Tag Archives: cloche

Friday April 2nd 2010 – I thought you might appreciate …

ford cortina mark 5 gardening raised beds les guis virlet puy de dome france… an aerial photograph of the new vegetable garden, such as it is right now.

You can see that I’ve now installed the 8th and final (for the time being) raised bed, but I’ve had to cover it with corrugated iron sheeting as I have run out of black plastic. I’m going to have to buy some more of that.

You’ll also see the nest part of the exercise. I’ve put a board up about 50cms from the edge of the raised beds (just to the right of centre behind the old-pallet duckboarding) and I’ve started to fill the gap with rubble. This will also be covered with old slates in due course and become part of the main path. It will also serve as a slug trap as two beds will be surrounded completely by old slate and these will be the brassica beds. I hope that this anti-slug idea works.

Next part of the plan is to dig out to the left of the new raised bed (the one covered in corrugated iron sheeting) as that is where this new large cloche is to go. I reckon about 1m20 or so at the back sloping down too maybe 35cms at the front and it will make a great place to grow melons, chilis, peppers and the like. I need to experiment with some hot beds in the autumn to see if it will work and provide the heat that I need to force some produce.

Once the cloche is made, that will be the heavy manual work ended in the garden for this year. Ultimately there will be another few raised beds to the right of the new path but I need to move the old van for that and that won’t be happening any time soon. And when I move the two cars I can set down a lawn there but that’s a long time hence.

And I noticed today that the onions have started to rear their ugly heads.

-1

Monday 29th March 2010 – We now have SIX raised beds in the vegetable plot.

6 raised beds garden les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe last one of these I had to cut a couple of new sides as the original ones had split. The next couple of beds I’m going to have to build up from scratch.

There’s only two more to make, but I’m going to be building a new cloche about 3 times the size of the existing one and about twice as high. That’ll be for melons and cucumbers and so on and I’ll use the existing one for strawberries.

MInd you there was a point when I didn’t think I would get anything done today. What with the change in hours today I found it a little difficult to leave my stinking pit. And then I had a phone call, a parcel from the postwoman, a parcel from a courier (my new Nikon camera has arrived!!!!) followed by a visit from my Dutch neighbours. By the time I’d finished my breakfast it was almost 12:00!

This morning started off bright and sunny snd for a moment I thought that Spring had come back. But of course it wasn’t to last and it clouded over progressively until by teatime it was positively pouring down with rain.

You might remember a few months ago I had a jamming session with a guitarist and a drummer in Montaigut. Michael the guitarist phoned me up this afternoon and asked if I wanted to get together again. So with being out tomorrow night at a CREFAD meeting, wednesday football training and Friday in Clermont Ferrand, that only left Thursday evening.

Do you know that when I lived in Brussels there was so much more to do and so many more people to do it with, yet I never seemed to do very much. However down here in the back of beyond I’m rushed off my feet and have far more going for me than I ever did back there!

-6

Wedesday 17th March 2010 – I now have a little terrace …

terrace outside table chairs les guis virlet puy de dome france… as you can see – and it’s less than 60 cms high too.But it’s amazing the things that you can do with old pallets and continually give them new leases of life. These were formerly part of the attic floor and before that they carried loads of paper into the European Commission.

And it was nice to have a terrace to sit out on to have my breakfast – at 09:30 it was already 17 degrees outside. And today has been the warmest day since October sometime – a max of 22.6 degrees outside and another 270 amp-hours (over 3KwH) of solar energy.

If you look carefully you’ll see that the cloche has gone. That’s now taken up residence in front of the greenhouse. And furthermore when moving the cloche I uncovered 2 strawberry plants from last year. So a ferret around where the outdoor strawberry plants were last year salvaged another 3 so I now have a cloche with strawberry plants in it.

cloche raised bed onions garlic les guis virlet puy de dome franceI pulled up a raised bed from out here too and moved that down to the area in front of the cloche. I gave that a thorough digging and that’s in place, with onions and some left-over garlic from last year. I haven’t half been busy!

Tomorrow I’ll be digging some more and moving another raised bed. This will be for the spuds at the end of the month. When that’s done I’llbe taking an inventory of the seeds that I have, finding out which ones I need (to be bought on Saturday) and then starting to sow them in trays. The garden needs to get under way.

-4

Monday 24th August 2009 – WHAT ON EARTH IS THIS?

strange vegetable fat cucumber les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’ve made a start on eating my cucumbers and I put my hand inside the cloche (well, a few lengths of old concrete shuttering made into a deep frame and covered by a caravan window). This is what I discovered.

Maybe it’s a melon, I dunno. There’s all kinds of things in the cloche. However it’s quite exciting to see it.

This morning the weather had clouded over and cooled down. With this threatened storm I fixed the guttering on the lean-to so that it’s all complete on there. I was going to do the house. I have 3 long ladders here but in a masterpiece of logistics I’ve managed to have half a section of each of the ladders attached to something semi-permanent, meaning I have 3 half-ladders ( and not a single whole one) available for climbing up the side of the house.

I dunno how I manage it.

When the “storm” arrived (ha-ha-ha) it was as I expected – no more than a handfull of raindrops. Not even anything resembling a shower ( and having served on the Open University Students’ Association’s Executive Committee in many capacities for as long as I did, I can recognise a shower all right). Not even 1cm of rain to fill my water butts (although even as I type, I can hear raindrops outside).

This afternoon I carried on with my control panel. Terry suggests I put all the wires into trunking and he’s quite right. In fact I’ve already planned for that.

But two things that I did do was firstly to run the permanent wires down to the back of the control panel and attach them to the bolts behind the panel so they won’t ever be disturbed (even though if they stay around me for long enough they’ll be disturbed all right) and secondly I put some plastic junction box thingies over the ends of the bolts that protrude through the control panel so that they will be protected against short circuits if ever I drop a spanner across the ends.

I’ve put fuses (1×100 amp for the inverter that is still in Pompey being repaired, 2×30-amp for the lighting circuits and 4×70-amp for the two power circuits ans two auxillary circuits) in the fuse box, wired up an American socket (I use American plugs and sockets for my 12-volt circuits as they are designed for heavy duty high-amperage cable) and started to wire the power cable in.

I use 6mm cable for the power circuits and 2.5mm cable for the lighting. No risk of voltage drop with me.

Tomorrow I’ll finish up the basic wiring and then connect the 4 batteries and the solar panels up to the system that I’ve been building. Then I can run a power circuit and a lighting circuit as well as a 230-volt circuit up to the attic and I can get started up there.

And not before time too.

-5