Tag Archives: greenhouse

Monday 22nd March 2010 – It’s 23:11 right now …

… and I’m absolutely shattered. I crashed out at lunchtime, I crashed out when I knocked off, and I’ll be crashing out any moment now at this rate.

liz ayers memorial orchard les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt’s not as if I’ve done anything major either, so I don’t understand it. This morning I finished off repotting the Liz Ayers memorial orchard – the trees are now all in fresh soil with a light scattering of wood ash over the topof the soil and covered in gravel to prevent weeds from settling. The bottoms of the plastic buckets have been crocked to allow for drainage.

I was also going to go into St Eloy for LIDL’s gardening day but I passed on that. In fact I couldn’t really justify the expense of buying the stuff and I’m on another economy drive.

seeds sown in pots greenhouse les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo instead I sowed my Brussels Sprouts seeds and that’s now everything for March. I can have 3 weeks off before I need to do the April planting.

But talking of Brussels Sprouts I noticed that the ones I planted last year now have a decent look about them so I had some of those for tea. It’s nice to eat your own food. After all, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing, and what the garden is supposed to be doing too.

aluminium frame greenhouse les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis afternoon I extracted the bits of aluminium greenhouse from the shrubbery. This is one that someone gave me – it’s a 3×2 metre with no glass so I need to organise that somehow, and I also need to find some of the aluminium screws and nuts to fasten it together. But at least I have it in place (which meant that I had to saw away several inconvenient branches) so I can work out where to put the next beds.

And I’m in demand! The English-language newspaper that spectacularly collapsed back in November has been put up for sale by the owner (some people have quite a cheek – it made nothing but losses throughout its entire existence) and a French person I know is interested in buying it (there’s one born every minute you know). She needs an English-language technical adviser and yours truly has been roped in for that. We have a site meeting on Wednesday morning.

As if I don’t have enough to do. Who said that the rural life was quiet and boring?

But I’m off to bed now before I fa ………..

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

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Friday 19th March 2010 – It’s raining now and blowing a gale.

In fact the rain is the first we’ve had since a week last Thursday -over a week ago. And hasn’t a lot happened in that time? A week ago we were still in the grip of the icy weather with the temperature as low as minus 9. Last night it was as low as … er …. PLUS 9.2

And look at everything I’ve done too – finished off weeding the hedge and the area around the vegetable garden, burnt all of the rubbish in a mega-bonfire, moved the greenhouse, moved the cloche, dug two raised beds, planted tons of seeds. Today I finished all of the sowing for February and March and I’ve started to repot the Liz Ayers Memorial Orchard, as the trees are having to stay in their pots for another year.

One thing I noticed in a gardening book is that they reckon that the soil I’m planting things in should be friable. One of my plots has onion and garlic in it. Now how friable is that?

But I’m going to have to do something about the manure water distiller. Since its installation back in February it’s given me about half a litre, most of which was yesterday.Today it gave me three litres and there is more beckoning. I’m going to have to move it no matter what otherwise they will be changing my address from “Les Guis” to “The House at Pooh Corner” and like Christopher Robin, I’ll go down with Alice or some other infectious disease. Which of course reminds me – the new AA Milne Travel Company is now organising trips to London where you can visit Buckingham Palace to see The Changing of the Guard, followed by a trip to the Bank of England to see “The Guarding of the Change”.

And I’ve not long been back from Clermont Ferrand, I’m thoroughly exhausted after this hard week, and so I’m going to have an early night.

Goodnight All!

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Thursday 18th March 2010 – My progress knows no bounds

2 raised beds old ford cortina mercedes 240d w123 greehouse cloche les guis virlet puy de dome franceWe now have, from right to left, a greenhouse, a cloche with 5 strawberry plants, a home-made bird scarer, a raised bed with garlic and onions, and a raised bed that is empty but covered with a sheet of black plastic.

First thing though was to scrape up all of the wood ash from the big fire. That’s my source of potash and it’s threatening rain – I don’t want to lose that. And I noticed something curious, namely that I’d set the fire over some tree stumps in the hope that I could burn them out but despite the raging fire all day Monday they are but scorched and it took me ages to pull them up today.

When I finished the raised bed I started on the organising of the seeds and I’ve now sown in seed trays some lettuce, peppers, aubergines, chili peppers and turnips. There’s loads more stuff to do. And I’m down on seeds too – there’s about 6 missing so I’ll be doing a megashop on Saturday.

I had a surprise visitor this morning – Liz came round with some of this compressed hardwood that a friend of hers sells. I invited her onto my terrace and we had coffee. It’s getting mighty civilised here these days – not like me at all. But it’s a major sign of progress all the same.

But there’s a couple of things that aren’t quite right. This compost bin is …errr … not much good and when I heaved a load of stuff into it, it all came apart. I had to empty it so that I could reassemble it and now it’s held together with a load strap. I dunno how long it will last – not very, I suspect.

The second thing is not quite so good. It concerns the composting toilet and a manure-water distiller that I’ve invented. This isn’t the place to discuss it – you’re probably eating your tea right now – but basically I wish I had put it somewhere else as it’s in the wrong place and it’s now too heavy to lift. The hot weather we have had is accelerating the distillation process and it’s making its mark on my close environment.

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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.

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Tuesday 16th March 2010 – Well, I moved the greenhouse!

old frod cortina greenhouse les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis is where it will be staying for the foreseeable future, gale-force winds permitting.

I had to dig out six tree stumps and that tookabsolutely ages. I broke the handle on my pickaxe but luckily Claude (Laurence’s father that is) many years ago gave me a kind of digging axe and I put a shaft into it, and that came in really handy. There was a whole warren of tree roots under there and they took some moving.

This afternoon I had to dig over the patch a few times ( and that wore me out) and then dig out the greenhouse from where it used to be, in front of the verandah. In fact the empty space there makes a nice place to put my outdoor table and chairs. I rounded off the day by chopping wood but I really didn’t need it as it was an absolutely beautiful day today. The  warmest so far this year an I had 270amp-hours (over 3KwH) of electricity – enough to run the electric heater in here for 5 hours and the temperature up here reached 18.6 degrees.

Tomorrow if the weather keeps on going I’ll be moving the cloche and making the first of the raised beds – you can see one of the shuttering planks leaning up against the Cortina.

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Monday 15th March 2010 – For tea tonight…

 …I had ratatouille and baked potatoes. The ratatouille was out of a tin (I’ve not evolved beyond that stage as yet) but the baked potatoes were out of my own fire.

garden fire ford cortina mercedes 240D w123 les guis virlet puy de dome franceYes, I had a raging fire going since about 10:30 this morning and I burnt all of the rubbish that I had pulled up from where the vegetable patch is going to be. It was burning like stink too, and I must smell like a forest fire. 

This afternoon I covered up the vegetable plot-to-be. I could only find one opened tarpaulin so I’ve used the lean-to roof to cover the rest. With a couple of bits of vehicle having been parked on there for 8 years or so there’s nothing growing there, so it seems silly to leave it uncovered and attracting the weeds. I’ll keep it covered until I’m ready to do something with it.

I was going to dig up the tree roots and transplant the greenhouse too, but the fire was still roaring away so I carried un pulling up brambles and nettles from elsewhere. I’ve now cleared out down the side of the Merc (well, some way anyway) and all of the weeds have been consigned to the fire.

plastic compost bin les guis virlet puy de dome franceThat’s left a nice little space at  the side of the lean-to and so I set up the compost bin that I bought for 10 Euros in the Brico Depot sales. It goes quite nicely there. There’s some hardstanding just there and I’m going to put the dustbin there in early course.

All in all I’ve had a pretty good day, even though someone spoilt it right at the beginning by telephoning me at, would you believe, 08:02 this morning. I caught up with the person responsible and gave him the sharp end of my tongue. It’s not the first time that he’s dragged me out of bed like this but it will certainly be the last, I can tell you.

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Thursday 4th March 2010 – I had quite a surprise this morning …

old cars mercedes 240d w123 ford cortina 5 ford transit les guis virlet puy de dome france… despite the torrential rain all yesterday afternoon, evening and through the night, the garden fire was still smoking this morning. It wouldn’t restart though, but nevertheless it was quite something to see.

I’ve finally reached the hedge at the back of the vehicles – you’ve no idea how many brambles I’ve had to scythe my way through – and I’ve made a start on cutting down the overhanging branches (and there are plenty to go at).

old cars mercedes 240d w123 ford cortina 5 ford transit les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’ve also cut around the far side of the old Transit so that is now totally clear of undergrowth so once I’ve burnt all of the weeds and brambles and the like (that’s another fire for tomorrow) I can drag that out of the way.

So this afternoon I emptied the greenhouse and got ot ready for cleaning. I’ll be buying some seeding soil on Saturday to get ready for the sowing but I need to clean the plastic sheeting of the greenhouse and get it ready to move it to its new home. It’s all getting quite exciting.

I also had a play with the Ford Escort but I couldn’t get it started – I think that the fuel cut-off valve is stuck. Ordinarily it wouldn’t have mattered very much – I would have just pulled it out with Caliburn, dragged it down the lane and then rolled it backwards down the hill into its new position. I might have managed it on my own but it’s one of those things that’s unequivocal – once you have started you really need to finish it because you can’t leave it blocking the lane and at the point where it’s likely to become stuck there isn’t anything like a handy tree to attach the chain winch to help me along. It’s the kind of project that I’m going to leave until I have visitors.

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