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  • I've just checked my daffodils too Pen, and they have started to come through too
    Exciting innit?
    "Nicos, Queen of Gooooogle" and... GYO's own Miss Marple

    Location....Normandy France

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    • Originally posted by Nicos View Post
      I've just checked my daffodils too Pen, and they have started to come through too
      Exciting innit?
      Indeed it is, I have a dianthus that thinks its time to flower and the odd flower on the hardy osteospermums, and walking to the shops yesterday I saw some calendula flowers. I associate all 3 of these with summer...
      A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP. - Leonard Nimoy

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      • Another reasonable day yesterday. I spent about an hour at the plot at lunchtime, weeding along the roadside hedge and in the tunnel and removing dead brassica leaves. I'd hoped to weed the whole plot but by the time I'd finished the tunnel my back had had enough. I found and removed a piece of horsetail that was already showing above ground under the shelving in the tunnel.

        This morning I nipped down to harvest a leek, and found the wet end under water after heavy rain over night. I think now that the trees have gone this is going to be a more common occurrence.
        A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP. - Leonard Nimoy

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        • No time on Thursday as usual, although I did nip down in the morning and harvest a leek.

          Yesterday was a lovely sunny day and I went down in the morning and finished off the weeding round the raised beds and dug some couch grass out as best I could from the roadside hedge.

          The rhubarb is annoying me - it is 2 huge plants (one of which I have dug up half of) in the sunniest place on the plot. I don't eat that much rhubarb, although it is useful to have in the spring and I freeze some for winter, and it doesn't need full sun to grow, so I keep wanting to move it. The question is, where to put it. Next to the wood shed is an area which I have been using for branches cut off the hedge which are too big to easily shred by had for the compost bin. I use some for stakes etc but the pile is quite big. I decided to move these to the corner between the two hedges, by the roadside to see what space I have got, so I did this. The result is an area about 3ft x 2ft where I could probably plant something. It is shady, but I have grown rhubarb in heavy shade before. The biggest problems are likely to be that it is full of tree roots and I need access to trim back the hedge. I think I might try to plant some of the pieces that I still have in a compost sack, which are starting to sprout, and see what happens. However, I wasn't sure enough about this to actually do it, as rhubarb is not the easiest thing to remove if you get it wrong...

          One of the brokali heads in the tunnel was going mouldy (not sure why), so I cut it off and harvested some of the undamaged shoots for tea. I also harvested another leek, and went home to think about the rhubarb problem some more.
          A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP. - Leonard Nimoy

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          • I haven't update this thread for a few days as the weather has made doing anything other than walking round and checking everything impossible. When it has not been blowing a gale or pouring with rain the ground and everything else has been far too wet to do anything with. I'm hoping for better weather after today and once the gales have died down I will put the plastic cover up over the hotbed.
            A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP. - Leonard Nimoy

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            • *run by hug*...

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              • By the way, I planted my rhubarb right by a hedge, by effectively scraping out a shallow space between the tree roots and then dumping last year's spent compost on top of the rhubarb... it worked.

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                • I think I may give it a go. One of my main worries is being able to get at the hedge to cut it, but hopefully it will be ok.
                  A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP. - Leonard Nimoy

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                  • Friday was a complete write-off thanks to yet again waiting in for the electrician. This time, thankfully, he managed to replace the broken bathroom fan, and that is one job (of several) off the long term "difficult" list!

                    Saturday was a lovely sunny day, but I had no energy left after mucking out in the morning and I was busy all afternoon so nothing got done.

                    Yesterday was another lovely day, but very cold. Having attempted some weeding at my friend's at lunchtime (still frozen solid, even in the sunny bits), I went down to the plot after lunch to put up the cover over the hotbed. Both covers now have a dodgy zip, with the plastic coming away from the zip material, and in one case the zip also pulling open above the fastener. I can't find any evidence of replacement covers being available so I will have to try to patch and mend.

                    The plastic sheet over the hotbed was covered in ice despite the centre of the bed measuring 10 degrees with the soil thermometer. I picked off the big chunks of ice and peeled back the sheet, then put up the frame and attempted to put the cover over it. The cover, which had been folded up, was somewhat crinkled and very difficult to straighten out enough to make it big enough to fit over the frame, and after struggling with it for a while I decided it was best to shorten the frame a little using some slightly shorter poles from an old blowaway greenhouse. I clipped the broken zip opening to another pole stuck into the edge of the hotbed, but this needs some more attention as I don't think it will cope well with gales as it is. I went home to think about the problem.
                    A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP. - Leonard Nimoy

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                    • Yesterday's job was to fix the hotbed cover as the zip was causing all sorts of problems. An attempt to open it resulted in the bit that you hold coming off, and even more of the plastic pulled away from the zipper material. Last year I fixed this with greenhouse repair tape, but that also pulls away from the zip far too easily and in any case I can no longer close the zip.

                      I have some velcro which I bought for the fruit cage, intending to sew it onto the netting, but the backing was so hard that it was impossible to get a needle through it once, let alone sew several feet of it. I wondered if I might be able to stick some to the plastic - I have some glue. However, I didn't like this idea much as it takes quite a lot of force to open velcro, and I could see myself pulling it off the plastic rather than opening it. I was also not sure the glue would stand getting wet or hold in a gale. There similarly seemed little point in attempting to glue the zipper back onto the plastic, which wouldn't mend the actual zip anyway. I needed something that would stay put in a gale and be reasonably easy to open, that would just cover that one end of the opening side of the cover. Maybe I could stick a piece of clear polythene to the opening flap and fasten it to the support with clips (I have clips the right size).

                      I went home to see if I could find a suitable piece of plastic. Then I had a brainwave. The shavings that the horses are bedded on come in large clear plastic bags. There are always plenty at the yard, so I went and got one. Opened out and trimmed of jagged edges it was exactly the right size to clip to the top bar and the side and middle parts of the frame, covering the opening left by the broken zip and securing the front flap in the middle. Job done. The plastic will not be UV stable so it will probably disintegrate reasonably quickly, but there are plenty more bags where that came from.

                      Encouraged by my attempt at DIY here, I decided to tackle another job that needs doing - paint the back garden fence. I normally have a man who comes and does it but I have put him off several times because the ground was too wet. He also usually makes a lot of mess (particularly last year when he used a sprayer and got bits of paint all over my utility room window and door), and he charges a lot of money, so I had decided to attempt the job myself.

                      Bear in mind that I am not good at DIY. I (thought I) knew what sort and colour of paint he'd used, so I went and got some. Although the picture on the tin looked similar to the fence colour, when I opened it it was clearly paler and more orange than previously, but as I'd opened it I couldn't take it back, so I set about painting the fence. I got half of it (3 panels) done before I ran out of time, energy and daylight. Looking at it this morning its a bit streaky and not all the same colour, but I actually prefer that to the bits at the top and bottom where I painted more thickly because bare wood was showing, so I think I will finish the fence and leave it at one coat rather than trying to cover it up and making the whole thing more orange. A lot of it will be covered by plants in summer anyway and I can always revert to a darker colour next year!
                      A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP. - Leonard Nimoy

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                      • Gardening time on Tuesday was spent finishing the fence painting. Its not great and I may have to get some of the darker colour and go over it again. Anyway at least I have covered up the bare wood (which was painted last year with paint that is supposed to last 5 years!). I nipped down to the plot in the afternoon and decided to harvest a parsnip since the ground was reasonably defrosted.

                        Yesterday was another gorgeous sunny day and after waiting in for a phone call that never happened all morning I gave up and went to the allotment. I tidied up the dead leaves on the brassicas and trimmed more off the strawberries. Then I decided to bite the bullet and plant the biggest chunk of rhubarb in the corner near the woodshed.

                        This piece had about a foot long thick piece of root, which was broken in places, but there are several buds that are sprouting and if it survives it should make a decent plant fairly quickly. There was a bit of soil on the roots and I inspected it carefully before planting as I don't want to introduce horsetail to an area that seems fairly clear. I dug down as far as I could and put the plant in the hole - it stuck up about 3 inches out of the soil, but I couldn't go any deeper because of tree roots. I made a mound with some compost that had grown potatoes to cover the remaining roots and then started making a mulch of shredded sticks around it to keep the weeds down. If it grows and isn't in the way too much, great, if its in the way I can try to remove it. If it dies, nothing lost as I was going to take it to the tip if I didn't plant it.
                        A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP. - Leonard Nimoy

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                        • No gardening time on Thursday, but I did manage a quick visit to pick a few brokali spears.

                          Unlike most of the rest of the country, Yorkshire was sunny again yesterday. I was busy in the morning and had an appointment at lunchtime, but it didn't take long and I was able to go down to the plot after lunch. The job I wanted to get done was sow the seeds in the hotbed.

                          My DIY cover repair seems to be working well, although we haven't had much wind. I sowed 2 rows each of spinach (Amazon), lettuce (1 row Black Seeded Simpson, 1 row mixed leaves), carrot (Marion) and beetroot (Boldor) in rows 10 inches apart. This is very similar to last year except that I am doing 2 rows of carrots and lettuce instead of 1 carrot and 3 lettuce. Having watered them in I replaced the cover. The sun was still on it so hopefully it will stay nice and warm in there.

                          I harvested some romanesco shoots from the tunnel and went home, having run out of things to do (!).
                          A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP. - Leonard Nimoy

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                          • Absolutely nothing got done over the weekend as the weather was most unhelpful. I didn't even get a chance to visit the plot.

                            Yesterday was much better. I went down late morning and walked round pulling out a few little weeds that had germinated. Then I went round the hedges picking out bits of sticks to shred to go around the rhubarb. Finally I removed some dead brassica leaves and cut some small calabrese florets and a couple of brokali spears. I also removed a green caterpillar (probably some sort of moth) from the calabrese.

                            Having run out of things to do I went home.
                            Last edited by Penellype; 28-01-2020, 12:32 PM.
                            A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP. - Leonard Nimoy

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                            • Nothing much going on at the allotment at the moment. A quick visit to harvest a leek on Tuesday and another this morning just to check everything is ok.

                              The rhubarb is growing and hopefully will be ready for the first harvest soon.
                              A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP. - Leonard Nimoy

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                              • Originally posted by Penellype View Post
                                Nothing much going on at the allotment at the moment. A quick visit to harvest a leek on Tuesday and another this morning just to check everything is ok.

                                The rhubarb is growing and hopefully will be ready for the first harvest soon.
                                Looking forward to my first crop of rhubarb I brought from my other plot, although I forgot to check how it was doing?

                                Do you blanche yours P?
                                My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
                                to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

                                Diversify & prosper


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