LL's Gardening Diary

Members adventures in the Vegetable Patch all year round
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wildlifemad
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Re: LL's Gardening Diary

Post by wildlifemad »

That's looking really good LL, very impressed! You are obviously very handy (as am I) which comes in very useful for being frugal! You just have to remember to sit & enjoy your hard labour sometimes, something that we are terrible at doing! Well done again!
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lancashire lass
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Autumn Equinox

Post by lancashire lass »

thanks Manda and wildlifemad - have to confess I still can't help thinking to myself, did I really build that? LOL

Actually, not a lot to report about the pond or garden. The weather has been up and down, always with a shower or longer spells of rain thrown in, but this morning there was low lying mist in the garden with heavy dew (from yesterdays heavy downpour), a real autumn nip in the air and glorious warm sunshine in a clear blue sky. It had a feeling of autumn about it ... until I realised today IS the Autumn Equinox, when the sun rise and sun set is exactly 12 hours apart and thereafter the nights will draw in earlier and sunrise will be later. Summer is now over.

Last weekend I tried to finish off the planter on the pond and make a start on boxing in the biofilter with a frame and feather board, but apart from cutting some wood to length and painting an undercoat the rest was thwarted by ... you guessed it, rain. The good news is that today is pay day )c( - so I can comfortably go and spend a little money this weekend on building materials for the patio which still needs to be finished off, preferably before winter arrives! However, now that I am back at work and the university is gearing up for freshers week, how much I can accomplish at home will be affected.

Meanwhile, the goldfish are a lovely splash of colour in the pond and a delight to see every time I open my back door - I'm so glad I had sited the pond in the middle of the patio. The fish are now much more confident swimming out in the open too. They all rush to the corner of the pond where I feed them as soon as I open the back door ... I keep trying to count them and although it is easy to pick out the 4 golden goldfish and the 4 Shubunkins, the Sarasa and common goldfish are so similar in colour and they move so quickly that I can't be sure if 2 are missing or not. I haven't seen any dead fish on the bottom but I suppose it's easy to miss them. One of my weekly tasks is using the skimmer net to oik out any clumps of algae and blanketweed, using it like a sieve through the water as well as lift up and thin out the duckweed (duckweed is an excellent oxygenator and provides good surface cover, but the growth rate is amazing - I think it doubles the surface coverage on a daily basis) In the end I think the best thing to do is to just take a photo and then do a count from the image.
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Re: LL's Gardening Diary

Post by Cheshire Chick »

Sounds like you are enjoying your pond LL. Don't forget more photo's when your patio is complete (love looking at your photo's).
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lancashire lass
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Autumn on the way + New pump for the pond

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Trees all around are gradually changing colour and losing their leaves now - though to be fair it is still surprisingly mild for this time of year (it doesn't always feel like it, but we should be having frosts about now) Although I've put net over the pond, leaves falling from the neighbour's ash tree have a habit of landing stem down and not always easy to stretch across the pond to pick them off. So I decided to use the scaffold netting I'd cut to size when I first filled the pond with water - draped over, it is a lot easy to flick off leaves than unhook the pond net. I decided to put some canes across the pond to take the weight and make it easier to drag the green net off. There's another purpose too - to support the heavy overflow pipe from my new filter box.

Last month I received an unexpected bonus from work in my pay packet - any other sensible person would have banked it away but I decided to put some of it towards a new pump and filter box. I hate to admit it but the water clarity has deteriorated but I'm not quite sure why. After testing the water, everything is fine (the pH is down to 6.8 but still in the okay range), with the nitrates and nitrates down to practically zero which is perfect. The current pump and biofilter are running 24 hours a day but clearly not coping too well. If I lean over closely and peer into the water, I can still see the gravel but compare this photo taken yesterday:

Image

to this one taken on the 3rd September ... a big difference in water quality:

Image

The current pump has an output of about 750 L up to 1000 L water per hour - the pond is about 3000 L. A lot of sites recommend a turnover of the entire pond water in an hour .... so perhaps this is the case. The new pump has an outflow of 3000 L/hour, but the biofilter would never be able to cope with that volume of water, so I also purchased a new filter box that can cope up to 6000 L / hour (both on special offer) I had to buy some nozzles to fit the filter box and also new tubing to fit the nozzle diameter. I decided to go to The Japanese Water Garden in Nottingham where they had all the necessary fittings. It was also opportunity to have a look at their indoor fancy goldfish .... I would like a couple for my fish tank in the living room as it looks so empty now the others are in the pond. I have an idea of what I'd like to get but I really must set the tank up properly - it was one thing having the tank as a temporary quarantine, quite another as a permanent home. Meanwhile, an update of the pond with the planter finished and the filter box sited on top of the biofilter (the only logical place to put it ... which has messed up my "boxing in" plans to hide the biofilter)

Image

As you can see the outflow is quite considerable - the sound of water splashing into the filter box and into the pond is quite loud .... I wasn't bothered about the sound from biofilter overflow but this could be quite annoying if you were hoping for a quiet sit down in your back garden.

Image

Fortunately I'm not 100% confident of leaving the new pump running 24 hours a day - I still need to fasten the hoses properly to the filter box so that it doesn't accidentally get pulled off - if that should happen, the pump would continue to pump out water .... doesn't take a genius to work out that it could easily pump out the entire pond contents in less than a couple of hours! So in the meantime the old pump is still running 24 hours a day but the new one only when I'm at home. Besides, there is the cost of electricity - the old pump is only 8 watts/hour, whereas the new one is 85 watts/hour .... which could add up in the course of a year!

And has the new pump made any difference to the water quality? Well, only marginally - it isn't any worse. It's hard to describe the water clarity - if I scooped up water in a glass it would look clear (that is, no particles floating around) but in the pond it is murky and a light brown colour like weak tea. So I put some activated carbon in the new filter box and hopefully that might help to clear the water. One thing about the outflow - landing in the water like a waterfall means it helps to oxygenate the pond water, but the other is that all the goldfish have to swim a little harder to avoid being washed away by the current. It has certainly perked them up and made them swim around a lot more LOL All the goldfish seem well - I'd say most have grown and between 3.5 - 4 inch in length from nose to tail now. I managed to do a head count and all 18 are still with us - I'm able to pick out some of the Sarasas - the one with the long flowing tail (I couldn't pick him out from the others for ages - I think he has grown a lot making it easier to find now), and one with the orange tail (unusual) still makes me smile. So that's an update of the pond.
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Re: LL's Gardening Diary

Post by Cheshire Chick »

Looking very good LL. I am sure you are just having some teething problems with water clarity etc. and that it will all settle down soon. Have to say it again, it's a marvellous feature in your garden and a project very well done.
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lancashire lass
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Re: LL's Gardening Diary

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Cheshire Chick wrote:Looking very good LL. I am sure you are just having some teething problems with water clarity etc. and that it will all settle down soon. Have to say it again, it's a marvellous feature in your garden and a project very well done.


thank you - yes, I think it is a combination of teething problems and time of year (though, when is a good time to set up a pond and not have problems LOL) Just when the bacteria should be keeping on top of the ammonia, temperatures dropped (mid August - early September had some chilly days - October on the other hand is an Indian Summer!) so the bacteria would not be growing and working at full capacity.

Anyway, an update - the new filter system is quite powerful and I'm happy with it, but the results were not that great. The water clarity was still turbid so I've been doing a lot of research on the subject. It could be the particles are so fine they are passing right through the filters so not getting trapped. Some of the chemicals used in water treatment include using calcium carbonate, calcium sulphite and aluminium sulphate among a few - however, some can be toxic to fish especially aluminium. Barley straw came up and I read up about how it breaks down and in the process hydrogen peroxide is formed which acts like an algaecide. Some keen koi keepers miss out the barley stage and use hydrogen peroxide direct but, it must be very diluted otherwise it can not only injure the fish but kill off the friendly bacteria in the biofilter too. Horticultural lime is made from crushed limestone / chalk - it is used to raise soil pH and helps to break down clay (by binding fine particles in a process called flocculation into clumps which makes it easier to dig through) The same process is used to bind the fine particles in water so they sink or more readily captured by filter systems. Calcium sulphite (aka Gypsum) is a neutral salt and seems to be safe, as is calcium carbonate which dissolves in acidic water and helps to neutralise (recommended in marine aquariums to also supply calcium for corals and shellfish) Calcium carbonate is also found in .... crush oyster shell. I have yet to test some, but in the meantime, I forgot to mention I had purchased some "Pond rescue anti-sludge treatment" (also on special offer at the time) when I was buying the new filter and pump. Sludge seemed too strong a word to describe my water issue - I think of sludge as being a thick silty layer on the pond floor which is disturbed when you poke at it, which in my case was not the same. However, it did say it cleared water so I thought I'd give it go last weekend.

Well, nothing happened but then 4 days later I noticed the water did indeed start to look much cleaner. Yesterday the water was looking so much better as you can see here:

Image

I'd love to find out what the magic ingredient is in the solution, but nearly all of the products for sale that boast clearing water do not mention what the active component is. That's why they can charge a lot of money for something that may only be pennies to make, but because you don't want to poison your pond, you are more likely to keep buying it because of the "wow" end result.
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sandy
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Re: LL's Gardening Diary

Post by sandy »

Well that water is definetly an improvement. Not only do I love reading your posts, LL I think you could make the rules of cricket interesting and I HATE cricket with a passion, but my Auntie's pond has just emptied yike* It is a stone construction so it has been difficult to see what the problem is.
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lancashire lass
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First frost!

Post by lancashire lass »

sandy wrote:my Auntie's pond has just emptied It is a stone construction so it has been difficult to see what the problem is.


sounds like a crack - hope it can be solved {hug}

sandy wrote:I think you could make the rules of cricket interesting and I HATE cricket with a passion,
{rofwl} I've never liked cricket either ... can't understand how anyone can watch it (seems to be more about standing about for ages, polishing the cricket ball, then about 5 seconds of action)

Well, we had our first frost of the autumn this morning. To be honest, I didn't think it was that cold outside when I went to sort the chickens (top up their feeder and water) and feed the fish. It was a bit nippy but hardly frosty. That is, until I went to the car at the front of the house to go to work and there was ice on the windscreen >coc< I can only think the large body of water (the pond) on the patio had kept the temperatures at the back of the house raised like a sort of "hot water bottle".

Which makes a lot of sense. I remember reading up about using big tanks of water (such as under racking/shelving) in greenhouses to keep the temperature inside from dropping too low and damaging plants - the larger the body of water, the less likely it will freeze as quickly.

As it happens I had spent yesterday preparing the pond for autumn weather and my initial thought was how to prevent ice from forming on top. I know it will eventually happen in winter if and when we get really cold weather, so I am expecting it and am prepared. When ice forms on top, it prevents oxygen from entering the water surface, and toxins like carbon dioxide from escaping into atmosphere. From what I've learned (and also seen in on the news recently), goldfish survive by turning their body reserves into alcohol like a sort of anti-freeze and sink to the bottom of the pond where the water is not likely to freeze. It is advised not to try and smash the ice on top as the shock wave through the water can frighten / injure the fish.

One of the preventative measures against ice is disturbing the water surface with a waterfall or similar - in my case, the overflow from the biofilter / pond filter. Another is to have some floating things on top like plastic balls or floating baskets with plants in. Of course, it helps if the walls of the pond are thick enough to act as insulation, and the pond is deep (as in, also below ground level) and increase the volume of water. If we get really cold weather, I could put some plastic sheet over the top to try and keep the heat of the water in the pond but I'll see how it goes.

Meanwhile my biggest problem seems to be ... autumn leaves. The trees are gradually turning golden colours (a little late this year after such a mild start to autumn) and already dropping. I had put some debris netting (scaffold netting) on top to stop the smaller ones from working their way through the pond netting (see post written 9th October) but it was only partly successful - most of the leaves swept up in the strong wind blew against the planter and ended up behind and underneath the netting. And of course, the plants in the planter had also managed to capture a load of leaves. So after a big clear out, the scaffold netting is now stretched right over the top of the new filter box on top of the biofilter, and a couple of canes on the other side of the planter. Now leaves that land on the netting should fall off as it is set at an angle. That's the theory.

I also had to sort out the biofilter - when I put the new filter box on top, I had a little bit of leakage from the pipe fittings so I took the bit of pond liner off the top of the biofilter so that the water could land inside. Unfortunately, so did a lot of autumn leaves (how so many landed through the small gap is phenomenal) So time to give the biofilter a bit of a clean and sort out - I took the top filter mesh out (remnants of the tent liner) and rinsed it, then re-organised the netting inside the water butt, replaced the tent liner and weight it down with a rock (limestone .... part of my calcium carbonate solution to help with raising the water pH in the pond), then on top of that a large sheet of foam (THIS from ebay) and on top of that a layer of polyester wadding (THIS, again from ebay) Finally, a piece of debris netting on top of the water butt (that is, the rim) to prevent leaves from dropping inside but porous enough for the water. So all I should need to do is remove the polyester wadding and sponge whenever they start to need a squeeze clean and rinse.

However, re-starting up the biofilter pump had a few problems. For some reason, when the pump is switched off somehow it manages to blow the fuse when switched on again at the mains. I could understand it if it was a heavy duty oil pump but this is just a small magnetic type (the propeller freely spins on a magnetic weight sitting inside an electrical current - primary school electrics) I've checked the pump itself and it is completely water-tight so very mysterious. After replacing the fuse, the pump seemed to be working (I could feel it vibrate in my hand) but no water was getting into the biofilter ... okay, maybe a blockage (?) so I blew the water out of the pipe (yep, yuk yuk rinsed my mouth out afterwards) but still no water. Meanwhile the sun had gone down and dusk was rapidly turning into evening and I just had to get the pump working!

I brought the pump indoors and got the screwdriver out. The propeller looked fine and after working out how to remove the grill, I noticed a tuft of strand algae wrapped round the tip ... hardly looked like it would stop the propeller from working but there was nothing else. So I unravelled the tuft and put the pump back together and tried again - well something was happening as water was forced out in all directions from the pump but still none going to the biofilter }hairout{ Once more I oiked the pump out of the pond and back indoors. After a lot of cursing I realised I'd forgotten to put the grill back over the propeller (it basically held it in place when spinning) Fingers crossed, I tried again and )c( , water was pouring into the biofilter.

After about a couple of hours I went outside with the torch to make sure all was well only to find the water level had risen higher than usual in the water butt and was also pouring out of the upper overflow (a piece of tubing about 6 inches above the main one) The new sponge and polyester wadding shouldn't be causing a blockage but I do remember rearranging all the netting inside the drum so I could have knocked the tubing at the bottom and blocked it. A quick wiggle with the tubing and instantly water poured out and slowly the water dribbling out of the upper overflow stopped. Phew. What a palaver - what should have been a 10 minute job turned into a 2 hour nightmare but hopefully I'll know what to do if it happened again.
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Mo
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Re: LL's Gardening Diary

Post by Mo »

OH and I had a saying 'there is no such thing as a 5 minute job'

Glad it's sorted now.
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lancashire lass
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Another frosty morning

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Now that the trees are in full autumn leaf and dropping fast, the scaffold netting over the pond is working a treat )t' I didn't bother brushing them off this weekend (there were still plenty of gaps for natural light to get through so the fish are fine) as we were forecast a sharp frost ... the leaves and netting would act like a blanket and keep some of the heat in the pond water from escaping. When we had the first frost, it didn't seem that cold out the back but this morning was very different - water on most surfaces like the feed bin lids and the chicken run roofs were iced over though their drinkers still hanging up overnight were fine. The car on the other hand was completely covered and I had to look for the can of de-icer (after accidentally scratching the windows on my old car using scrapers, I've gone for spray this time)

I was expecting the goldfish to stop feeding now that it is cold but they were all there waiting this morning as I came out with the food. There was no ice on the pond but the temperature of the water must have dropped. This is also partly due to the pump / filter system - water is pulled up from the bottom of the pond where it is warmest then brought up and delivered to the top of biofilter where it slowly filters down and then overflows back into the pond on the surface where it is cold. Perhaps the water temperature needs to be a lot lower before the fish stop feeding? All I care about at the moment is that the fish have built up enough food reserve to survive their first winter in the pond.
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Re: LL's Gardening Diary

Post by Cheshire Chick »

It sounds as if it is all going well LL. I am sure the pond fish will be fine over the winter - they seem to be in the perfect environment (thanks to all your research and planning).
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lancashire lass
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Oops - Potatoes & Garlic

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I can't help myself - free p&p offers from seed and plant suppliers and there I am having a peek even though I don't have an allotment. For a while I had been considering planting some garlic in big pots on the patio to overwinter so thought I'd try out a variety I'd been successful with on the plot - called Red Duke - unfortunately the ones I'd have preferred were no longer available. Garlic are said to do well in container growing so seemed worth trying out.

But then at this time of year, my attention turns to selecting potatoes (and take advantage of the free p&p offer) for spring planting. I've been buying supermarket potatoes but as always, I shop carefully so price rather than flavour comes into the choice. Shame, as different varieties can be very tasty or have cooking qualities that I like. So I thought about using the polytunnels in the garden to grow some. The soil in my garden is heavy clay and compacted, worse the roots of the fruit trees and privet hedge make it difficult to dig down so anything I grow will have to be in raised beds. I've been considering building raised beds in the polytunnel so growing potatoes in them seemed like a good idea.

And that's where the "oops" in the subject title comes in. Somewhere between thinking about using the polytunnel and growing some nice tasty potatoes, I went into my usual selection mode. As per usual, I love Vivaldi so no hesitation there - and they are supposed to be lower in carbohydrates which is a plus. I also like salad potatoes - they are waxy and do well in soups and stews too. I've never grown Maris Bard but so many people say they are really nice - these are an extra early variety and if grown in a polytunnel could be harvested by June (spring weather permitting) Then my attention turned to Elf - I'd bought the seed potatoes for growing this year but with giving up the plot, they never got planted. I was still keen to try them out. So in the shopping basket they went and then I paid for everything. Only then did it occur to me that I had forgot I didn't have an allotment plot size polytunnel .... oops :oops: So I might have to do some creative thinking about where to put them all.

First step - building raised beds. The pond project has given me some ideas - the thick polythene I used to line the pond before putting the pond liner down could be used much like a growbag. I'll still need to have raised sides and consider what to use to fill the beds up with, plus set up a watering system - I've got a few ideas which hopefully won't cost the earth. So it looks like I've got a new project for 2018 ....
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lancashire lass
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Autumn 2017

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The scaffold netting on the pond has done a great job of keeping the autumn leaves out. We've had a couple of frosts recently which has hastened even more leaf fall - I've had to clear some leaves off the netting twice so the fish have a little daylight. The neighbour's ash tree is still dropping leaves so the netting will be on a little while longer but overall the light levels on the patio have definitely increased:

Image

I'll have to clear the leaves off the chicken run roofs - they have steadily been getting a little darker with all the autumn leaves landing on them LOL And all the leaves on the fruit trees have dropped too. It's such a lovely bright cold crisp morning, I think I know what my job will be today ...
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Winter maintenance of pond + polytunnels

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This past week, temperatures really plunged .... as a result, the goldfish stopped feeding. It was strange - one day they are all waiting for their breakfast, the next day the pond looked scarily empty with not a fish in sight (bar one golden goldfish that had died ... it wasn't that unexpected) I'm hoping the others decided to shelter under the patch of dwindling duckweed so I couldn't see them. At first I put a small pinch of food on top thinking the water might warm up later during the day or the food would sink where they'd have access, but as I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to do I thought I'd better read up on it.

Hmmm, okay - this is what I learned. When the temperature drops below 10oC, the goldfish will sink to the bottom of the pond where the water is warmer. As goldfish are cold water fish, their digestion also becomes sluggish - any food they eat will simply rot in their gut and cause problems. So feeding over winter is a no-no. This is not usually a problem if they have had access to a higher protein diet over the summer months (I suppose that will be like mosquito larvae and other insects which land in the water) which helps to prepare for the winter months. I was conscious of this when I got them in September and made sure they got as many smaller feeds per day as I could (a lot of smaller feeds per day are better than one big meal) while it was mild and light levels good so I'm hoping that should be enough.

Another thing I was concerned about was the pump - should I switch it off or leave it running? On the one hand, the overflow from the biofilter would disturb the water so the surface would not freeze as readily as undisturbed water during an overnight frost. On the other hand, the pump sits at the bottom of the pond so it pulls the warmer water below the surface up and out into the biofilter drum where it slowly filters down to the siphon tube and then overflows back into the pond .... the biofilter / water butt is a smaller body of water so will get colder than the pond, so basically my filtration system will in effect chill the water faster.

Well, there's a bit of a debate with various sites online - some recommend shutting the pump down (as a cost factor - to prevent damage to expensive pumps sited outside the pond during very cold weather) to others recommending keeping them going for the same reason I had about disturbing the surface water from freezing. The biofilter stops working when temperatures drop because the bacteria need warmth to grow so ammonia levels in the pond water could start to climb especially if you have a lot of fish. Algae also stop multiplying when the water temperature drops, but mechanical filters (the layer of sponges and matts) will keep on removing particle matter from the water. One site was insistent that if keeping a pump running, it is better to have one where water is drawn up from the bottom of the pond and land on the surface than one that takes cold surface water and pumps it to the bottom of the pond.

Keeping the surface from freezing is important because it allows toxic gases such as ammonia to escape. Of course, at some point the weather may get so extremely cold that it becomes inevitable but is still suggested that some of it is kept ice free. Apparently trying to smash the ice will cause vibrations in the water which can shock and kill the fish but to use other methods such as putting some warm water on it to melt the ice.

As for the deceased golden goldfish - I had noticed a black mark on its body a couple of weeks prior to the weather getting cold. I had kept a close eye on it when they were feeding and the fish seemed normal in every way (it swam normally, it ate with the others, they didn't chase it away) I'd read that some goldfish do change colour to black and that this was not unusual. So I left it. Now I feel a little sad that I didn't do anything and maybe isolate it in the quarantine tank until I was sure it was nothing more than a colour change. I suppose the more worrying thing, is that I haven't seen most of the others now for more than a week (although the big Shubunkin I bought in the last batch does appear now and again) so fingers crossed.

This weekend the weather was a little milder and dry. Yesterday (Sunday) was chicken coop clean out but my compost bin for the soiled bedding is now full to the top .... the disadvantage of giving up the allotment is that I'm going to have to find another way to dispose of it. I don't have any beds (flower or veg) in my garden but have one long big bed the entire length of the back garden fence where the fruit trees are planted. The trees are 15 years old now so well established - I'm sure a bit of bird poo and straw should be alright, and with putting it down now on the soil surface, any wet weather and worms will help to rot it down. I do have a plan for the stuff already in the dalek compost bin.

With having a brain f*rt when ordering seed potatoes for next year (forgetting that I don't have anywhere near the same cultivation space as I had at the allotment), I intend to make raised beds in the polytunnel where I might be able to squeeze them in and harvest them earlier (I might even be able to get a second crop of something else in the same beds for the summer / autumn months after lifting up the potatoes - I'm toying with the idea of some sweetcorn, maybe also beans and peas, carrots, maybe winter veg like salad stuff? I might have to play "bee" for flowering plants but that comes naturally with greenhouse / polytunnel growing) I will need a lot of compost and soil for the raised beds, so that's where the soiled coop bedding comes in to improve the soil fertility especially for the potatoes and crops afterwards.

So yesterday, the first task was to rescue one of the polytunnels - because I did not grow anything in them this year, one of the covers had managed to dip deep enough at the top to fill up with water over summer and then got so heavy it actually pulled the bottom skirt from under the weights and then the velcro straps came apart pulling the cover off half the frame and creating a suspended swimming pool in the other. I tried to push the cover up over the top frame to empty it but the water was just too heavy .... I abandoned the whole thing until I could think of something. Well, nothing like the present so I gave it another go. Instead of tackling from inside the polytunnel, I pulled on the cover from the side which helped a lot. There was a lot of tugging and cursing going on in the back garden, and I wasn't particularly happy when stinky sour smelling water (where leaves had collected and started to rot) landed on my head )loo( ) The cover is now 4 years old and has frayed quite a lot with holes and stitching coming apart so I'll have to replace it anyway but in the meantime, it might still keep most of the inside fairly dry over winter. Meanwhile, I put some rods along the centre of the frame to hopefully stop it happening again.

Considering I didn't actually do an awful lot this weekend, I do seem capable of incredible waffle

{rofwl}
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Mo
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Re: LL's Gardening Diary

Post by Mo »

Considering I didn't actually do an awful lot this weekend, I do seem capable of incredible waffle

It's surprising how long 'not an awful lot' takes.
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