportage, has resulted in 200 bricks, all made by local brickworks now defunct. I ran out of steam, but I’ll get some more next week.
The topsoil here is about a spade deep, and then it’s shiny clay. Korean Natural farming have suggested that pouring potato water to feed and promote indigenous microbes will help break down the clay but I’ll need to find more research. The method is simple, fill a 44 gallon drum (55 gal in the US and 210 l in Eu) with water, heating it and adding some potatoes and boil. When soft use a paint stirrer and mush the lot up. Strain and spray onto the soil.
Matthew’s potato donation
This huge box of potatoes was delivered by DPD, I could barely lift it into the house. When Matthew said he was sending seed potatoes, I expected a bag or two. He send twenty one!
My guesstimate is I’ll need the area of another poly tunnel to plant them all. The plan is to plant through a hole in the cardboard and covering the cardboard with organic straw. The straw needs to be organic as many of the farmers use roundup weed killer to stop the barley over ripening and giving them time to harvest it.
Earlies – Sarpo Kilfi, Sarpo Blue Danube, Pink Gypsy
2nd Earlies -Sarpo Una, Carlingford
Main – Rooster, Vlor, Setanta, Sunset, Red King Edward
Visit www.brighterblooms.co.uk and support their business.
Jane Fonda Workout
Before I started this project, I weighed 110kg, about 17 stone. I’m six foot but my t-shirts were now getting a bit short because my “Rhodesian Front” was the biggest it’s ever been.
Building beds, filling, lifting and raking meant lots and lots of small movements, hence the Jane Fonda Workout. A shovel full of manure is not particularly heavy when compared to a concrete block, but fill a cubic yard of compost bin or a bed with compost and it’s a real work out. Technically I can lift a big bucket of water but I’ll knacker my back, so filling a water butt with watering cans is a workout. I’m drinking significantly more water as a result of the additional effort. With no scientific backup, I have a ‘gut feeling’ that water does something to shift weight. For this reason, is why I think it’s important if you have depression, it’s worth coming along. It’s not the dread of a gym, it’s not boring and there is no need for lycra and weights. You will feel so much better.
About two weeks ago I weighed myself again and I’d lost 10kg/ 1.5 stone. I’ve cut back on raiding the cupboards at night and drink less alcohol. Both significantly easier to do now I’m doing something positive.
Today I have a real workout, I’m collecting secondhand bricks. I’m lining the boot of the car with carpet and visiting a local building site where they have knocked down a wall. I’ll need to count how many ‘reps’ I do.
A funny story
At the supermarket my folks noticed some vegetable seedlings for sale. My mother wanted a butternut squash, saw this label and bought it; there were two seedlings as well.
When they got home and looked up the translation. It’s a giant squash, the size you grow on a pallet need a forklift to move. They gave it to me.
Bed Number Four
It seems I’ve used the majority of the used blocks, I need eight and two half blocks. Rather and measure from the closest bed, I’m using the end wall as the reference point. The gap is two foot wide and the big beds are 4′ wide and 6′ long. Added fish, blood and bone and perlite and compost as well as collecting some of the clay soil dotted around the outside of the poly-tunnel.
In the bed is swede, cucumber, tomato, mixed kale, a few leeks, four varieties of tomatoes, Jalapeno from my folks that is doing really well. a Mung bean and a Perfumed chilli. Oh yes, interplanted some jatka F1 carrots.
Oven dried Tomatoes
Our local ASDA (related to Walmart) had grape sized tomatoes marked down to 20p for a half pound bag, so I bought five. I should have bought more….
Looking at various recipes, they seemed similar so here is mine.
Cut them in half length ways, when they’re all done put a splash of olive oil, some freshly ground pepper and salt. I also threw in a sliced up clove of garlic. Pop them on a lined backing tray and into the oven at 120C / 250f for a couple of hours. Keep an eye on them as some of them crisped up and chew almost like toffee, Sara likes those. The fatter ones are a little juicy and perfect for a pizza topping. They have a sundried tomato flavour with added sweetness. When we have a glut I’ll know what to do with them.
What’s an inch of water?
Some of the podcasts talk about giving certain varieties of plants so many inches of water a week. I guessed it was the same amount of rainfall as an inch of water. But how to translate that into a unit of measure I understand.
Let’s just do it imperial and calculate the other way 1″ x 12″ x 12″ = 144 sq inches of water for an inch of rain falling on a square foot. Using the converter cubic inches to litres is 2.4 liters per sq foot.
I have two watering cans, one is 6 liters/1.5 us gal and the other 10 liters/ 2.6 us gal
The six liter normally holds five so I don’t slosh it all over the place. 5 liters will water 2 sq foot and the bigger can will do 4.
Before I go pouring all that water into the beds, they are filled with coir, compost and have a high organic/soil ratio, so the bed will be able to hold more water than you usual soil.
I normally push my finger in and you can feel if it is dry, moist or wet. Water as required.
The other option is to use blumats. They are relatively expensive in the UK £46 for 12 so I’ve tried copies from China or £12 for 12. These are touted as high tech watering system and in fact is ancient.
If an unglazed pot is sunk into the ground and filled with water, it will only seep out into the soil when the soil is drier than the outer face of the pot. The irrigation pots were called an olla, but you can just standard teracotta pots and some silicon sealant. Those ancient folk had a few good ideas.
First bed
My original plan for the raised bed walls was to use wood. I had some concrete block I’d used for a foundation to support an old railway goods carriage I wanted to upcycle but life got in the way. Rather than waste them, I used these blocks as a bed wall. They are about 8″ deep and with a layer of manure at the bottom of the bed, it took five wheel barrows to fill the bed.
All the seedlings have been pulled out of make shift fleece bed and into the poly-tunnel. There has been some frost damage – some of the tomatoes have their tips burnt and the french beans are not looking well. One of the purple corn plants was left in the grow room by mistake and is perky and happy while it’s brothers are looking limp and sad.
What did I plant? with a nod to square foot gardening:
- Pak Choi and Oriental greens – they can keep each other company
- Rainbow chard, I tried to keep them colour co-ordinated
- Bird Eye Chilli along one edge, I have no idea how big they will grow
- sprouting little red shallots sold to be eaten that I bought in chinese food shop in Peckham, London. It was an Aladdin’s cave of surprises; chili sauces, soy, fish sauces, beans and peas I’d not heard of and interesting looking frozen fish that looked delicious. Fortunately I’m on a budget or I would have bought so much more. I did buy turmeric tubers, and two fish heads that I’ve put in a large glass jar with brown sugar to make FAA (Fish Amino Acid ala Korean natural farming)
- Red Brussel sprouts and Snowball cauliflowers
- Broad beans
- Purple corn
Rory built a compost bin using three pallets and loaded it with horse manure. It followed a discussion where I was considering ways to keep the poly-tunnel warm. He’s got a good head for ideas. Some of the manure was a little dry so I watered it and put all the heat loving plants on top of it.
Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I pick up meds for my wife. As we were out of milk I popped into the co-op and bought 2lb of sugar and 2lb of over ripe bananas. On my return home, I chopped them up (skins and all) and wizzed them with the sugar in a food processor. It filled a quart jar to the brim. In 10 days, I should have some FFJ (Fermented Fruit Juice) that I can feed the plants who like a little more potassium than just nitrogen. Nettles are ideal for nitrogen and I’ve eyed up a few patches that have young (and very stingy) nettles I can use in the same fashion, equal weights of brown sugar to nettles.
It’s on
Long covid had left me breathless even walking at normal speed. Pushing that envelope, my breathing has eased and now I can work as I used to. Although I’m overweight and unfit, working yesterday and today to the point of exhaustion, has given me a new lease on life. My hands and fingers ache, as does my back, but that fades when I think of the achievement, the goal I’m striving toward.
My father, 80 this year, helped to cut the carpet we used as hotspot tape, gave sage advice and really helped in the whole process. Rory, my son, is generous with his time and I love bouncing ideas off him. He has a dry sense of humour that is incredibly funny. Lynda our neighbor, who has also struggled with depression has been a stalwart, and Lewiss her son, helped out too. Fraser, who lives with the kids next door, is ever upbeat and worked really hard.
In the time it took us to put the cover on, the temperature inside the tunnel was about 40C and outside was just 10C with a wind that could cut a nipple off. I can’t wait to see what happens tonight when the temperature drops to freezing.
On a final note, the cover was supplied by First Tunnels. Their calculator is great, their packing and posting ensures the cover arrives in good shape and they threw in an extra meter. The cover itself seems great and I look forward to ordering more covers.