Farcebook

Tag: Rotavator

  • Creating a covered planting area

    Creating a covered planting area

    After moving the shed I was left with a patch of ground that is relatively low in weeds and planned on using it as just another area for growing things. However, after getting rid of the other greenhouse I was also left with a greenhouse base that either needed giving away to the local metal fairies or reusing somehow. So I had an idea…

    If I removed all the grass, flattened a lump of grass that I built up after last year’s wasp incident and dug in the remains of a compost pile, I’d have a nice area for growing more delicate plants.

    Also it’d thoroughly dig up the ground where the wasps were, so future ones didn’t get any ideas.

    My trusty battery powered rotavator chewed the ground up fairly well, and after some mildly dangerous antics with the greenhouse base, I had an area that was enclosed which should help keep the weeds out.

    The next step was to actually plant things in there. The Range were selling strawberry plants, and after the demise of Wilko they also seem to have bought all their stock and are selling it off cheap. So Wilko’s 99p seed packets were 50p.

    The second photo is for my reference too. There’s two rows of beetroot, two rows of carrots and then several rows of parsnip. The ground had a really good chewing with the rotavator and now actually resembles something you could grow plants in, rather than a field that’s had the grass ripped out.

    The final stage was to set up a small plant cover I’d bought off Amazon. It’s one of those kits made from the tubular metal and plastic connectors that tends to last a season at best before something fails or the wind takes it away. I’ve tried to buy a more robust one so maybe it’ll last all year if I’m careful?

    It was a bit bigger than I expected too…

    The only irritating thing is the plastic cover doesn’t have many straps for tieing it to the frame. I hope it doesn’t explode in the wind the next time we have a storm.

    To prevent this I got creative. I was tempted to attach it to the greenhouse base, but once the parsnips and carrots have grown a bit I’m intending on moving the cover to another part of the plot to cover something else.

    Here’s the finished thing

  • Whoops! we upset the council

    Whoops! we upset the council

    When you own an allotment there’s rules. The rules are varied, depending on where your plot is, the council owning the site and seemingly the phase of the moon. If you have a plot of your own, some of you might know about the various committees that can exist to help the council manage the plots.

    Our council is quite keen on our plots not looking like weed infested abandoned bits of wasteland, and if they decide your plot is, you get a nice letter.

    Which is fair, mine did look a bit like a jungle but had they waited a few weeks more, I would have cleared it without them needing to send me a letter “requesting” that I clear it.

    So I set about the place with my strimmer and rotavator, turning it into this. The main bed is wider and some annoying lumps have been removed. It’ll need digging over properly before I plant anything though.

    While moving some plastic sheeting around I discovered some frogs. Hopefully they’ll help produce more frogs now that we have a pond.

  • Jungle Clearance

    Jungle Clearance

    Due to the weather being quite rubbish I didn’t get over to the allotment much in the past month. And it seems things are now starting to grow! A lot! Before I could even start I needed to mow the space my car parks on.

    The knackered petrol mower I’ve had for years did actually start up, which was surprising. It got rewarded by being made to chew through thigh high wet grass.

    On the right hand side is a patch of ground that used to be clear and had beans on it. Now it also has grass. Some more vigorous mowing and then a chewing over with the rotavator soon turned it into usable ground. There’s two rows of potatoes in it now.

    Since that took up most of the time I had, all I managed to actually do on the main plot was plant some onions and remove some new weeds that had sprouted up.

    The trees are flowering nicely. Maybe the cherry tree will give us more than a small handful of fruit this year. I did mean to prune it, but that’ll now have to wait.

  • Planting Fruit Bushes

    Planting Fruit Bushes

    Poundland sells cheap fruit bushes, and if you pick the ones with leaves on, they tend to grow fairly well and make a nice hedge type thing. If you pick the ones with no leaves on… they’re dead, you’re buying a dead plant… They’re also not a pound each, but never mind.

    I’ve put them along the edge of the plot to make a sort of fruity hedge. I had a few spaere, so they’ve gone at the end of the plot next to a new rhubarb plant.

    The other job this week was to turn a big grassy part of the plot back into land I can grow things in. It’s an area of the plot that’s always been a messy lump of grass and rubbish. And not little tufts of grass, but great big mounds of the stuff. Clearing this has always been hard work and takes weeks of effort. It’s usually summer by the time I get parts cleared.

    However since I now own a rotavator, it was about half an hour’s work to get it all nicely turned over. The rotavator gets clogged easily on mounds of grass so the trick is to sneak up on them from the side. After a while the blades rip the grass clump out the ground.

    Before
    After

    It needs a bit more work, but the ground is more level and all the rubbish has been picked out.

    Since the batteries in the rotavator weren’t dead yet, I went over the other half of the plot to give the weeds a gentle hint they weren’t supposed to grow there, and cleared some space to plant the rhubarb from earlier.

    All the chopped up leaves and grass will rot down once the weather warms up. It’s between 2 and 7c during the day still, so not a lot’s going on. Except that onion, it’s already been mown over once by mistake, so I’m leaving it alone. You’ve survived my cack-handed gardening, you can live.

    The other jobs I did was to move the bin store from home to the plot, it can be another shed thing to store junk in. And then I attacked the triffids multiplying around the greenhouse. I don’t mind brambles, except when they snake off across the ground, rooting as they go. If chopping at them with the strimmer doesn’t make them go away they’ll be getting sprayed with weed killer.

    Yeah I know, it’s bad to spray nasty poisons on your garden, especially when you’re going to eat the produce, but you try removing brambles by hand using a shovel. Sure, you can cut them up but they’ll grow back a month later. There’s a reason they grow everywhere…

    And all of this was supervised by next door’s chickens and other feathered creatures. I like next door’s little zoo, he’s done two very helpful things

    • Removing the weeds from his plot – chickens and ducks eat anything green looking
    • Building his chicken pens using my fencing. Last year the fence blew down. Now it’s part of a chicken coop, it can’t go anywhere.
  • Preparing for Spring

    Preparing for Spring

    It’s been pretty windy here again, so I went to the plot to see if the shed had tried to escape again…

    It hasn’t quite done a Wizard of Oz this time, but did seem to have moved a bit which is surprising given it has about 30 kilos of water sat on its roof. Also the plastic box next to it has been obliterated, and the wooden cold frame clearly needs something heavier inside it.

    The actual point of today wasn’t to tidy up, but to do some tidying. Grass is an annoying thing, it grows quite happily all over the plot, especially if you don’t dig it out. At home, my lawn is all thin and patchy.

    Managed to get the majority of it cleared before the batteries gave out on the rotavator. It’s certainly a lot better than doing it by hand.

    This bit is next, It’s full of grass and junk that has grass growing over it. I’ll need to give it a mow and attack it with the strimmer a bit first to get it short enough the rotavator can chew it up without getting tangled.

    The wind wasn’t all bad though, I somehow gained a giant sheet of plastic from somewhere, and two large builders’ sacks. The plastic will keep the weeds down on the end of the plot I dug over earlier, and the sacks will be useful for gathering up rubbish.

    I’ve made an attempt at tidying, I’m sure the wind will help reorganise things soon.