Winter

It sleeted the other day in Teddington, which I'm taking as a sign that the Wintersmith has stepped up for his turn at the dance.  As there's no planting or plant-activity left to do in the garden, I thought it might be an idea to just take stock of where me and my garden are at this year and what's planned for the quiet season.

First, we have a new addition to the family.  Our Sam had a baby.  I've mentioned her before, her name is Ellie, she's turning 1 in December and she's already toddling at a run.  She's got a fair vocabulary up to now:

Miaow = Bill or any cat
Doos = Juice
Doyan = Diane
Durj = George
Door = Door
Edjig = Hedgehog
Mum = Mum
Nana = Nana
Chickenchickenchicken = Chicken.

I buried my Dad this Autumn, which was as hard as you might expect.  I might write more on that in the next few months, but I'm in a weird sixth stage of grief right now.  I've gone through the five as normal, but my mind still isn't at rest so I've been making a lot of jam and I've been poopsocking heavily on the xbox.  On the plus, I can now make lemon curd.  He liked lemon curd did our Cubby, he liked the Beatles too, so when I did a job up Hampstead the other week I swung by Abbey Road on the way home, spent some time sitting by the zebra crossing with my thoughts.

It seems I've been shortlisted for a job as a lab tech.  Won't find out until tomorrow.

The garden then.  The trees out front had a fungal thing but I've treated that organically by dousing the leaves with diluted milk and by adding calcium to the soil.  The new thornless brambles are making it easier to gather the fruit, and Ellie loves doing that.  She sits on my Mum's lap out on the ramp and picks the blackberries that grow along the handrails.  There'll be more planted on the other side too, but not just yet.  I want to get two more cherries in first.

The back garden is having its annual lawn die-off.  The back garden faces North so we can only keep a lawn for a Summer.  The fruit bed is doing well though.  The loganberry plant is halfway along the trellis now, chasing the last of the Sun.  The gooseberries are looking iffy, in that I can't quite tell if they're dead or just hibernating and I shan't know until Spring.

Out front the neighbours' fence is still a bit dodgy.  It was put up by cowboys and so in the first breath of wind it collapsed and damaged their car and my pear tree.  I've made some repairs to it (because it's cheaper than cleaning up after cowboys - the last time they came out to make repairs they dug a hole round the post, filled it with dry cement powder and buried it) but I'm still not happy, so when I get some dough I'll buy a couple 8' tree stakes and drive them 4' deep.  Against that fence I've got an elderberry and three kinds of raspberries.

I'm looking at ways to make my front garden more wildlife friendly.  The bark on the ground is attracting woodlice, I've got a log with holes drilled into it which attracts ladybirds in the warmer seasons.  Plenty of dead wood for beetles.  Once my dwarf orchard grows to size it'll start attracting bats, at which point I'll consider bat boxes in the eaves.

Now birds and hedgehogs...  My front garden has two plantable areas, which I term the Island and the Outside.  Here's a map, not to scale:

The North edge of the Island is already lined with rosemary and lavender.  I think I might continue those around the Western edge and then along the South edge.  I'll site a hedgehog box in the centre and fill out the middle of the Island with gooseberries and bush roses.  There's already jasmine and brambles growing against the railings, and together it should make for a dense enough hedge to support birds and hedgehogs.  

At the Northernmost end of the Outside, up against the wall I've got climbing roses, Etoile de Hollande, but as they grow the bottom will need cover to look nice.  I'm thinking Buxus sempervirens, maybe bush roses, maybe lavender.  This'll come out by a foot or so and again I can work in a hedgehog box.  I'll put blackcurrants in front of that.  Maybe I'll separate the blackcurrants from the rest of the bush with a little hidden chickenwire so that Ellie isn't grabbing rose prickles. 

I'll put a narrow path down the middle of the Western bit of the Outside, from the blackcurrants down to just East of the Westernmost cherry.  At the end of this path I'll put a wee storage thing in the shade of the front fence (where little else grows), while either side of that path I'll sow herbs and strawberries.  I'll also put in bee pots to encourage bees.  

Next year I'll fit windowboxes for basil and sage.  I'm gradually accumulating nice pots, some of which will house a mix of flowers and herbs, others will hold mint by itself because mint is the Britain of plants: it'll colonise the entire pot! 

This year we were sufficient in three things: rosemary, bay leaves, and blackberries.  Next year we ought to be sufficient in those plus sage, raspberries, verbena, loganberries, blueberries, gooseberries and hopefully thyme.  Thyme's tricky though in my garden.  Within the next three years we should become sufficient in those plus strawberries, basil, mint, blackcurrants, elderflower, elderberry, figs, and seasonal stonefruits (apples, pears, cherries).  

And that's been my year!

Herbst

It's been a while, to say the least.  My first year as an undergrad was mayhem mayhem, so I've cashed out for an HNC.  I had the grades, no problems there.  It was pretty much straight Distinctions in everything, but the politics got to me.  Suffice it to say I've been busy.

My first niece, Ellie, was born in December.  She's adorable.  I shan't blog photos though because internet.

Got away over the Summer.  When you're part of the many worlds that I inhabit you tend not to have a circle of friends so much as a diaspora, so I arranged a list of couches to crash on, got myself a Golden Ticket - *sings the line* - and went off to see, well, the UK I guess.  England and Scotland at any rate.

I ended up staying in Aberdeen, Northampton, Dundee, Inverkeithing, Manchester, and Leamington, with stops in Stonehaven, London, Edinburgh, Newcastle, York and Coventry, before ending the Summer in Brighton with Julia from Stages of Succession where I picked up an award!  

In all, I probably racked up 3,000 miles in three weeks.  It was awesome!  This map by @scattermoon doesn't show the Brighton leg but other than that the lines taken are accurate, it should give you some idea.

Muchly recommended!  If you get the chance to put in a fortnight city-hopping then do so.  I saw more museums and galleries in that short space of time than I do in the average year.  I went on the RRS Discovery, stood inside a mock-up of the Large Hadron Collider, finally saw Body Worlds, and got to stand on the footplate of a very handsome steam engine.  Ain't stopped grinning since :)

So the garden then.  The garden has changed considerably.  The buddleia got cut down, so I put in fruit trees, thornless brambles and rosemary.  I've also painted the railings British racing green so's they don't make the place look like a doctors' surgery any more.  Alas, with the shade from the departed buddleia having gone away I'm having weeds come up out of the ramp faster than I can pull them out, but once the trees get a little bigger that'll sort itself out.  

On the left along the fence line are three cherries: morello, dessert, and another morello.  Visible on the right, between ramp sections, is a family-grafted apple and behind that, near to the taller fence is a family-grafted pear.  

As you can see I'm training thornless bramble to wind around the railings.  This year's growth will turn woody next year, providing a broad and steady platform for next year's growth.  In time the railings will all be covered in blackberries, I may even put in an arch with bamboo and have blackberries cascading above the ramp.  Yum!  Ellie's been picking blackberries all Summer, she loves them.  

My new bay project - Stan - is coming along nicely.  Here he is next to the entry out front.  

That's all thyme in there.  The two in front are orange thyme, then three lemon thyme in the middle, Stan in back.  Oh you should smell that planter after a storm!  

Out back, meanwhile, I've had a little change of heart.  My veg beds will never grow anything like enough veg to feed my lot, but they can grow enough herbs.  They're now my herb beds.  The little ones that were my herb beds are now my odd-job beds.  The fruit bed is mostly planted, save for raspberries which aren't even stocked until October.  

From the left we have rose, thorned bramble, three kinds of blueberry, a fig, and loganberry on the right.  The roses and brambles are to discourage a cat from sitting on the Strawbrary because it pisses George off, who then runs around the garden frantically, and my flower beds get trashed.  No cat, no crazy dog, no destruction.  

This being Autumn now I'm drying rosemary for storage, where it'll keep us in home-grown herbs until the Spring.  

And meanwhile we've got enough fresh in the kitchen to last us a while.  

Rosemary - Sage - Thyme - Bay

Looks kinda Skyrimesque.  Ah well, until next time :) 

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!

The State of the Garden Address

Here's where we are just now.  I've put in the sage bed, clockwise from back left: purple sage, common sage, tricolour sage, Icterina sage.  

My lemon thyme turned out to be common thyme.  I got it from amidst the lemon thyme and the label said 
"[£1.99]mon Thyme", so I assumed it to be like its neighbours.  Ah well.  I picked up a variegated lemon thyme today and put it in the centre of the thyme bed.  

That'll teach me to not buy a pig in a poke!  

I've planted up bed 3.  There's two frames of bamboo and wire in there.  The one nearest the trellis is growing runner beans (Wisley Magic) and the one nearest the lawn is growing sugar snap peas (Sugar Ann).  

And the lawn is thickening up a treat.  It'll need a mowing and a third seeding to make it ready for the Summer, but imperfect as it is it's still a joy to walk barefoot on after all those stones and nettles.

Approved by Bill!  

In other news: at the bar last night we had a gap between doors and the first DJ showing up, so I got up and DJed for half an hour.  When I DJ I tend to write my set down as I go along.  I got near the end, looked back over what I'd played and realised "shit, I've been watching too much of the news!"  Take a look and see if you can see what I mean:  

Jam - Eton Rifles, 
REM - End Of The World As We Know It, 
Cranberries - Zombie, 
Prodigy - Firestarter, 
Manics - If You Tolerate This, 
Clash - Rock The Casbah, 
Chumbawumba - Tubthumping, 
Alice Cooper - Poison, 
Skunk Anansie - I went to play Hedonism but the disc was bad, so I played Weak.

Dude!

And I reckon I'm starting college in October, if I can get this bloody paperwork squared away.  

Later :)

Busy weekend, pt. 2

I've finally got the first of my beds built!  I've built the fruit bed and the first two vegetable beds.  I would've blogged this last night but just as I sat down to the keyboard there was a mass exodus out the door to see Iron Man 3 and I just had to go with.

The long bed that runs along the East fence is the fruit bed.  The shorter one in the centre of things is one of the veg beds.

You want broken bricks in the bottom for drainage.  If you can only get so many bricks but have a bunch of slabs then divide them as follows: bricks under the veg beds, slabs under the herb beds.  The reason for this is that slabs have a higher pH than bricks, and herbs can generally tolerate a higher pH than veg.

I dug a pit and filled it with broken bricks,

-parked a bed over the pit,

-and half-filled it with soil.

As you can see from the plan, these are bed 1 and bed 2.  The finished beds will project twice as far.

This week I'll be shopping for compost to fill the remaining space with, as neither my compost nor my leafmould are fully decomposed and ready to use yet.  It looks shabby just now but this is the bare bones, and even that much isn't finished.  Once I've got stuff on the grow it'll look better, and better still when I've got grass growing in the rows between the beds and perennial plants like herbs in the herb beds and fruit in the fruit bed.  The rosemary will really set it off.

Lastly then, because I am a fantasy gamer to my bones, a little flourish:

Back to the grind...

Busy weekend, pt. 1

Today I've finished preparing all but one set of the panels for the raised beds.  They'll go up tomorrow.

I've built a worktop for the shed from part of an old wardrobe.

I've begun decorating the shed.

I've nailed up some trellis.

My strawberries are beginning to flower for the Spring.  We'll have home-grown strawbs this Summer.

Grass, tools and evolution

I planted the lawn today.

  George now has no back garden for at least a week, maybe a fortnight.  I used aerator shoes to drive the seed in deep, like two inches deep.  Some's only an inch deep, having been raked in.  Some's at the surface, squashed in with my boots.  With any luck, a storm coming out of nowhere won't be as devastating a thing this year as it was last year.  We may end up with a half-decent lawn this Summer!  

  As thanks for putting the lawn in, I got given a lovely new edger.  I've never owned an edger before.  This one's a thing of beauty: dark hardwood handle, sturdy, quality lathework, and with a bright stainless steel blade.  I think I'm in love.  Can't wait to put in a proper border with it.  

Lastly then, the strawberries I planted last year are greening up and back on the grow.  More specifically: half of them are.  The other half are either dead or dormant.  Thankfully the surviving half are from all four cultivars planted.  This is a good thing because the weird second Winter we just had is not great for plants.  The limey London soil is definitely not great for fruiting plants (my strawbs are in compost, but there's soil beneath and the alkali is capable of creeping up).  

Those which survived are hardier to frost and more tolerant of the edaphic conditions than those which died.  

This is the basis of evolution.  Evolution depends upon life in the midst of death.  Those which survive go on to pass on those very genes which helped them survive.  This adapts the species to the prevailing conditions.  The surviving strawberries will propagate new plants - both vegetatively and sexually - until the Strawbrary is full.  Those new plants will be adapted to fit the prevailing conditions of my garden.  After a few more generations they'll have thoroughly evolved to fit the niche of "strawberry plant in Joey's Strawbrary", after which they'll need to evolve again before they'll be able to thrive half as well in any garden but mine.

Life plods on, as ever it has.

Slowed again

So the tumble dryer broke.  In a household this big, a broken dryer is not good news.  I've now got a line across most of the garden to get the clothes dry in this glorious sunshine; meaning I can't be dragging pallets about and staining wood for fear of ballsing up the laundry.  This limits my worktime severely, but there's bugger all I can do about it.

Meanwhile, the front ramp needs work done.  To facilitate this, the buddleia's going.  Once the work is done on the ramp I'll probably put in a pergola.  Pics to follow.

Et voila, pics!  How naked does that ramp look?  Makes the place look like a GP surgery.  Plus I've finally gotten to all the rubbish that berks have shoved into my hedge when they couldn't find a bin.  It filled a sack and was mostly comprised of empty cans of cheap lager.

Meanwhile, is there anything that conveys the wonder of nature more succinctly than just watching a bud unfold?  

By next post I should hopefully have my lawn replanted, unless drama has ensued.  

Shed bearers

The compressor box is off the wall and I've built the shed bearers.

Now when you buy a shed or similar structure it'll usually say in big letters GUARANTEED AGAINST ROT FOR TEN YEARS, then down the bottom in tiny letters it'll say the guarantee is only good for one year - not the full ten - unless you put it up on bearers.  You need the bearers for the ten year guarantee.  They'll try and nudge you towards buying their own bearer kit made of timber and steel with ground spikes.  If you're putting the shed on soil then you'll need this, but if you're putting the shed on a hard surface like a patio or other paved area then you don't need the steel or the ground spikes and can just as readily build your own timber bearers.

This cost me £25 for the timber.  A bearer kit is £50+.  I already had the screws and the stain in the house.  STAIN YOUR TIMBER!  If you don't treat it with some kind of protective stain or exterior varnish then you might as well chuck a bucket of mould right at the shed and have done.

If you're buying a kit shed then check the instructions to the shed carefully.  Beneath the floorboards there'll be joists.  You need to know if those joists run parallel to the long side or to the short side before you cut your timber.  If the joists run parallel to the long side then your bearers must run parallel to the short side, and vice-versa.

My shed is 8' x 6'.  The joists run parallel to the long side, so I've cut 2x 8' and 6x 5'6".  If the joists ran parallel to the short side then I'd cut 2x 6' and 5x 7'6".  All the timber is two by four.  It should be built so that the two inch sides face into the ground and sky, giving you four inches of ground clearance.  That way any ground rot has to penetrate the stain at the bottom, creep through four inches of wood, then penetrate another layer of stain at the top before it can attack the joists.  The thicker your bearers, the longer the joists are protected.

I've stained them two colours.  The shed is blue, so any part of the bearers that'll see daylight is also blue.  The blue stain is about seven times as dear as the red stain, litre for litre, so any part that isn't seeing daylight I've stained the cheaper red.  No sense wasting the good stuff.  

I've held the timbers together both with heavy carriage bolts and broad-threaded timber screws and with a good blob of wood glue.  I'm a big fan of the belt-and-braces approach, particularly where something has to take a lot of weight.  

These'll look after my shed a treat.  The shed itself is going up on Saturday.  I've stained the panels blue but I still need to paint the trim white.  It's a kit shed, I know what's going where, so it's easier to stain it while it's still laid out flat.  

I guess that's it for now.  The shed goes up on Saturday, the beds go up on Sunday, the lawn gets replanted at some point this weekend.  Big flurry of activity coming up, but it'll all be worth it afterwards.  

Until then :)

Getting closer

The compressor comes off the wall on morning of the 18th and the shed'll be up that afternoon.

I'm digging the lawn over ready for replanting.

I'm treating the areas contaminated with cement.

My hand is fixed and I'm just waiting to get the shed panels off the pallets so I can build the beds.  Next weekend will be incredibly busy.

Bring it on!

In other news: the two fingers that took the brunt of the hammer seem to each have a floating lump beneath the skin.  They're smooth, so not bone shards, and I'm beginning to suspect that I've managed to give myself sesamoids with one blow.

Shed update

The shed arrived on Tuesday.  I've improvised the bearers using old paving slabs and the sides of a wardrobe.  Where it's meant to be going however there's a compressor unit on the wall.  The compressor belongs to a lift that no longer exists and should've gone at the same time, but it didn't.  I'm now waiting on that being removed, so meanwhile the shed is still in panels, stained blue, standing on pallets with a tarpaulin over the top.

We have moved from a state of stagnation without shedparts to a state of stagnation with shedparts.  I guess it's progress of a sort.

Shed dramas

The shed - paid for before I thumped my right hand - is being delivered Ikea-style on Monday.  I'm in no fit state to build a shed, though thankfully I've got help.

I went up to B&Q in Chiswick today to pick up some woodstain: 2.5L of Cuprinol garden shades in Iris if I could get it, else Barleywood.  I've been planning where the shed is going for well over a year now and I always pictured it as stained dark blue with the trim (doorframe, corner edgings) painted gloss white.  I don't know why I pictured those colours, but I did, and now that's what my shed looks like.

Turns out they do the range in 2.5L, and they do both Iris and Barleywood, but they don't do either of those colours in 2.5L.  They stock everything but dark blue in 2.5L.  Bugger.  I could buy two 1L cans, but they're £14 apiece while a 2.5L can would be £19, meaning I'd be paying damn near 150% the price for only 80% the amount of woodstain.  Sod that for a laugh!

So the shed's coming, sure as Winter in Westeros, but I've got no stain, half a hand, and I've still not built the bearers yet.

Shit.

The PLN

Here's the finalised layout for the arable side of the garden.  I've got the wood ready.  All I'm waiting on now is for my hand to heal up and the damn thing's as good as built.  This is just the right half; try to imagine that off to the left is the path and then the lawn.  All unmarked greenery is Rosemary whilst the purple is climbing flowers.

Beds and other news.

So the builders have finished and I'm getting in the first of the raised beds.  I'm putting in four of the main beds, so I'll be growing potatoes, carrots, leeks, onions, garlic, neeps and cabbages.  No photos until it's done because right now it all looks fuck-ugly.

This is being hampered somewhat by the fact that I bashed myself in the hand with a sledgehammer yesterday.  The right hand.  The hand that was holding the sledgehammer.  I'm actually impressed.  It's swollen, turning purple, two fingers are lacerated, but no bones are broken.

Having bugger all else to do this weekend, I'm thinking I'll jump the train down to Egham for a night at the opera, the new one about the Ap-ocalypse.

Until next time.

Edit: apparently my hand's a mess. The joints function but I've got periosteal cracks, weakened tendons, an injured pollical system, the ulnar nerve got banged up pretty good. 4 weeks light duties: no heavy lifting, no heat, no xbox; lest I give myself a crippled hand.

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.  

'Tis the Season...

"Once they figure a way to work a dead horse, we'll be next. Likely I'll be the first too. 'Edd,' they'll say, 'dying's no excuse for laying down no more, so get on up and take this spear, you've got first watch tonight.' Well, I shouldn't be so gloomy. Might be I'll die before they work it out." 

– Eddison 'Dolorous Edd' Tollett

  Well, my part in the Christmas Clean is drawing fast to a close, Gods be praised.  My black dog, Shuck, tends to make an appearance around this time.  Two generations of Atheists (though half of us were still part-raised as Taigs) and still we gotta get festive.  My cynical nature reckons that the season isn't in full swing until I've called the tree a c**t to its face.  I hate Christmas, so the little acts of cynical pseudo-rebellion (like insisting that being Christmas no.1 makes Killing In The Name a Christmas song) keep the black dog from swallowing me whole.  I never take it too far though, on account of the fact that the rest of my family seem to like this ever-repurposed holiday, and that it is bizarrely easy to spoil it.

  Gardening then.  I've had to change my plans for the beds.  It turns out that a person can't work a bed of 5'x5' without stepping into it, which defeats the object.  Better than having six of those is having ten beds of 3'x5'.  Either way it covers the same amount of ground, but this way I get to grow more solanaceae and alliums, fewer beans and apiaceae, plus I can include things that weren't in the six bed rotation such as peas, wheat and gourds.  Here's the new plan; it's to be read clockwise in terms of a given bed, which actually means that the whole thing'll rotate anti-clockwise.

More tatties overall, but in a rotation that sees each bed growing legumes once every five years rather than once every six.  The beds won't reach all the way to the Eastern fence.  Instead, there'll be a strip of land a foot wide, from which I'll grow fruiting bushes and vines up trellis against the fence.  This is also where I'll grow borage, as any area of soil that has fruit growing in it has a heavy drain on potassium.  

  Other than that, the garden's ticking over.  Got some manure coming soon.  Got the baseplate to the composter coming soon.  Once Commercemas is over I can start building for the coming year.  I'll get a tool cabinet and a couple of bat boxes built.  The beds will be built in January.  I'm thinking railway sleepers for the beds, but you've got to be careful in buying them.  For beds, the law says I need timber not treated with creosote.  The shed likely January or February.  Once the shed is in situ I can work on trellis plus further bird houses, bat boxes and other things.  BirdCam will follow the shed.  The greenhouse tent will go up in March and the first seedlings will go into the garden shortly afterward.  With luck I'll be getting in the first of the early Harvest in June.  

  Lastly then, the post Why Biology?  has attracted enough interest (second most viewed post on the blog) that I reckon it's appropriate to go further back.  Science for me started when I was a tiny kid.  I had a microscope before I could write, but I'd document my methods and findings pictorially.  At 4 I used to sit and watch that cartoon variously known as Once Upon A Time... Life, and How My Body Works.  Mam got me a chemistry set when I was about 5 and I grew crystals of copper (II) sulphate.  The big thing though was Lego.  I had Lego throughout my childhood, starting from the day I was able to play with things without trying to eat them or fit them into the orifices of the head.  Physics, mechanics, timing, all can be explored with enough Lego.

  I don't think I was raised toward Science though, I think it's better to say that I wasn't raised away from it.  I had the tools because I asked for them and showed genuine interest.  The kids who grow up to consider Science are not those who were told to be curious, but those who weren't told not to be curious.  If that makes sense?  I dunno.  ROLL VT!

Flies, bats, other stuff

The composter is attracting flies, even as we are fast approaching the Winter.  This must mean the composter is generating a certain amount of warmth, which is nice.  Getting rid of the flies is something of a must, however.  I don't mind flies, they do their jobs in the ecosystem and the world keeps turning; but they encourage spiders, which I personally quite like but which my sisters get freaked out over.  It's bad to put house spiders out in Winter as they won't last the night, so I resist doing that, but I don't want to swell their numbers by letting a fly explosion run unchecked.  The solution is to assert a biological control over the flies. More spiders are out of the question.  Frogs are crap.  Wasps scare the living shit out of me.  Birds can be great, but there's quite a spread with birds and you don't know when putting in a bird box whether you'll attract the sort of bird that likes flies or the sort of bird that likes your crops.

I've decided on bats.  London has many species of bat, and Strawberry Hill comes alive at dusk with the tiny, leathery sound of pipistrelles in flight.  I'm picking up a pair of bat boxes tomorrow which I'll fit high up in the big Maple just as soon as I can get ten minutes use of an extension ladder.  Eventually I'll set up BatCam as part of the BirdCam project, but for now the priority is pest control.  It's also nice to be able to offer shelter to an endangered species.

I'll need to stain the bat boxes so as to protect the wood from the elements.  Should I stain them a blending colour like green or brown?  Red like the fences?  Something like purple or blue to be bold yet stylish?  Something that really sticks out like a neon pink?  Or should I stain them black and then paint a little batman symbol on the front?  Decisions decisions...

Mike's doing well.  The beans are doing well.  The strawbs are doing well.  The lawn has a hole in it.  Those Thymus are doing well, though I still never figured out that 'lilac' business.  The brambles seem to be doing alright, to the point that two of them have shown overt growth while a third is budding.

I'm getting a budget from the household in January to make improvements to the garden, which should be sufficient to finance a shed, the beds, and a greenhouse tent.  This is awesome!  I mentioned before that the ramp out front is bridging the DPC and needs to be replaced, well so too does the patio out back.  This'll put the shed, beds and greenhouse on hold until it's done, but it should be done fairly quickly.  I think I'll stain the shed blue an paint the trim (corners, door frame, window frame) white.  I think that'd be bold, but look nice.

In other news: there was some kind of magpie turf war going on in the Buddleia earlier today.  It was quite intense, more so when a shitload of parakeets and a raven got involved.  Bill stayed indoors for that one, and of his own volition too, which I guess means he's smart enough to value his eyeballs.

I need more tea.  Down the bar last night...  Okay, it's a bit of a long story.  Jesse disappears for donkeys' at a time because of work.  When we see him again; he, Liam and myself have a thing of sitting about the bar in our boxers and drinking.  I don't normally have more than two pints on a night out, three at most, so now my head feels like it's been carpeted.

On the other hand, it isn't every day that one's arse gets a round of applause.

Bye xx

A nitrogen fixation

So I haven't done much today, a) because when it rains like it did today my left knee turns into a brick, and b) because I'm thoroughly hungover.  November 20th will do that at the best of times, but this year was doubly fubar because someone there actually got spat on.

Anywho, I've gone and checked my V. faba for nitrogen fixing.  This can be done quite readily, but may mean the loss of a plant.  Nitrogen fixation doesn't happen because the plant just feels like doing it.  It happens because of a symbiotic infection in the roots by a bacterium called Rhizobium.  Rhizobium causes nodules to form on the roots.  These nodules contain ammonium (NH4+, better expressed as H3N:H+), and when the plant is dug over at the end of its life those nodules decompose, releasing the ammonium into the soil.  Were it not for this process the soil couldn't support the intensity of plantlife that it does, which in turn means the Earth couldn't support anything like the 7 billion humans that are currently walking around.  Chances are that you are alive today because of Rhizobium.  Let's give it a round of applause, shall we?

Rows and rows of Vicia faba

These are too clustered.  Digging up one might hurt the roots of those around it.  Avoid them.  

These are more sparse, so it is far easier to isolate a single plant.  

Using a hand fork, dig out the entire clod that surrounds the roots.  

Use a slow-running tap to gently sluice off the soil.

Examination of the major roots should reveal nodules.

 

 Alas, I found no nodules.  No nitrogen fixation for me.  The problem might be any one of four things:

1. I have no Rhizobium in my soil.
2. I have the wrong strain of Rhizobium in my soil for V. faba.  
3. My soil is deficient in cobalt, which is a catalyst for the reaction.
4. These beans are not yet mature enough to be showing nodules.  

I'll give it until this time next month and then I'll lift another plant.

In other news, I'm fairly certain the big Maple is attracting birds...

That is definitely a nest!

...and the Rubus Experiments are a go!

Until next time xx

V. faba, A. italicum and endless R. fruticosus

  Since last night I've had Zombie by The Cranberries stuck in my head.  I like the song but it makes a brutal earworm.  Been listening to a lot of Lyndsey Stirling of late as I do so love string music.

Today I brushed back the leaves off the beds and lo!  My Vicia faba are coming in.  They're titchy, bud-headed shoots just now but they'll grow.  I've included a tuppence for scale:

Seven more or less parallel rows, though some shoots are isolated within the row whilst others are quite clustered.  

The random Arum italicum from the beds I've dug out and potted with a little 4:2:6.  Ultimately it's going to the windowsill of the Biology lab at my old college.  They're lovely plants but I can't ask a vegetable bed to bear the cost in nitrogen and potassium of an ornamental species whilst still giving me a decent yield.  The exception of course is for useful species such as marigolds and borage, which I don't eat, but which make themselves useful.  Marigolds discourage pests whilst borage frees up potassium and calcium in the soil.

Here the A. italicum is keeping Pinky and Perky company while I watch it for any signs of transplant shock.

Those alpines have grown like stink since I got them, and their leaves look far less symptomatic than they did.  Symptomatic isn't really the right word, but there isn't really an equivalent word that has to do with signs.  They'll want to go outside soon, I reckon.  I'll need to get some more straw first so that they can be properly mulched.  

Lastly then, I've given up pruning my brambles (Rubus fruticosus).  If I cut them back they only grow into the same space again and faster than before.  Instead I've taken to tying them onto the buddleia.  The ladder is about 4'6" to the shelf.  

Give it a few years and those brambles will be twenty feet high, the way they've grown.  I pity the poor sod who parks their car under it when the upper reaches are bearing fruit, as it's already a bird magnet.  Bee magnet too, which when you consider that something like a third of edible crop species are bee pollinated, a bee magnet is a nice thing to have around.  Bees freak me out, but their biological utility is undeniable.  

I have a show to light now so I'd best get off the comp.  Until next time xx