Tag Archives: compost

Strange Tales from the Garden

My idea of irony

After a day spent hammering away at the keyboard yesterday – ebay parcels and banknotes to be written up for sale – I decided to devote most of my evening to my beloved, as she has had another harrowing day at work. After much moaning and eating fish and chips we both fell asleep around 10.30 in front of the TV and didn’t wake up until midnight. And That is why there is another untidy gap in my history of blog posts.

Julia has been under considerable stress at work over recent months because, as with all successful garden projects, everybody wants a piece of it. It’s a lovely, relaxing place to spend a day according to her manager, who spent a lazy, sunny day there in late summer, eating fruit and chilling out.

It’s not quite so lovely in November, with no heat or light or running water and a group that needs supervising, chemical toilets that need scrubbing and all the routine tasks to attend to (so that people can come down in summer and steal all your crops).

In the Polytunnel – now converted for general use with Social Distancing

People always want to ‘work’ on garden projects when they are running well, but they never want to do the actual work, and they often disrupt things due to ignorance and stupidity. Here are three examples of what she is up against. I will offer them here as slightly humorous stories, rather than serious complaints, as the full list of problems is long and boring and makes me think murderous thoughts. These are just three edited highlights.

One, Julia went down one day after her regular Wednesday day off to find a large hole in the garden. The Wednesday staff had decided the garden needed a new pond as the three it already has are clearly not enough. Julia shrugged it off as she is becoming immune to the random stupidity. When she went to the compost bins she found that the bin she had just spent two days emptying (ready to move compost) had been filled with rubble by the pond diggers. It took two days to clear it. (They have, by the way, dug the hole the wrong size for the liner and the garden is let with a hole and a discarded liner, because they have now lost interest.)

Apples – the garden is always popular at harvest time

Two, she went to the main base on the edge of town and found a display of succulents on show. Apparently they were too good to leave in the polytunnel and everyone should be able to enjoy them. One of the visiting staff had decided this and without discussion, had removed them. When Julia complained and pointed out that they were part of an ongoing project she was told they were Mencap property and they would do what they liked. However, they aren’t Mencap property, they are our property. We sourced them and loaned them to the garden because, until recently, there was never any money for the garden. They are part of a project where the group propagates them and sells the extras at Open Days to raise money for the garden.

She was then told that she should not take her own things to the garden and that she should remove them. So, no succulent project, no enrichment experience for the clients, no fund-raising and only about half the succulents we used to have as quite a lot have disappeared. Most managers would have apologised and thanked Julia for the resources she provides.

Finally, she inspected the wormery yesterday. She found that somebody has filled it with sand. We are mystified why anybody would do this, as worms don’t live in sand and don’t eat sand.

Why, why, why, why, why?

Moles like the garden too

There is a meeting on Monday to discuss the garden. I don’t think it will help. I think homicide would help, as some of the staff will clearly be more use as soil improver than they are as human beings.

One of those Cheerful Posts about Happy Things

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If something is upsetting you, it needs addressing and the worst thing in my life this week has been WordPress. I have now made the first step towards my new life after WordPress. I am committed to another year, using the plug-in Classic Editor, but the countdown has begun. The Classic Editor, for me, is as good as the Classic Block, and has the added advantage of allowing me to relax as I write.

My email system, like WP, has recently had a so-called “new and improved” version and, as with WordPress, it’s time to move on. I have just signed up to a new provider who has a good clear system with plenty of useful features. I’ve been testing it and it seems OK so I’m going to start moving across to it. This is also part of my plan for the new blog.

I’m not quite sure what form the new blog will take, and don’t know where it will be hosted, but I do know that, unless a miracle happens, it won’t be on WordPress.

I think I’ve been conned over the garden fence issue, and I know I have the law on my side, but it’s easier just to go with the easiest route. Half a garden fence is cheaper than being proved right in court.

The dishonest customer is a bit more of an issue but Julia has told me that my plan of posting bits of dead animal to him is an over-reaction. The fact that I was going to use roadkill rather than killing things specially does not, in her eyes, make it any better.

I’m already beginning to feel better…

Foreign Banknotes

I found a list when we were clearing some old papers out. It was a list of inventions I was considering.

Top of the tree as ideas go, is compostable underwear. It’s like normal pure cotton underwear but with added potato starch. I’m sure you all compost your old underwear anyway, but this would have the added advantage (to the manufacturer) of programmed obsolescence.

Instead of wearing it for twenty years, people would have to buy new when it began to biodegrade, probably after three. Then they could chuck it on the compost heap, buy new stuff and feel virtuous.

Julia has just read this over my shoulder. She tells me that not everybody composts their old underwear. Well, shame on you, I say. I have composted cotton and wool clothing, and leather and cotton work gloves. Yes, even leather will compost away. Things with polyester can also go in the heap, but you have to go through it to retrieve the mesh of polyester left behind, so it probably isn’t worth the effort.

Anyway, that’s enough writing for one day. Time to load a photo or two and look at new blogging platforms.

We had gammon and roast veg for tea tonight, as in the photo. We also had a plum flan, but that didn’t last long enough for me to take a photograph.

Gammon and roast veg for tea

Last night we had new potatoes and mint from the garden (Julia has been growing them in containers) with a quiche that included our own tomatoes.

We picked more plums today and were given more figs. It’s a good time of year. It’s just a shame it means winter is on the way.

A Leisurely Second Post

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I’m trying a post from the living room while watching TV. It’s not as efficient as sitting at the dining room table typing but it’s warmer and more companionable. It’s also slower, as the netbook is getting on a bit. I sometimes think that if we opened it up we would find it was put together using mahogany and brass. There’s also a lurking suspicion that my wireless signal isn’t pulling its weight. In my imagination it simply drops out of the router and saunters across to the netbook in the next room like a sulky teenager.

We are still getting orders for 1973 50p coins, as nostalgia cuts in. We did have our Brexit 50p coins from the Royal Mint earlier in the week but I forgot to take a picture. They are unimpressive and, on dull-coloured cards, look even worse. I forgot to take a photograph, but you can see one here. If you think it lacks style and looks like it was knocked out by a half-wit with a computer I would agree with you.

However, when you look at some recent designs like this one and the Olympic commemorative, it could have been a lot worse. Our coins are becoming a pitiful joke.

On 20/02/2020 the Bank of England launched the new £20 note. It is another in the polymer (plastic) series, which still isn’t exactly popular. We haven’t seen one yet but they will no doubt work their way into circulation in the next week or two.

The old ones are to be composted and used as soil improver.

And that, I think, is a natural end to the post, apart from a link to a coming auction. It’s an auction of the low numbers of the new £20 note. The very early ones go to the Queen and various institutions, and the estimates on these show how much a mad collector will pay for a low number.

A Wastrel’s Life, Or The Glamour of Compost

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I used to be a dull person, but I was lucky enough to work outdoors with butterflies, compost and bread.

This added a false veneer of interest to my life.

Now that I spend my days packing parcels in a windowless back room I dream of butterflies and the glamour of compost.

On the plus side, I do get paid for sitting in the windowless back room where most of my work on the farm was unpaid. That’s what happens when you work for your wife…

All in all, I really don’t know which I prefer. Money isn’t everything and it’s hard to put a price on working with your wife, and having flexibility and free time. I would definitely live my life differently if I had it all over again, but I’m not sure it would be an improvement.

I think I’ve covered this before.

All I will add before moving on is that I really ought to be ashamed of the way I have squandered my opportunities, ruined my health and loafed my life away. I do sometimes have regrets in my more introspective moments, but they aren’t real. I don’t necessarily like being a ne’er do well, but I’d hate to be an accountant.

Don’t take this badly if you are an accountant, there is academic research on the subject. This shows that accountants are boring because of the vocabulary they use. It also shows that academics have too much time on their hands. It’s not as if someone writing something called Writing in English for Specific Purposes can take the moral high ground in matters of being interesting. I’m actually confused as the link in the article doesn’t quite tie in to the page that comes up but I can’t really be bothered to sort it all out. Sorry about that, but I’m not academic and I have a cavalier attitude.

If I had to select a motto for my life I’d probably give this one a go.

“I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.”

― Augusten Burroughs

Juvenile Starling – looking before it leaps

Open Gardens

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Julia visited some local Open Gardens on Saturday. If you are interested in others there is a website here which details all the national ones.

One was clearly the result of spending thousands on hard landscaping and plants straight from the garden centre. I don’t know why you would do that on our street as the house prices don’t justify the cost of expensive garden work, and on our side of the street (as this one was) the gardens slope away from the house and face North.

Poppies growing from cracks in concrete

If I’d been a gardener when I moved to Nottingham I wouldn’t have bought this house. Nor would I have slabbed the front garden to save work. However, plants still manage to grow in the front garden, as you can see from the poppies.

The plants were all planted in buckets because the soil, it seems, is so poor. That is strange because our soil, just a few hundred yards away is quite good. It wasn’t bad when we moved in and with compost and hoed weeds, falling leaves and leafmold it has improved over the years. It could be a lot better, but we are best described as sporadic gardeners. Having worked as a self-employed jobbing gardener for 10 years I have to confess to neglecting my own garden dreadfully.

The plots were built up using sand when they built the houses eighty years ago, and the underlying geology is sandstone, so the soil tend to be a bit light. However, it is well drained and easy to work, and does respond well to feeding. There were allotments here before they built houses so it was hardly a barren desert.

I did, however, bring back a lot of compostable debris from my work as a gardener, so it all worked out well in the end.

That, I think is where many gardeners go wrong. Spend money on hard landscaping and plants and you will get a garden you can show off. Spend time on the soil and you will get a garden where you can grow things.

Next year I suspect this gardener will have to buy more plants from the Garden Centre to fill her garden again. One thing she won’t have to do is mow the lawn (or compost the cuttings) because the “lawn” is astroturf.

We will, once again, be cutting things back in a desperate attempt to keep ours looking vaguely like a garden. We will also return to planting calabrese and kale in the flower beds. It seems to do well and the pigeons don’t spot it like they do when you plant it in a vegetable bed.

In contrast to the posh garden there was another, where kids were playing. The owner kept apologising for this but Julia told them that was what gardens are for.

They were just doing it to help raise funds for local charities and show what an ordinary garden looks like.

It takes all sorts, and they are both valid uses of a garden, depending on your ambitions and lifestyle.

We had Hummingbird Hawk Moths in the garden a few years ago. We also had a nesting Blackcap. This year we had Painted Ladies. You don’t get that with a tidy garden.

Painted Lady on Red Valerian

Painted Lady warming itself on a paving slab

Red Valerian, like poppies, grows vigorously from cracks in the paving. It is a great food plant for moths and butterflies, though it’s a bit of a weed and not seen in the better sort of garden.

Four Days to Go. And Snowdrops.

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I have four days to go before the end of my 100 post challenge. Hence the title.

Apart from that, I am short of inspiration.

I had a look round the MENCAP garden this morning. Here are some photographs.

Composting operations are going well, and the woodchip has all been tidied away. There’s even a scarecrow to guard the woodchip piles. This is an important part of the garden as the “soil” is, in places, only a few inches deep over the builder’s rubble that was left after the rebuilding of the school.

Wood chip at Wilford

Leaf mould at Wilford

I wondered where that top went…

Leaf mould cage – MENCAP garden

There is plenty of bird life about to, though they mainly manage to hide behind branches and prevent my autofocus working. Apart from the normal birds we also have a variety of gulls, terns, ducks, geese and cormorants flying overhead as we’re just the width of a path away from the River Trent. There were gulls and cormorants this morning but nothing stopped to pose for me.

Robin

Great Tit

A big project for the coming year is reskinning the smaller polytunnel. That’s what happens when you don’t have a policy of replacing things until they fall apart. Ideally, for you should reskin them after about three years as they become opaque and less light gets to the plants. This one has lasted seven or eight years so it hasn’t done badly. It finally became so brittle that it simply gave up. Julia taped it back together last winter but there’s now nothing to stick the tape on.

Polytunnel in distress

Overwintering broad beans

At least there is a good cropof broad beans coming along…

Memoirs of a Book-Buying Man

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I was a bit sluggish this morning, and ended up watching Saturday Kitchen. It featured the most over-the-top recipe I recall seeing. It was presented by John Torode this morning. I’ve no doubt he’s a good chef, but he’s not in my list of top presenters. Looking on the bright side, at least he didn’t have Greg Wallace with him. I still haven’t forgiven Wallace for the vegeburger recipe in this book. The book is a bit of a fraud really – it’s a spin-off from his series and it has his picture on the cover but it’s actually written by someone else.

Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man arrived this morning and I made a start. It’s easy reading and fifty pages soon slid by. It’s about 15 years since I last read it and I’m looking forwards to it. Fortunately Julia was out when it arrived.

After that I took a trip to the garden centre with one of the neighbours to help her pick up eight growbags and a bag of farmyard manure. It was a lovely day, and nice to be out in the open air, though it’s frustrating to see the lack of seeds and tools in what is essentially a massive garden-themed gift shop. It seems to be the way of things these days.

Fortunately I didn’t need any seeds or tools today so I just poked about in the plants and looked some Swedish Fire Logs. I’ve never seen them before though they have been around since Swedish troops used them in the Thirty Years War. That’s about 400 years ago. It seems unlikely they just thought of it then, I suspect that they knew about it way before that, but the image of soldiers camping in the snow with cloaks and plumed hats is probably more commercial than the thought of a smelly woodcutter hunched round a burning log.

After that I struggled round Sainsbury’s shopping for the evening. It didn’t quite go according to plan because there’s a group of House Sparrows in the corner of the car park. It’s very restful watching sparrows dust bathing.

The second unplanned aspect was the slipping of my leg bag as I walked round the shop becoming gradually more and more uncomfortable. Finally I had to make a temporary adjustment in the car park. It provided some relief, and restored my capacity to walk, but it could have led to all sorts of unfortunate consequences if I’d been observed.

That’s about it for now. Time for more George Sherston.

The Egg and Spoon Race

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After moving sheep and collecting eggs we had a talk about compost, aided and abetted by Farmer Ted the agricultural bear. We like compost. Well, to be accurate, we like composting. We’re not too fussed about actually spreading it because it seems like a waste.

If I could incorporate it into a recipe I’d be happy, as well made moist compost always reminds me of a nice, rich Christmas cake, and the drier sort reminds me of Grape Nuts, but I suspect I’m in a minority.

We then went on to the Easter Egg and Spoon Race Championship, where there seemed to be a lot of winners. I suspect political correctness was at work here. Even I was allowed a share of the chocolate (though I only had a modest portion) despite allegations of cheating. As you can see from the photographs, the diet has a long way to go so a few grams of chocolate isn’t going to do much damage.

For the record I took part in three races, being disqualified from each one (obstruction, shirt pulling and use of sellotape). Strikes me that people just don’t take Egg and Spoon racing seriously enough.

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Making the most of adversity

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Another day, another problem…

I know I ought to be talking in terms of challenges, solutions and lemonade at this point, but it’s difficult to see an upside right now.

I’m looking for my car log book. I don’t know about the rest of the world (Americans, for instance, seem to carry them in the car every time I see a traffic policeman ask for one.) In the UK there are two general reactions to being asked for your log book – smugness from the organised people who know where they are and panic from people like me.

I’ve had the car eight years. I can’t always find things after eight minutes. I need it this afternoon when collecting my new car or things become more complicated. First port of call was the filing cabinet where my wife puts things.

Yes – “puts things”. Her filing makes a pack rat look like an obsessive compulsive

An hour later I’m no closer to finding the log book, but I have hit a rich seam of out-dated bank statements so tonight I will be shredding. And so, as this episode closes I can at least say that when you have paper – make compost.

Monday Miscellany, posted on Tuesday

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We had a strange day at the farm yesterday. With nobody in we managed to force our firstborn into action and shifted quite a lot of work. This was despite frequent visits from a variety of people. I wasn’t allowed to talk to them because I’m considered a trifle direct when people stop me working, so I was able to brew mint tea, make the nettle soup for today, restructure the herb bed and plant the new beans after the problematic start to the “Bean Trial”. More of that later.

Mint Tea

Sorry if the tenses seem a little strange in that paragraph, it was originally written yesterday but will be posted today, which was tomorrow when I wrote.

Julia spent half the day explaining what we were doing, what the statues were, what was happening on Open Farm Sunday and how to enter the Scarecrow Competition. She’s very good with people.

I’m good with tools of destruction, a talent which came to the fore when we got home. The laburnum tree, which had been leaning at an increasing angle over the last few months (coinciding with the time erection of next door’s new fence, though I am pointing no fingers here) had finally given up its struggle with gravity.

They don’t look like much but I can assure you there’s a lot of wood in a laburnum, particularly when you’re using a pair of loppers and a pruning saw. The worst is over now ad I’ll be able to get on with pruning the plum, which is why I’d originally gone into the back garden.

I’ll miss it because laburnums have featured in my life since I was about 6 and we moved to a house with one in the garden, but it’s an ill wind that blows no good and I have plans now that we have a new patch of unshaded patio. Think “heated greenhouse”.

As for the “Bean Trial”, it hasn’t worked out well. You may recall that we filled half a bed with compostable material and left the other half plain. I then added an “X” shaped frame and planted two Firestorm beans at the base of each cane. The half of the bed that was prepared with organic material definitely showed better germination and growth, but then nearly all the shoots disappeared. On digging holes to plant replacements I found many more beans which had germinated then been eaten.

We’ve also done a Health and Safety trial with the ends of the canes. The Mark I – Coke bottle and gaffer tape is big and clumsy and tends to fall off. The Mark II – plastic protector was too small for the cane so became a Mark III using a slit and gaffer tape. The unmodified protector still works for most canes and at 12 for £1 is a good investment. Better than a poke in the eye, as they say.

Mark I

Mark III

So, organic material is good, slugs are bad and beans that are two years past the date on the packet will still grow well. Hopefully the new plants will survive and we can start to measure the crop we get from the two sides.

However, nothing is certain in life so we will just have to see.

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Life after the Care Farm