Long grass is a problem, it smothers everything and is hard to cut down as it doesn’t fit in the mower and binds up my strimmer. So I decided to go old school and buy a scythe.
It’s as mean as it looks and there’s a definite skill to using it. Get it right and the grass gets sliced down in a pretty satisfying way – you can feel the scythe working. Get it wrong and the grass just leans over then waits until you’ve gone home before springing back up.
It’s let me get rid of some quite long grass that was around some fruit trees, and is good at dealing with nettles as providing you keep away from their long stems, nothing stinging gets thrown around like with a strimmer.
Now there’s been some rain, things are starting to grow on the allotment. Not all the things are wanted though. I’m getting a lot of grass and bindweed appearing, trying to choke things out…
The bindweed just sprouts out the ground at random, climbs the closest thing and snakes across the grass. Dealing with this stuff is the main job.
Some of the fruit bushes are having a go at making fruit, but it’s that dry malformed stuff you get when the weather is too hot. A few strawberries appear to have survived the mower too!
In one of the main areas various things are growing. The beans are a bit stunted, I grew them from last year’s crop so maybe they’re not a good strain or something. I have a feeling all the ground needs more nutrients in it too.
Something that is growing well is the random grape vine that appeared from nowhere. It seems to be growing out of a neighbouring house’s garden. I’ve also planted some cucumbers, I am quite certain they’ll grow a lovely crop of bitter tasting veg.
The pumpkins have so far survived the slugs and other pests that want to eat anything with leaves. All my peas have gone, I’m suspecting the pigeons.
Last year I attempted to grow some leaks, but they didn’t really do much and after accidentally mowing their tops off I decided to give up. The plants however had other ideas and managed to survive, so I’ve let them flower, the bees seem to like them anyway.
Here’s a photo that perfectly sums up modern society…
Chairs need instructions explicitly telling the user it is for sitting on, and that it isn’t a step ladder.
Of course the warning label is not attached to a chair because of course it isn’t, even though it tells us not to remove it. That person probably used it as a step ladder while riding it down a corridor.
My garden has three water butts in it, for some reason I keep writing about them on this blog. To make use of the water I used to own a mains powered pump but due to a minor electric shock issue that’s now on its way to my nearest e-waste pile.
Does your water butt also store electricity? Mine did. Getting a bit of a zing while trying to make the pump’s float switch activate was a bit too much excitement this morning.
Here’s my multimeter with one lead dangling in the water and the other poked in the ground. 97v AC is quite tingly.
It wasn’t bad enough to trip my house circuit breaker though, but now that pump is an ex-pump.
So I have three water butts, one contained a pump and it was pretty good being able to water the garden using rainwater. However once the water butt ran dry, it was awkward moving the pump into the next butt. So my plan was to plumb them all together and then the water can just level itself out between them.
After emptying the butts of all their suspiciously stinky water I noticed my shed was looking a bit sun beaten, and since I stained it dark brown it suffers from getting cooked in the sun. On a recent visit to my sister I obtained some white masonry paint. So now the shed is white.
My plan for linking the butts was to use 15mm PEX piping and plastic fittings. It’s the same stuff they used in my house, and after poking a hole in the hot water line in my house and seeing how easy it was to repair, I went shopping in Wickes and bought a bunch of taps and connectors. I already had some pipe from an attempt at using it on the allotment.
Plumbing it up was so easy, it just suffers from that plastic piping thing of being quite bulky so I will need to avoid banging into the pipework when mowing. Although there’s no glue used anywhere, so if I break it, it’ll be easy to repair. And being plastic it’s quite bendy.
Coming out of each butt is one of those isolation valves used on taps and toilets so I can shut off each butt if I need to do anything, without needing to drain the whole system. At the end of the run is a tap so I can fill a watering can easily. The original taps are still on to completely drain each butt if needed.
My plan is to isolate each water butt in the winter and drain the joining pipe so it doesn’t freeze. Otherwise it’ll stay open so the water levels equalise, although I will need to shut off the third one as it sits higher and will never fill up fully without making the others overflow.
Since I’d emptied the water onto my garden (which wasn’t a waste, it’s been dry and sunny for the past month, everything needed a good soaking) I leak tested the system using the hose. And it works! nothing leaks! Each butt has some water in now to stop them blowing away if it gets windy.
And that’s it. I just need some rain now. And a new water pump that won’t try to electrocute me.
Now the intense mowing has got the grass under control, and the strimming has temporarily put the brambles in their place, I can get on with removing the long grass that’s growing amongst the fruit bushes.
There’s bushes in here somewhereWhere there’s grass, there’s bindweedAfter…Now the light can get to the plants
This grass is a pest, it smothers the smaller plants and since it grows right amongst the bushes I can’t stick my strimmer in there otherwise it’ll damage the plants I want to keep.
The solution I’ve found is to use more traditional grass removal tools. I have what Amazon calls a “Japanese Weeding Hoe”. It’s sharp – well it was sharp, dragging it through the ground and stabbing at stubborn weeds has given it a less sharp edge now. I need a file. Since it’s hand held I can get right amongst the bushes and rip out the grass with it.
I’m a bit fearful of the brambles and nettles though, the grass has a habit of whipping back on itself as you try to cut it, and goes right where my hands are. This is fine with grass, but being whacked on the hand with some nettles doesn’t seem like fun.
A giant thorny triffidYeah this thing is sharp
The bit between the fruit trees is too long to strim, and since I can’t see where the trees are amongst the grass it’s not safe to just stick the strimmer in and wave it around. I might cut my own leg off or damage the trees.
I can’t even get in thereChickens are a good way to remove grass
This part contains three rhubarb plants, can you see them? No? Me neither, I thought they’d died.
There’s also a lot of rubbish in here. I’m sure I’ll find that in the winter.
With some careful weeding it turns out the rhubarb are still there! Next year they should produce enough that I can harvest their stems.
To get in amongst the longer grass I need a bigger tool.
Something like this will work. Not sure how you get a large sharp object through the mail, but it’ll be fun finding out!
