Lots To Do & No Time To Do It……
Life near the beach, too many distractions.!?

It’s been a while since I have posted anything (the last post was a draft from last year!). This year has seen a lot of life changes forced on me and therefore quite a bit more time on my hands.
Well this is what I thought, but between dropping and picking up the kids from school, fitting all the jobs in that I had planned for the day and studying I never seem to stop.
I have always been a busy person with lots of things to do but when I think the list seems to be getting smaller it increases again because the jobs I have done mean others can be started. Some of the things I have done since I stopped posting are, complete the shed, remove the old shed/clear the bottom of the garden, move one and put up another greenhouse, build some steps into the extension (this has been in need for the last few years and at last I can have my tool boxes back again!!), clear and dig an allotment, clear a friends allotment and start to build a chicken run. With all this going on I’d best get my camera out and post some pictures in the next few weeks.

With the recent purchase of the Ryobi Brush cutter/Trimmer RBC30SESA to clear the allotment of long grass we realised that the strimmer was maybe not the best thing for the surrounding paths as it tends to send the grass clippings everywhere.

The flexy-mower attachment is small and is perfect for the small grass paths around our allotment. You could probably keep a small garden lawn down with it but it obviously wouldn’t give you a bowling green finish. The machine handles well once you’ve got used to it – it seemed to take a lot of revs to get it started.

The difference with using this head over the strimmer is the trimmings don’t fly about, they stay close to the ground and can be raked up afterwards (or left!). It isn’t the type of tool I’d choose to cut the lawn on a quiet Sunday afternoon but when there’s no electricity available it does the job at great speed without the need for lots of extra tools to store in the shed. The flexy-mower head got a bit clogged up when the grass was wet and quite long – nothing more than a normal mower would have done though.

All-in-all we’re really pleased with this new piece of kit, we’ve even found new homes for our electric strimmer and lawn mower and will be using this new kit in the garden and not just down the allotment.

We thought we’d experiment with our own paper pots, rather than using the standard plastic pots or buying biodegradable ones. We did have to buy a newspaper – not a common occurrence in our house, but it did get read – just some would argue it wasn’t news by the time we got round to it!

I ripped the sheets down the fold and then folded long ways. I then took a wine bottle (I wanted 3″ pots for the squash plants) and rolled the paper around the base. Then crushed the base, filled with compost and planted the seeds. The pots have worked really well, transplanting the squashes into the allotment worked really well, I just wish we’d worked out how to stop the slugs – out of the 18 plants that germinated 5 are surviving on the allotment….

Resources sourced, tools on the ready, we had the first steps to make our raised beds down the allotment. The first quest was to get the wood to the allotment. With wood strapped to the top of the car we drove to the parking bay outside the allotment gate. Our allotment is at the bottom of the site, as far from the gate as you can get! We’d bought enough wood to make 8 beds, that’s 48 pieces of 4″ x 1″ by 3 to 3.4m lengths. That’s at least 6 journey’s up and down the allotment for each of our family. Do we try and drive the car down… what the heck! Yes, job done in half the time.

Constructing the beds was quite simple really, the 3.4m lengths were already cut by the very nice man at Oxford Wood Recyclers . The 1.5m lengths had to be cut from our 3m lengths (it was decided it would be easily to transport and unload these longer lengths). We then made 16 ends, then built the side. Time ran out, but our next job is to stick the copper tape round the tops.

Unfortunately siting the beds is proving slightly difficult as we have already started to grow potatoes, sweetcorn, green beans, beetroot , parsnips and turnips, but in time they will be sited, filled and full of yummy veg, that we’ll enjoy and not the slugs. We always said this year was going to be a very experimental year – each problem solved – with another just over the horizon no doubt!

I don’t like slugs. They make me angry, we spend lots of time ‘doing’ and the slugs just mozzy on past leaving a slimy trail of devastation. We planted out our squash plants a couple of weeks ago, our first really serious allotment venture and the slugs have had 3 of every 4 plants. It’s time for retaliation!

Slugs don’t like salt. Slugs really like beer. Slugs will avoid crossing copper. There is plenty of advice out there on how to rid yourself of slugs and just as many products to use. We’d had a similar problem with slugs last year in a formal flower garden. To keep the slugs out we made a raised bed and trimmed it with some waste copper pipe: this was very successful and we will be using this technique down the allotment. Our first task is to source the materials…

Timber – we’ve decided using reclaimed wood was the way to go, not just environmentally – using other peoples waste but also on our purse strings. We went to the Oxford Wood Recycling and purchased a lot of 4″ x 1″ timber at 50p a metre. Our beds are going to be 1.5m by 3.4m to suit the size of our allotment. We will also need 4 arris rail posts for each corner.

Copper – we’ve decided to use stick on tape – purely due to cost as pipe will be very expensive and we don’t have that much waste! Bought off ebay.

Screws – 2″ long purchased for a previous job from screwfix

Well they say that the English spend a lot of time talking about the weather, so as I’m English I would hate to see traditions die out. I can’t believe that in the last one and a half weeks since we’ve had the allotment we’ve had all weathers, rain in it’s various strengths is no surprise, but sleet, snow, hale, gale force winds and today lovely warm sunshine. The wind didn’t win the competition, my coat only came off when the sun came out!

I pruned out currant bushes in the garden today, the wrong time of year maybe but a great opportunity to take hardwood cuttings and plant them in a small cleared patch on the allotment ready for transplanting when the plot is ready. The raspberries look a little sad, I hope we see a few green shoots soon, guess I’m just being impatient (not a very good trait for a gardener though).

We lit the flame gun, worked a treat until we ran out of fuel and had to refill it whilst it was hot. Couldn’t get it to light properly after that, finished the area we wanted to burnt down though and hubby loosened the soil so we can fork it on our next trip and remove those roots. I’m a little concerned our blog might start sounding repetitive!

I had a pruning session around the garden: our hazel tree had gone a little mad and was encroaching on the pears and apples; the climbing plants along the fence were climbing a little wide and the blackberries had started to land. Hubby also had the chance to dig a few more posts into the bottom of the garden for the workshop too! Hopefully we’ll start having the evening weather to thin out the pond, now well and truly established (the children’s old sandpit and flower pot seem to be working great and having seen the winter through successfully). Toads are in their holes and vegetables roasting, dinner will be ready soon, with a well deserved glass of red wine…