Tag Archives: strawberry plants

Tuesday 29th April 2014 – I WAS UP …

… before all of the alarms had finished going off today. That’s keenness for you and it shows just what an early night can do for you.

It was a gorgeous day too at that time of morning. But it didn’t last. As I was working on the website again it started to rain and that’s what it’s been doing on and off all day.

after the website I went out to plant the raspberries and strawberries that Liz gave me yesterday. That meant hoeing the bed right through from one end to the next and then adding a pile of sand to lighten the soil.

Once I’d raked and hoed all of that well in, I could plant everything, and now they are in. And to take me up to lunch time, I hoed the onion and shallot beds.

I was in no rush after lunch as we were having a rainstorm. But once it died down a little I popped out and put the secon coat of wood treatment on the raised bed that I made the other day.

I’ve also been working on Caliburn. The back is all cleaned out nicely now and I’ve rebuilt a bed for the back. I’ve been using the old hammock-type of attachment that was a fifth bed in an old caravan that I broke for spares ages ago. But that gave up the ghost a while ago.

But then I had a brainwave. When I was living in a caravan I cut down a bed to fit in an odd corner and I’d forgotten all about it since I scrapped that caravan too. I resurrected it, cut it to fit the rear of Caliburn, fastened it all together with some angle brackets and aluminium strips riveted in position, and then made a cradle out of the old hammock supports.

It works a treat too, and I’ll be very comfortable on that bed, for I’m going away next week for 10 days or so, I reckon.

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Monday 28th April 2014 – WE’VE BEEN RADIOING …

… today.

First off was to record the rock music shows that I do, which means that I needed to be in Marcillat by 09:30 this morning. Liz came to join me at 10:00 to record a month’s work of the Radio Anglais information programmes.

We went round to Liz’s for lunch – some of the left-over aubergine and spaghetti casserole from Saturday, and went down to Gerzat to record the Radio Anglais sessions for Radio Arverne.

While we were in Gerzat we had to track down a parcel that had not been delivered. We tracked down the depot where it was kept, and they tracked down the parcel. It seems that the address on the parcel was incorrect, hence the non-delivery, so we’ll let them off this time.

But it was nice and sunny down there and what was so ironic was that we could see the thick black clouds over the Combrailles from there.
“I bet that those clouds are right over our houses” said Liz, and she was right too. Torrential rain up here.

The parcel was the towbar for Terry’s new Jeep and so once he had checked it over and was satisfied, he said “have you got half an hour?”. So while Liz was sorting out some surplus strawberry and raspberry plants for my soft fruits bed in exchange for me having driven her in search of this parcel, Terry and I fitted the towbar.

Liz cooked a tea for us, which was always very welcome, and then I came home.

And now I have more gardening to do for tomorrow.

Tuesday 22nd April 2014 – SO WHAT’S HAPPENING …

… over there tben? There’s quite a fire burning for some reason or other and I wonder what’s going on.

I couldn’t hear the pompiers or any amulance or anything and so I don’t know how urgent that might be, but it certainly looks most unwelcome.

However, it’s not likely to burn for very long because we’ve had something of a torrential downpour this evening. There’s been the odd shower or two and we had a thunderstorm pass over at about 15:00 but it really meant business this evening.

Still, the first real rain for a couple of weeks and so we can’t complain too much.

The rain is my fault too, for I’ve been out gardening today. And I noticed that the three surviving strawberry plants have flowers now. But that’s by the way.

First job was to plant the Brussels Sprouts that I bought on Saturday. So I gave that bed a good hoeing over first, and carried on to weed a few more as well while I was at it. Then I planted the sprouts, followed by the 12 lettuce that I bought. 6 of them went in between the sprouts, and the other 6 went in between the cabbage that I planted the other week.

After lunch I sowed the new potatoes, and then I turned my attention to the seeds. Seems that I have some lettuce coming up, and there’s signs of life in the leeks too. But still nothing much coming up anywhere else.

Now though, I have some sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower seeds sown, as well as some organo and basli seeds. Tomorrow, though, i’ll need to push on.

At 17:45 I came to a halt as I had to go round to Cécile’s to show some househunters around – that was what I was on my way back from doing when I noticed the fire.

I made another mega-curry tonight. This one is a mushroom and green pepper one, and that will keep me going for a few days too.

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Monday 7th April 2014 – I DON’T BELIEVE IT!

Well, I suppose that I ought to really. It should be something that I’m used to by now. But do you remember me saying that I replanted 4 strawberry plants the other day? I had a look today and there are now only 3, with a hole in the soil where the 4th one was, as you can see in this photo.

I’ve no idea what happened there. I suppose some local bestiole has taken a fancy to it.

But you can see the soil just there – clay with a barrow-load of sand worked in. That should lighten it considerably.

As for the garlic and shallots though, I don’t know if you can really see them here in this photo but they have mostly done the business.

One or two garlic bulbs seem to have failed but I have some of last year’s crop to plant in there to replace them. And one or two of the shallots needed reseating, but otherwise they are fine. The onions in another bed are pushing up too.

Nothing stirring with the carrots, parsnips and radishes yet. I’m not surprised about the parsnips, but the carrots might have done something by now and I’m bewildered by the radishes. They should be almost ready.

I have a courgette plant about to rear its ugly head out of its pot too. And where there’s one, the others shouldn’t be far behind.

So today after website work I went out and the first thing that I did was to empty out all of the herb beds. I have a row of flower boxes and I use them as herb beds and they were all overgrown.

If anyone wants some mint and thyme cuttings, let me know as I have tons of the stuff here. It really did run wild while I was away last year. Anyway, everything is now rosy in the herb beds and I even had fresh rosemary from my own garden in my onion and mushroom gravy tonight.

For the rest of the day I’ve been sowing seeds in pots. And here’s a list of what’s gone in –

Aneth
Coriander
leeks
cucumbers
lettuce
aubergines
basil
chives
cayenne peppers
mixed peppers
broccoli

They are all in pots in the little greenhouse thingy that I bought the other week.

I also have some beetroot seeds soaking ready to plant tomorrow, and I’ll also look at the rest of the brassica to see what I have an what I need.

All that needs doing then is to make some more pea and bean frames and then start some of those off, and to sow some more carrots and parsnips.

Mind you, that’s not all that I’ve done. I went to St Eloy at lunchtime and spent a whole shed-load of money, in fact the only time that I’ve ever spent more money than this was in buying Caliburn and buying my various houses and apartments. Yes, there will be a new arrival here shortly, more of which anon.

And I forgot two pieces of news from yesterday. Firstly, the mystery of Matthieu’s appearance on the football pitch Saturday night is now solved. He had no intention whatever of playing, so it seems, but someone couldn’t make it at the last minute so he went out rather than let the teamplay short-handed. If that’s not courage and devotion to duty after all he’s suffered with his injury, I don’t know what is.

And Nane rang me up for a very long chat, in the middle of which she announced that a mutual acquaintance of ours had died on Saturday. It’s never nice to hear of a death, especially of someone that you know, but this friend and I did have some issues between us that have been the subject of a considerable rant from me in the past. Nevertheless I wish her bon voyage to wherever it is that she wishes to go.

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Thursday 3rd April 2014 – JUST LIKE YESTERDAY …

… I crashed out twice today. And at roughly the same times too. Difference is though that it was only for a couple of minutes each time, and so that wasn’t quite so bad.

And I had an early night too, so I wasn’t surprised to wake uo to find that it was darker than usual. But it wasn’t through being awake early, or through snow on the roof lights. It was in fact raining and there was a thin coating of sand on them. This desert storm has reached over here now.

So after the usual procedureson the web site, I went out to work in the garden and, just like yesterday, there were no interruptions at all. I’ve finished the bed where the soft fruit will be going, and I’ve added a load of sand to about half of it. That’s all hoed and raked in. The soil is nice, dry and friable right now but when it rains, it’s just heavy clay. Sandy soil is good for soft fruit of course so the more I can get, the better.

I then started on the big cloche and tomy bitter disappointment, not one of my 20 or so strawberry plants survived the bitter winter 2012-13. I was wondering if I should buy some more when I saw them at the Auchan on Tuesday, and I wish that I had now.

So in the garden there is half of the big cloche to do, and then one more raised bed. I’m hoping that I can finish them tomorrow because that will mean that, starting on Monday, I can go onto the revised plan B of 2 hours in the house in the morning, then 2 hours in the garden after lunch and then finish off with 2 hours back in the house.

I’ve so much to do and I really ought to get cracking.

And another windy day today.

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Monday 18th April 2011 – I’ve been gardening today.

Well, after all it is the full moon. Before lunch I planted all of the main crop potatoes – I put 64 into two of the raised beds – the last two that I installed the other week. I’ve had to be careful how I planted them because the baby lettuce that I bought the other week – they are in one of those beds and I’ve had to fit the spuds all around them.

After lunch I planted this week’s seeds – things like cauliflowers, broccoli, carrots, courgettes, beans, peas and so on – they all went outside and into place. In the smaller cloche I planted into small pots some more peppers, chilis, cucumber and gherkins. And there are already some of those sprouting up from a fortnight ago. I’ve also weeded out the strawberry patch in the mega-cloche. That’s doing really well in there and it’s a mass of flowers, looking like there might be a bumper crop, and quite early too. But then again, this magnificent spring has a lot to do with that.

But there is a down-side to this magnificent spring. When I finished weeding and planting, I gave everything a thorough watering. And with no rain for 14 days, all of the casual water, that in buckets and bins and tubs about the place, that’s all gone. All that’s left is my rainwater for household use and there’s just about 150 litres or so of that remaining. I’m drying up and this could make things difficult here. I shall have to start a rain dance if it carries on like this.

But there’s still some water for a shower and at 36.5°C I had one as well. And then off to St Eloy and the Anglo-French Group where I set everyone an exercise – I’d found some old notes that I had made, with useful French phrases that are used in everyday life. And so I set everyone to translate them from French to English, to keep them out of mischief.

And so apart from working on the Newfoundland web pages this morning, that was my lot. Tomorrow we are in the studio at Radio Tartasse again. Don’t the months come round quickly?

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Monday 29th November 2010 – I’VE BEEN GARDENING THIS AFTERNOON

With the weather having warmed up today, I’ve covered over the beds of spuds and carrots with some of the black plastic sheeting that I used to cover them just after I dug the beds out. This will hopefully trap the “heat” (after all, 6 degrees is “heat” after what we have been having just now and help them to thaw out, as well as protecting them from the frost until I can get to dig them up.

I also wanted to put my herb beds under cover too so firstly I grubbed out everything in the mega-cloche and then moved the strawberry plants from the smaller cloche and planted them into the mega-cloche.

6 plants went into that cloche last spring, and 21 came out. I was impressed with that. They should do well in the mega-cloche and I might even have a decent crop this coming year.

The smaller cloche wasn’t big enough to take all of the herb beds so I had to tidy up the greenhouse and put the other herb bed in there. All of the stuff that didn’t grow was consigned to the new compost heap and now for once there is plenty of room in it.

But the plastic covering of the greenhouse has decayed and so I need to turn my attention to building the new greenhouse out of the windows that Simon gave me. Last year I made a space to put that, and the space where the plastic greenhouse is, I’ll build a garden shed there.

I’ve also given the inside of the back of Caliburn a bit of a clean-out too, and then I spent a pleasant hour or so crushing tin cans – I had a load of them lying around and so I’ve flattened some of them ready to take to the recycling. Plenty more to go, too, and I’ll spend some more time on that.

But this evening the temperature has plunged dramatically. When I went downstairs it was -3.3 and there was a really heavy frost. Seems like the temperature is in freefall tonight and we could well be on our way to the coldest night of the winter. And winter hasn’t started yet – it’s still November around here.

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Friday 27th August 2010 – It’s been an exciting day today.

This afternoon I had a good wander around the vegetable plot checking up on things as it’s been a while since I’ve had a really good look, what with one thing and another.

One of the things that I did was to check in the smaller cloche where I have the strawberries and the one surviving cucumber plant. That has just been growing and growing with plenty of flowers but nothing much else, however today I noticed for the first time that the cucumbers are set.

There’s just three of them at the moment, still quite tiny but it’s nice to see some kind of progress in there. If the way that the courgettes have burst into life is anything to go by, within a week they should be monsters.

After that I went and checked on the tomatoes in the mega-cloche. They are just growing and growing with tons of flowers and fruit and so I took an executive decision and topped them all. No point in growing stuff that is never going to ripen and letting perish the fruit that is already there. Topping them will hopefully concentrate all of the energy into the fruit and they may even ripen.

There’s a stray tomato plant in the greenhouse so I went to check on that. And fighting my way in past the gherkin plants I noticed that they are finally starting to do stuff.

And that’s about time too. Thousands of flowers and not the least sign of a fruit, and all of a sudden a few of those have burst into life.

Now what do you do with a gherkin? If I could get malt vinegar over here I might be tempted to pickle them but I can’t so I’ll have to think of something else. All suggestions are welcome

I followed that up by pulling the veg for tea. I had a veggie-burger lined up and so I pulled up some carrots and spuds, and picked some beans, spinach, sage and rosemary. Add a garlic clove and an onion to that lot and it really was a nice tea. Quite enjoyable. And I sowed the last of my parsnip seeds in where I’d removed the carrots. I’ve no idea what they might do but they won’t do anything in the packet.

The rest of the afternoon I’ve been sawing wood. I need to move the wood to erect the dividing wall in the lean-to where the composting toilet is. I keep on moving this wood around and nothing ever happens to it so I’ve decided to remove it by cutting up for burning, no matter how long it takes (and it will take a while). Winter’s not far away, you know.

This morning though I spent until midday working on my website. It’s almost up-to-date – I reckon another week will see the monthly pages done up to August 2010, and about time too. Nevertheless I was interrupted by a buzzing coming from across the yard – the water boiler that Smon gave me sprung into action at about 10:00. The weather today was terrible (it’s still pouring down now) and there wasn’t enough current to really fire it up, but it ran for a total of 3.5 hours. And more of this anon.

Once I’d knocked off computing at midday I went with Caliburn round to Lieneke’s and tidied up there. It seems that Terry and Simon have finished.

I rescued the breeze blocks, the sand and cement, a huge pile of buckets my tarpaulin and ladder and a host of other stuff, heaved it all into the Sankey trailer and brought it round here.

I reversed it down the lane (hard to think that 20 years ago I did that for a living) and parked it next to Terry’s tractor where it can live for a while.

And it’s amazing how much room there is on there. I still reckon that the money I spent on having that done was money well spent. There’s room for another couple of cars on there I reckon if I tidy up a little bit better.

But the exciting bits involved the water heating.

Of course the day that I get everything ready for blast-off is the day when the weather turns miserable. The immersion heater in the house ran for a grand total of two minutes. But it was trying its best to fire up as the charge in the batteries bounced along the critical voltage. It was quite a windy day so I reckon that if there had been a wind turbine on the roof it would have worked a treat. I’m going to have to sort out this wind turbine.

As for the water boiler, even though the solar energy levels were pretty miserable it fired up in early morning once the batteries in the barn were fully-charged and ran for a total of about 3.5 hours. And the water, all 2.5 litres of it, was boiling away merrily to itself. So much so that with it being POETS Day ….
“POETS Day?” … ed
“Yes, that’s right. P155 Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday!”
… today I had a lovely hot wash and shave out of that boiler at 17:30 when I knocked off. And had it been less windy, I would have gone for the hybrid shower – the solar water (that struggled to reach 30°C) diluted by the 2.5 litres out of the boiler. Now THAT would have warmed it up.

I topped up the water with cold water once I’d emptied it, and it carried on warming itself for a short while until the sun went down and the solar charge stopped. And when I went to do the washing up after tea at 22:00 it was not very far short of being hot enough to do the washing up. A couple of minutes on the gas ring sorted that out.

All in all, I reckon that this is major progress and I’m really pleased with all of this. This place is slowly starting to take shape one way or another. I just want a nice sunny day now so that I can see what the immersion heater will do. But with all this rain that’s going on right now that isn’t going to be for a while.

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

… 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.

I 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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EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality