Start of Spring

Blue skies. Warm weather. Lots of work to do down the plot.

For starters there is a rather scruffy greenhouse to clear out. The BlueBerry bushes that over-wintered inside, dropped all their leaves everywhere, and there is lots of other rubbish that's blown in. So it's time for a spring clean.

But first it's time for breakfast.

The old can stove is doing it's job. However I have been playing with the design a bit. I have now come up with a design which uses a single can with an inner wall. I'll probably do a separate entry about this at another time. But at present it takes half the time to boil the kettle for coffee.

Once the greenhouse is emptied out, then the next step is to level the shelving inside. The trays are designed so that they can hold a small amount of water to make a micro-climate. But this only works if everything is level, which at present it definitely is not.

Once it's all cleared out and levelled, time to put the survivors back in.

Meanwhile outside, I managed to scavenge a load of cardboard courtesy of Evans Cycles in Wimbledon. So this is being put to good use in the new beds that are going in.

Time to lay out the peach stones in an attempt to get them ready. The Wife wants to try and grow a tree or three from them. Not sure if we can because from all I've read about them, it's hard to do. But we shall see.

And it seems that we now have an official address. Plot 30, now resides on Leeky Lane.

Not sure whether that is a reference to the floods from last year, or what we intend to grow this year. Don't know who was responsible for this, but I don't think those signs will last very long.

So what's the Buzz about Bees and Flow?

Yesterday a new product launched. It was launched on Indiegogo as a new startup for a new kind of frame for bee hives. The new design allows you to harvest the honey without opening up the hive. It also resets the frame so that the bees can start filling it up again.

Quite frankly I'm surprised that nobody else has thought of this. Admittedly it seems a very ingenious solution, albeit one which which looks to have been an engineering nightmare.

Within minutes, they passed their starting requirement of $70,000. They are now well on their way to having one of the largest startup returns going. And this is no bad thing.

What they have done here is to think about the needs of the honey producers of both kinds... the Bees and the Humans who want to market the honey. I think this is going to seriously change the Honey market.

Brown, Grey and Blue

Well it has been a while since I last posted.

Well pretty much in line with all the other blogs around at the moment, everything seems to have shut down for winter. Most of us are simply digging things over getting ready for the new year. Fortunately it seems that I'm not suffering from the flooding that plagued us last year. But it's still pretty damp on the plot, and the brown mud pretty much sticks to everything. Even so, I'm still digging everything over and putting in plenty of manure.

In an attempt to keep down the bind weed and to make the front of the plot a little more presentable. I've put a long strip of carpet down. Eventually this will be covered with wood chips, but the grey skies are threatening rain. So it's going to have to wait for another day.

The old Birch tree sticks which I've had knocking around the plot for a while are starting to cultivate a healthy fungus on them.

There is also a very health lot of fungus growing in the manure. I'm not sure why people are so afraid of mould and fungus. After all it's these organisms which start the break down of the woody tissues. The small creature such as wood lice and such then feed on this and thus the cycle of life is continued. You cannot have life without death.

But here I am contemplating death. The death of this blog that is. I do not get many readers. My stats show that I only get on average about 20 views for every post. Those views are probably from people who know me and subscribe to the feed. I get very few comments. In fact most posts only have the sharing comment from where I post onto Google+. Don't get me started on Farcebook. I can't even sign up for it.

So I question whether it's actually worth keeping a blog. Certainly I need to keep notes about what I plant and what works well (or not so well on the plot), but is this blog actually fulfilling any purpose? I find that the best way to find information is to text search. Google certainly understands this, which is why its the number one search engine. However the modern generation seems to go for the TV. So the channels on Youtube seem to get hundreds of hits, for what basically amounts to waffle. I did threaten to start filming last year.

Anyway, no need to feel blue about it all. There is some life on the plot. The Rhubarb is starting to poke through.

Back on the plot

There wasn't anything posted for the past couple of weeks.Why not? Well I was half way up an Austrian mountain. The same mountain as last year.

But back on the plot it's time to see what's happening. Well firstly the courgettes are now well and truly over. Time to clear them out.

The marrows are also pulled out leaving a freshly available bed.

Not sure what to plant in this, or just cover it and leave it for next spring. Any thoughts?

The Beans are also in their final stages.

We've had an absolute load of beans from these. They were given so me by my Father back in April. Now we have the results of them drying in the kitchen at home.

But what about the Triffid? The grapes were growing nicely before we left and should have been ready to pick. Nope.

Some greedy bugger had pulled them all off. This doesn't appear to be the work of avians. It's more likely that it's the sticky fingers of some of the other pests we have on the plots. Something which we have seen by the way of kids who have been after pumpkins. Time to rig those cameras.

But the Strawberries are doing really well. Too well in fact. The runners off the main shoots that we planted, have started producing their own runners. Time for a quick haircut.

In the greenhouse, the Autumn Colours are starting to settle in with the Blueberries producing a spectacular colour display.

Hopefully, bigger and better for next year.

Winner!

Well my photo has won the "Fruitfulness" competition.

It's amazing what three large green things can do. Those courgettes (marrows) will go towards next years crop.