Nuss, Sids, Fa-Ball and Urms

I've nearly finished principal planting on the middle island out front.  There's a revision to make (some roses need moving) and I'll be doing that in the next few days.  I've also got to get in some currants.  Mostly though it's done.  The side bit I'll do in the next few weeks.

It's turning into a very busy Spring this year, but that work and expense will sort me out for years.

Ellie, my niece, loves birds.  Planes too, but mostly birds.  If it flies it becomes an instant object of fascination, though a bird on the ground is just as interesting to her.  So yesterday I put a bird feeding pole into the middle bit and in so doing gave Ellie the first serious responsibility she's had in her fourteen months of life: filling up the tubes.  She's also picked up a few new words.  We sat on the floor and did it together, grabbing handfuls of nuts (or nuss) from a bag and dropping them into a wire tube.  I screwed the lid back on and we went outside together to hang it from the hook.  We filled two plastic tubes with sids (seeds), hung fa-ball (fat balls) from hooks and put sute (a suet feast) into a cage and together we hung all of these on hooks.  She needed help getting the rings over the hooks, but her hand was on it so now she's got the gist of how it goes.  I also poured out a goodly number of urms (mealworms) onto a wire tray halfway up the pole.

She laughed and had a right old time.  We got as many sids on the carpet as we did in a tube!  Anything that involves using her hands, getting messy and getting outside will always meet with her approval.  So now she has a job: refilling the tubes whenever they empty.  She'll learn about duty in a way that's fun, which is a great start.  Meanwhile the pole is outside her window, so when she wakes up before her mum she can go to the window and watch birds instead of getting into cupboards and eating the sudocrem.

Now to see if we can encourage Bill to stay in at dawn and dusk...

Preparing for college

  So I think tomorrow I'll be ordering a lot of textbooks. For £9 all-in I'm getting Principles of Genetics, Functional Histology, and Principles of Anatomy and Physiology. I'd best clear off a shelf in my room for all this (or build another shelf if I can't clear one), and fetch my Gray's Anatomy and Striker's Biochemistry down from the loft, though I prefer Lehninger's Biochemistry and will be getting a copy at my earliest convenience.  

  Getting Bioscience Laboratory Techniques next week, along with as many box files and as much lined paper as I can scrape together.  A friend has offered to lend me her copy of Essential Cell Biology.  

  The advance legwork I need to put in ahead of my practicals is well in hand.  So much so that Julia now has an entire folder of emails titled "Jo's crabs".  Yep, I'm looking at mitten crabs.  I'm also intending to look at bees and holly.  Two subjects of great environmental significance and one subject of personal curiosity.  If I get the green light for the holly study then I may find myself doing carpentry in the lab: the study will need a rig that I don't think we have, but that I can build for next to nowt.  

In 69 days' time I will be a biologist-in-training!

Rubus conclusions, pt 1

So the first three Rubus Experiments have concluded.  Link here.

The next three will launch in 2014.

Odd maths

So I've picked up on a pattern involving square numbers.  I've been running numbers all morning since I spotted the pattern and I'm convinced that this is actually a thing.  Okay, here goes:


If AxA=B
And (A-1)x(A+1)=C
Then C=B-1

Or

4x4=16
(4-1=3)x(4+1=5)=15
15=16-1

5x5=25
4x6=24

6x6=36
5x7=35

And so on.  I haven't yet found a set of numbers that this fails on, provided that you start with a number timesed by itself.  Is this like a known thing?  Does it have some kind of a name?  Because it's pretty cool - useless, but cool.

The smelliest job so far!

Last night I moved the composter from the dark side of the patio to its final home by the strawbrary.

Fiddliest and smelliest job I've ever had to do in that garden, and I've done poop patrol!  

  The baseplate for the composter arrived, finally, after one lost delivery and one delivered broken.  I could not get that thing to fit on.  Nope.  No fitting on for that baseplate.  I chalked it up to the fact that it was cold outside, the composter body was at 0ºC while the baseplate was at room temperature, and so Physics has a thing to say.  In reality, this was my excuse for saying "sod it, it's 0º out here and this smelly thing is making my hands wet in 0º!"  I ended up laying the baseplate on the ground and standing the composter over it.  The weight of proto-compost should hold it all together.  

  Sliding the body of the composter up over the contents was a bit tense - would it stay together like a putrid blancmange or would it go everywhere?  It stayed!  The rest was work for a fork, a shovel, and eventually a hose.  The contents were somewhere below half the height, but as the thing is slightly conical I reckon it's full to about half the volume, or 165 litres.  Whilst I was forking out compost I took the opportunity to study the strata within.  Some bits seem to decompose faster than others.  Things that are watery (like cucumber) or mushy (like banana) seem to go first.  Things with a hard shell (like the pumpkin from Halloween) appear to take a lot longer.  Eggshells break down surprisingly readily.  Any leaves that get in there seem to turn slimy.  

  I've taken a photo of some of the strata, laid out on one of my favourite childhood building materials: the knackered, rusty sheet of wriggly tin (of dubious acquisition).  For the sake of your breakfast I've left out the bits where putrefying is actively taking place.  Upper layers on the left, lower layers in the right.  Rightmost is damn near compost!

This time next year, Rodney, we'll have compost.  

Primary Succession

This is cool.

Norderoogsand has sprung up from beneath the sea like a kraken of sand.  It has since become home to 50 plant species and a bunch of sea birds.

Photo: Telegraph

  Dunes rise above sea level all the time and usually sink just as readily, but this one is different.  What makes it different is the same force which has driven our evolution from bacteria to human beings: luck.  Call it chance, fate, divine intervention, whatever.  The right factors were in place at the right time.  Those factors were a mild sea and the presence of spores from simple plants.  The mild seas didn't destroy the proto-island, whilst the spores grew into simple mosses and lichens.  Those mosses and lichens put down roots and bound the sand into a basic soil.

  Once a moss organism dies it decomposes into compost, adding organic matter to the sandy soil.  This organic matter - or humus - contains carbon, nitrogen, and other essential elements.  Birds drop guano containing further essential elements and ions such as calcium, potassium, sulphates and phosphates.

  Over time, the soil becomes rich enough to support more complex plants.  The seeds for such plants are also carried over in the stomachs of birds.  These plants have deeper and stronger root systems which will help bind the deeper layers of the soil.  When they die, their roots will decompose and leave humus in the deeper layers.  Eventually this process will clear the way for shrubs to take hold.

  There is a selective pressure here.  A selective pressure is a natural force which says "A can live here but B cannot".  In this case it is the salt water.  Sand doesn't hold rainwater very well by itself, so for now all the moisture is seawater.  Only those plant which thrive on beaches or in areas with high salinity will be able to live on Norderoogsand in the early stages.  Once the soil is rich enough in deep humus to support shrubs it should also be absorbent enough to retain rainwater.  Even so, it will still be quite saline.  Coastal shrubs will be best adapted to these conditions.

  The potential for trees to grow on Norderoogsand is uncertain.  Soil that sandy might not hold a tree firmly enough.  Deposits of lime from bird droppings will gradually improve the soil structure.  Clay would make a nice addition, but it will not arrive there by itself.  If sufficient generations of plants live, reproduce, die and decompose that peat has a chance to form then that is perhaps the best chance we have of seeing trees arrive on Norderoogsand.

  Higher land animals are highly unlikely until the ground is very very stable and the plantlife is sufficiently fecund.  Likely it'll just be birds and amphibians until the trees appear.

  Alternately, the island could be helped along.  A little clay, a little peat, a couple bay trees and this island would be halfway toward a climax community.  This won't happen though.  Biologists and geologists will argue - and rightly so - that Norderoogsand should be left alone to be observed.  Primary succession is a rare occurrence, so the data which can be gained by watching it happen from scratch is scientifically invaluable.  It can tell us something about our world that we do not yet know.  The process of succession is slow, but when seen from end to end is a miracle of nature.  I urge you to keep an eye on it.

I wish I was there...

Testing the cider

I've made the cider, I've racked the cider, and today I've tested the cider.  To do this I arranged some time in a lab, but you can do this at home if you have the parts:

• Hotplate,
• Pyrex beaker,
• Mercury thermometer,
• 100cc cylinder, graduated by 1cc increments,
• Clamp stand

Measure out 100cc of the cider using the cylinder, transfer it into the beaker, pop that onto the hotplate.  Stand the thermometer in the cider, using the clamp stand to ensure that the bulb of the thermometer is near to the bottom of the beaker but not quite touching it.  Heat it to 72ºC for a couple minutes until it's steaming nicely then take it off the heat and wait for the steam to stop.  You wait for the steam to stop in order to get an accurate measurement.  Once it isn't steaming any more, put it back into the measuring cylinder and read the volume.  We will call this new measurement X.  

  100 minus X = your percent ABV

100 - 92 (my X value) = 8% ABV

I also tested it at a lower temperature to gauge the methanol content and judged it to be less than half a percent.  I used Benedict's solution to test for aldehydes (formed when ethanol goes off) and found none of the characteristic orange sludge which appears in a positive test.  

It tasted largely of rhubarb.  Very sharp, but not too sharp.  I think next week we'll be good to go!

In other news: that arum has grown since it moved to its new home.  It seems to have settled in quite nicely :)

The Anthocyanin Test

I've used this one since I was a little kid.  Anthocyanin is a pigment found naturally in red cabbages and leaches into the water during boiling.  This test therefore comes free with a Sunday roast.  It acts as an indicator, changing colour in response to changes in pH.  It's a shotgun test, meaning that it sacrifices precision for breadth.  Don't worry that it's called anthocyanin, there's no cyanide involved, I've checked.  Cyan is simply a shade of blue; a purple chemical comes from a red cabbage and people name it for blue.  Chemists do have a weird sense of humour.

The range it covers is as follows:
Strong acid
Medium acid
Weak acid
Neutral
Weak alkali
Medium alkali
Strong alkali
Ridiculously strong alkali!

If your soil is strong enough to turn the solution white then you'll already know about it, having received prior treatment for chemical burns.  You should always start this test with a violet solution.  If your cabbage was cooked with London tap water like mine was then you'll start with a blue solution.  Titrate it back to violet using vinegar before running the test.  

In my case, the soil in the beds shifted slightly into the blue spectrum, which was surprising.  My soil is slightly alkali despite being a humus-rich loam.  The previous gardener must've gone berserk with the lime!  Most vegetables prefer slightly acid soils, so I'll have to amend the soil before I can plant the year's crops.  

Feel free to use this test at your own risk.  

In other news: George seems to think the circles around the holes in the birdhouses are eyes, looking at him. Every time he looks at them from an angle where only two can be seen he raises his hackles and growls.  We can now add the tree to the very long list of things that George believes have come to murder us all in our beds.  

Rosie and Jim Go Outside

Finishing revisiting childhood in 3... 2... 1...

I'm back.

So we've got some new additions to the garden this morning.  Rosie and Jim are from Rubus 3 and they've taken up residence on the roof of the Strawbrary.

Bill is vaguely interested in the mysterious floating plant pot.  George is convinced that it's here to kill us all!  Meanwhile, the experiment's own page now comes up top on Google when you search for The Rubus Experiments, which is pretty awesome.

Chemistry in the kitchen

I make no assertion that this test is foolproof, nor can I accept responsibility for any gardening errors made based on the results of testing your soil this way.  Please dispose of the end products carefully and responsibly.  Always wash your hands before and after Chemistry.

Racking the cider

  First a gripe about the state of humanity.  Me and mine went to the Xmas thing in Hampton like we do every year.  Lovely as ever.  Someone got hurt up by the Uxbridge Road and an ambulance was coming up from Fulwell. It ended up slowed to a crawl behind a shuffling crowd outside the bakers' who were not so dense that they'd be harmed or even greatly inconvenienced by getting out of the way.  So I shouted "ambulance!", which should have caused some reaction, but nobody moved.  I shouted again "AMBULANCE!", and a few people moved.  So I took a fortifying glug of hot wine and yelled "There is an ambulance behind you with blue lights on!  Move into the right hand lane or onto the pavement!  This is no longer a request!"  That shifted them.

  I recall a similar set of circumstances five years ago in Heiligendamm, only there the whole crowd took up the cry of "rettungswagen!" and immediately parted like the Red Sea from where I was to the horizon and beyond my sight.  They were so good that the krankenwagen never had to go slower than 10 mph.  THAT is how people are meant to behave!  I despair of my compatriots.

Okay, on with the cider!

If you haven't yet read the start of this keg of cider then you'll find it here.

  Racking is the practice of transferring your unfinished wort from one vessel to another whilst fermentation is still ongoing.  You do this after the first 1-2 months or whenever your sediment starts to look a bit dense.  A little sediment is a good thing, it gives it a complexity of flavour.  Too much sediment impairs the flavour.  When you rack cider (or beer, or wine, or mead) into a new keg you leave the bulk of the sediment behind in the old keg.

  The keg is meant to spend as much time sealed as possible; so if you wish to add ingredients that weren't in season or were too impractical or expensive when you laid down the cider, or top up with sugar or yeast or nutrient, then you wait until racking time to do this.  Today I've added rhubarb and enough yeast and nutrient to begin a secondary fermentation.

  It smelled as it should, which is not to say it smelled good.  This stuff is not cider, but a half-fermented apple wort.  Essentially it's a tub of rotten apples.  It'll be another month's maturation before I dare call it a cider.  Still, it had the beginnings of the right overtones and undertones. I reckon it'll be alright.

  Proper rhubarb cider is hard to get in London.  The commercial stuff is pale and crap, and the decent stuff from Kent and Somerset seldom leaves Kent and Somerset.  If you want good cider in London then you have to either go five miles to find a niche pub that gets it in, or you have to brew it yourself.

As you can see, the sediment has gotten deep.  

1) Sterilise the second keg and equipment in hot water and chlorine, as per the original. 

2)  Add any supplementary fruit (such as the rhubarb) to the second keg with a little nutrient before the wort is racked.  Be sure to whiz the new fruit through the blender with some water and sugar to extract the maximum flavour from it.  

3)  Pour the wort from the old keg to the new keg via a towel in a sieve.  

4)  When it gets to the point that you're pouring as much sediment as product, and the liquid itself is thick, opaque orange, this is the time to stop.  Tip the rest down the toilet.  

5)  Finally, add any supplementary yeast (made up the same way as the starting yeast) and seal the keg.  If you use the same type of airlocks as I do then you can tell when the keg is airtight because twisting the keg lid any tighter causes the airlock cap to jump high enough into the air that it clears the chamber and pops off.  

6)  Leave it in the bath and run the hot tap to a quarter full.  Let the revised wort warm up to between 25ºC and 30ºC in order to give the yeast a favourable starting point.  Then remove the keg from the bath, dry it off and put it back where it normally lives.  

Easy peasy.  This lot'll be racked one last time, about a week before it's due to be drunk.  The final racking is done to clear any scum from the top (resulting from the stringy bits in rhubarb, which are indigestible to yeast), and to introduce Campden tablets which halt further fermentation.  Overbrewed cider is even worse than underbrewed cider.  I'll then stash it away somewhere cold so that it tastes lovely and fresh when it's needed.  The final rack is also when I'll draw some off for lab testing.  

Fingers crossed!

Wa-Hey!

Looks like I haven't just killed thirteen bramble cuttings!  This is excellent!  It means that the experiments are definitely going ahead (I've been biting my nails over this one) and that at the end of it I'm likely to have a viable plant with which to carry on the lineage of brambles that have lived up to now in the front garden.  Think in terms of Noah's Ark if that helps.

Pics when the camera turns up.

The Rubus Experiments, pt. 2

I'll be setting this one up tomorrow.  Broadly the same set-up as for Rubus 1, but with different variables:

Windowsill 'Tilly' (my bedroom)

• Hot
• Average humidity
• Maximum direct Sun

Windowsill 'Tom' (dining room)

• Hot
• Very dry
• High Sun

Windowsill 'Tiny' (living room)

• Warm
• Average humidity
• Minimum direct Sun

Windowsill 4 (Rubus 1 group)

• Coolest, though warm still
• Most humid
• Second-highest direct Sun

From Rubus 1, only Milo and Doodle will be involved in Rubus 2.

Further updates will now be found at rubusexperiments.blogspot.co.uk

The Rubus Experiments, pt 1

Note to secondary and FE biology teachers: feel free to use this as an example of a simple and practical botanical experiment.  The link presently comes up second on the first page of Google when searching for "The Rubus Experiments".  The Rubus tab across the top of the page will link to the site where I'm posting the experiments progress.  

  The ramp out front needs replacing as it is presently bridging the damp course.  Everyone finally admits it, so that'll likely happen a few months from now.  The ramp covers more than half the surface area of the front garden, so it'll mean something of a slash-and-burn of plantlife out there.  That Buddleia will go (TFFT!) but so will my brambles.  Those brambles have been there for over ten years and they're a brilliantly heavy cropper.  Every year in late Summer/early Autumn we have more blackberries than we know what to do with.  I didn't plant the bramble myself and nobody knows how many generations of Rubus have grown here.

  More important than sentiment is genetics.  Genes are like stories: they shift in the retelling.  The verses which suit the culture tend to be retained, to grow and to flourish, whilst those which don't will fade into obscurity.  That plant has a genetic heritage which enables it to hold its' own in that place, that soil, those conditions, in spite of competition from other plants.  That plant belongs to that garden, and a similar bramble bought from the garden centre might not suit the space in the same way.

  What to do, then?  Well, I intend to keep the bramble one way or another, but if the bulk of it must be chopped down then I might as well try some stuff out.  I'm not saying this'll work, so you shouldn't take this as a guide to action.  Still, here's what I'm getting up to:

The tools I'll need.  

I've filled the pots with soil from my garden, the same soil the parent plant is growing in.  Most would say to use potting compost, and I'd tend to agree.  My soil is crumbly, silty loam which successive gardeners since the 1930s have dug endless peaty compost into.  If I wanted a better medium for growing I'd have to invent it.

I took the soil from the beds.  Specifically from a point furthest from where my V. faba are growing.  No sense in depriving the beans at this time of year.  Once filled, I took cuttings from shooting tips of the Rubus. They're easily spotted by the claw-like, mitroid tips.  These are where new growth is happening most vigorously, so they should be most likely to take root.  The greenest shoots are best.  Prior to cutting the blades of the scissors were suspended in a pan of water as it boiled.

The growing end of a vine.  

The shoot cutting, size 7 hand for scale.  

I took only healthy shoots, avoiding any that had a problem with greenfly.  Heh, "problem", kinda makes it sound like "if you're not talking to your plants about greenfly..."  Aaanyways; once a shoot cutting was taken, it had to be rinsed under the tap.  A good soaking helps prepare the cuttings.  A hole was made in the centre of my potted soil using a skewer and the cut end put into the soil.  I then used my thumbs to press the soil down gently, just enough to close the hole without compressing the soil.  

I've made five of these - each of roughly the same length - and put them in the Nursery.  Mike has been relocated to my bedroom windowsill for the duration.  Mike seems to be recovering well from his infection.  Once there they each got a solution of 4:2:6 up to the yellow line on the saucer.  Now for the experiments.  I say experiment, but these are more akin to case studies than true lab experiments, albeit with certain controls in place.  

1. I've taken four cuttings of thin, green shoots.  One of a thicker, purpling shoot.  Which will fare better?
2. Two of my shoots curve.  I've pointed the tips of these away from the Sun, where normally plants bend toward the Sun.  Will the phototropic action of auxins cause the whole shoot to straighten up as it brings itself sunward or will the tip kink towards the Sun instead?  

Basic exercises in botanical study, but interesting for all that.  I'll observe the cuttings over the coming months and report on their progress.  Here's the five as they stand today:

Technical help wanted

1. I want to set up a secondary page on my blog.

2. The secondary page will consist of a live stream from a webcam fitted into a bird box in the garden.

3. I want to run the camera straight to the router through some converter without having to go via my PC.

How do I accomplish these things?

Thanks in advance :)

Autumn Maple

  So it's Autumn, for the originators my 62 British pageviews this past month.  30 might call it Fall while 152 would call it Herbst (according to Google, at any rate).  It's bloody cold after what weather reporters called "Freezing Friday", which to me just conjures an epic yet PG-rated quest being undertaken by a polar bear, a puffin, and one very lost penguin.  All of them singing jaunty songs about snow and things that rhyme with snow, which thirty years later prompts heated (but largely esoteric and thus widely ignored) debates as to whether the word "Eskimo" is racist.

But I digress...

  The big maple growing through the roof of the Strawbrary is having its annual shed.  I've not yet managed to get a photo which includes the entire tree - Google Earth notwithstanding - so suffice it to say the thing puts down enough leaves each Autumn that the garden becomes effectively cushioned.  Any deeper and I'd have the cast of Jackass wanting to fling Wee Man off the roof in a Superman cape.  Ordinarily I'd just leave them to rot over the Winter, but this year is different:  this year I'm getting a brew on!

The fallen leaves thus far - and it's only the start of the shedding - are scraped up into a plastic bin.  

Once it's filled, pressed down and filled again (because leaves trap a lot of air!) I poured three litres of water over the top of the leaves, replaced the lid and weighted it on with a stone.  

That'll rot down over the coming year.  The resultant liquid - known as leaf tea - can be diluted to one cup of the tea into a watering can of water for use as a high nitrogen feed for the lawn and other nitrogen-hungry plants.  The leaves which wouldn't fit into the bin can be mulched directly onto the lawn.  

In other decomposition news, the compost is coming along nicely.  Some berk put bread in it though, which is doing nothing so much as turn blue.  I must remember to pop round to Nathan's house for some horse manure.  

And I found this leaf in my bean patch.  It's not the Vicia faba that I planted, and nor is it anything that I've seen in this garden before.  It's of a firm, rubbery texture.  My hand is in the shot, and for scale I wear size 7 gloves.

If anybody knows what in Earth that is, please comment below.  Ta muchly :)

Your input is wanted.

My garden is on the North side of the house.  This means that the soil gets full sun for more of the year as it gets further from the back wall. On the arable (East) side fence I want to paint four diagonal lines, showing the line of full direct sun.

The blue line I'll paint at Noon on the Winter Solstice,
The green line I'll paint at Noon on the Spring Equinox
The yellow line I'll paint at Noon on the Summer Solstice,
The orange line I'll paint at Noon on the Autumn Equinox.

I think it'll be useful and will also look kinda cool.  In my head it'll tie my garden in with the passing of the seasons.

Is there a better way of doing this?  Can I make it look better?  Your input is most welcome.

In Pictures: Squirrel Stalking

No squirrels were harmed in the making of this blog, though Bill's ego might've took a knock.  

New blog

So...

  We moved here some dozen years ago, and the garden was a heap.  An insurmountable jungle of weeds and trees.  The path had been rafted over by wind and humus.  There was a rotted old shed full of broken glass and rusted iron.  A shitehole, in short.  We never bothered with it.

More trees sprang up.  One of the two big trees - who knows what species - had two of it's four trunks killed by the ivy plant belonging to the Scumbags-Over-The-Back-Left, (so dubbed because of Mrs. Scumbag's habit of screaming "YOU FUCKING CUNT" whenever she sees me).

So a year ago I thought "sod it, I might as well do something with that garden".  I've since given over the ground on the left side of the path to a lawny-type space, and the ground to the right of the path to arable purposes.  So far I've:

• dug the lawn side, 
• taken out all the baby trees, 
• demolished the shed and thrown out the junk, 
• cut the ivy right back,
• dug out the stinging nettles,
• repaired the fence (except for the little hole where George, the dog, enjoys nasal meetings with next door's dogs),  
• stained the fence a browny-orangey-red (so that it reflects the corresponding wavelengths of light at my plants),
• built a Strawbrary,
• and chopped down the dead and diseased parts of the tree in the back left:

Today, and for the next fortnight, I'll be forking and weeding the lawn.  I'll have to replant the whole damn thing in September, but it'll be worth it next Summer.  This blog will be updated as and when I do stuff of note in the garden.