Another sunny Bank Holiday

I've been a little quiet on the blog recently due to ill health (Pertussis aka Whooping Cough) and what not. But you can't ignore a sunny Bank Holiday because there are so few of them.

I've occasionally popped down to the plot over the past few weeks to make sure the seedlings are watered. But now is the time some of those seedlings need to be planted out. And the other nuisance needs to be taken care of. No, not the foxes who seem to have done an exploratory dig into the mound.

 No, I'm talking about weeds. They seem to creep up on you from nowhere. Now as you may remember from previous posts, this plot is rife with bindweed. It's a real pain in the growing beds. So to try and keep on top of it I'm covering as much of the plot as I can.

First off is the mound (sorry foxes).

This is covered in weed proof matting. Because when the time comes, the courgettes will be planted on this. Secondly is the next bed area.

At least it'll keep some of the weeds down until the time comes to plant.

Bt there are other areas which at present have no use other than walk ways and places where I definitely don't want weeds. Fortunately there has been some carpet dropped off at the site to be used of a first come, first served basis.

So the big entrance to my plot gets a welcome mat. And the grape vine gets a weed cover...

...and gets trained up onto the shed.

That's not a permanent fixing. I will need to guide it a little better. But the vine has been left in a very rough state that it needs to be gently coaxed into position. However for the time being it will do so I can see which part(s) of the vine is actually alive and which needs trimming.

After all that it's time for a cup of coffee. Just one problem. No electricity. Or gas for that matter. Time to try an old Boy Scouts trick of an alcohol stove. Take two coke cans and cut the bottoms off. Wedge the two together and punch a few holes in them. And voila...

Pour in some denatured alcohol and light it. Actually B&Q don't have and denatured alcohol (nor do Black's) so instead I'm using a little bit of bio-ethanol (normally used for outside fireplace ornaments) and then once the alcohol starts boiling from the heat you can stand your kettle (carefully) on top.

In the mean time, all those weeds that were collected including the heaps of stinging nettles were gathered up into a bucket. Pour in some water cover and leave to stand for 3 months and you have an excellent plant feed. Albeit a little smelly.

Now I need to get some of these seedlings planted out. Before they take over the green house.