Wednesday 28 July 2010

Veg plot progress.

Things are coming along nicely and we are finally not buying any veggies.  Chooks are laying two a day, with the third chicken coming into lay soon (her wattles are dropping!).  Got our first "cock a doodle doo" from the rooster, which made me roar with laughter as it sounded like a teenager whose voice is breaking!  Will have to call him "Kevin" a la Harry Enfield.

Pics:

Brussels Sprouts under runner beans.  This combo has worked really well and will be repeating this next year.  They seem to like each other!














French beans, kale and a rouge squash that snuck into the bean seed tray.















Melons!  Must have a dozen this size.  It's resting on a yoghurt pot to keep it off the damp soil.











Red cabbage under two sewn together scaffold nets to keep butterflies off.  Almost works...  They're growing well - almost a metre across.  Flea beetle ravaged khol rabi in the foreground.















Peppers, aubergines and a happy Pachypodium in the polytunnel.  The green-ish covering is my favourite thing, scaffold netting.  Also a monster orach on the left being grown for seed.  8ft tall, so it is!














Tomatoes at last!  A nice Gigante Liscio in the foreground with my name on it.











Muckle squashes for winter.  Dozens of these hiding under the jungle that is the squash patch.  Wish I'd remembered to write down what varieties they are...










Calabrese coming through a bit early...












Chooks scoffing patty pans - I'm glad some use can be found for them because they're tasteless and there's millions of them!















Fruit coming along nicely - apart from the redcurrants which are dying after the caterpillar blitz.











Rabbits coming up as soon as the gite's underpinned and I can get on with something that doesn't involve cement!

Wednesday 21 July 2010

Always a bright side to the Island!

Got an egg at last!


Funny colour for a Maran - should be brown...


Double yolker though!  I think a neighbour is having a laugh and put it in the nest box to cheer me up, but "owt for nowt" as we say...

Tastes like an egg.  Belters.

Gite renovation so far.

The surveyor found some problems with the gite when we bought it, which amounted to a bit of death watch beetle (DWB from now on) and a bulging wall, both easily remedied.  We then discovered that the DWB had in fact eaten everything and all the wood was as hollow as a sponge, so we decided to rip the lot out, olde worlde beams included, and start again, then let it commercially to recoup costs.  The walls have turned out to be made from loose rubble, full of gaps so not at all stable.  To save money, I am cutting grooves for the new electric cables (the whole thing is being re-wired as it was done by a proper bodge-jobber originally) and rebuilding the wall.  Below are some photos for y'all:

This is the corner, at the front of the gite.  The rainwater from the road and the downpipe have washed the soil out from the bottom of the wall in the corner, and now it needs underpinning.  I am going to dig under it, and someone with a bit more knowledge is going to pour a concrete slab in the hole, and make a proper drain.







This is the gable end, where water from the adjoining barn has been pouring down our wall for centuries, causing a wee damp problem.  I fixed it by digging out the soil along the bottom of the wall (which now needs underpinning - see above) and making a gutter.







Here is a bulging wall, full of cracks, needing underpinning at the bottom left.  See below for what happened next.









Cracks all over...










Cracking and sagging above rotten lintels at the front.










More cracks, due to end wall wanting to fall down and sagging lintels.










Inside, with the window to the left just out of photo.

..."I want to break free-ee, I want too breeaaak freeee...."








Bulging wall gone!  It's on the floor, and I am now putting it back (reasonably) straight.









That soggy corner is at the bottom of this wall, which is made from loose soil and bits of brittle stone.  Someone has made a bodged repair at the top - see the cement?  I reckon the roof has been replaced at some point - by Steven Hawking.





 The wall is made from two skins, with sh-te in the middle, and not tied in.  You can see the outside skin on the left parting company with the inside - there's a dark line down the centre of the photo, which is a biiiiig hole.








Inside we have:

A big space upstairs...










No upstairs!










Top quality floor levelling - the wedges are not attached.  Hmm... those beams look a bit erm, semi-composted...







Bit rotten, like.  This was in the wall and we would have found out that it's rotten when a guest fell through it if we had left it.

"No presence of infestation" said the seller's surveyor.





Illegal wiring, buried in the wall.










The bottom of the A-frame holding the roof up is balancing on it's end (actually the strongboy, which shouldn't take the load anyway) on this wee bit of wood stretched across two rotten beams.








The other end of the A-frame, above the door.  There's a theory that it was moved so a Velux could be put in above the stairs, when the roof was re-done.

I want a drink.

Got one.





And finally... not a crack - my chasing!  By hand!  Through granite!
I'm also mixing the cement by hand, wheelbarrowing it to site and carrying it up the scaffold in wee buckets.  I must be thick.









Top tip: DO NOT BUY A CONVERSION!  Buy a ruin and start with a clean slate!

Saturday 10 July 2010

No spuds!

Drought, no watering, and unfertile clay soil equals:

5ft by 30 ft early potato bed.  Should have got 60 kgs from this...

...but got this instead!  We're doomed!

Half a bed of broad beans harvested to make room for winter cabbages.

Gets us this many pods!

Starvation rations.

Next year, the beds will have TONS of muck on them, and will be WATERED.  Only myself to blame, really...

Monday 5 July 2010

Planting plan

I've been busy clearing the early peas and planting out autumn cabbages, red cabbage and Brussels sprouts, and sowing French beans this morning, so I thought a planting plan would be a good entry, which would enable anyone who actually reads this drivel to get a good night's sleep.

The veg plot is divided into 12x 1.6m by 10m beds.  The polytunnel is also divided up into 3x 5.5m2 beds, and then there's the soft fruit area with a couple of fledgling perennial beds, and another perennial bed for rhubarb by the potato bed, which will also have comfrey in it.  There is also a small holding bed for leeks and brassicas, which go in after other crops have been lifted.

Here's what goes where:

Beds with muck added:
Bed 1: Early potatoes, which are cleared off slowly and the space left planted with celeriac and leeks.  Next year this is runner beans.
Bed 2: Main crop potatoes, which will have broad beans sown in the autumn for overwintering.
Bed 3: Squashes, sweetcorn and courgettes, which will be cleared this autumn, limed and sown with green manure, with a block of overwintered early peas under a cloche.
Bed 4: Squashes, courgettes and cucumbers, which will be cleared, limed, and green manured over winter.  Next year this is French beans.

Beds with lime added:
Bed 5: Runner beans with red cabbage and Brussels sprouts, with a block of khol-rabi at the end.  Carrot bed next year, which means double-digging.  I can feel those blisters already...
Bed 6:  Broad beans, followed by kale and romanesco as the beans are cleared.  Onion bed next year.
Bed 7: French beans with some salad at the end, followed by savoy and winter cabbages, and broccoli.  Chooks next year.
Bed 8: Early and maincrop peas, followed with more Brussels sprouts (never too many sprouts) and autumn cabbages.  Chooks next year.

Beds with nowt added but sweat and graft:
Bed 9 (double-dug): Carrots and failed parsnips followed by autumn calabrese.  Squashes next year.
Bed 10: Onions, beetroot, salads, chard, garlic, followed by green manure.  More squashes next year.
Beds 11 and 12: Chickens.  These fat lazy birds are busy destroying the grass and manuring the beds ready for the potato crop next year.

A wee holding bed with all the brassicas and leeks waiting for room on the main plot.  Next year I'm gong to build it up a bit with new soil to keep grass from encroaching.

The polytunnel has three beds: chillies/peppers, tomatoes/aubergines, and herbs/salads/melons rotated every year.  In the winter it'll have salads and herbs, then some early potatoes, carrots, etc in the spring.

My idea is never to have bare earth anywhere.  Compost will be added before a sowing/planting, and green manures will cover anywhere that there are no crops.  Everything mulched:  I'm thinking about a clover cover crop as a living mulch, which other plants would get nitrogen from.  I'd clear small patches of clover where I'd want to plant/sow, and let it grow back when the crops are established.  Maybe.  The chickens would be put onto plots where I had just cleared crops for a few days to scratch out pests, but as the coop's so bloody heavy I might not...  Rabbits are to be kept on the grass paths in arks as edible lawnmowers!