The Potato Harvest 2013

A few days ago I harvested my potato's and was very happy with the amount I had grown. From a 12x5 foot bed I got 2 large sacks of King Edward potato's. The two bags are essential to this post and for all the wrong reasons. The reason being one of the bags is full of spuds with some sort of disease! Here is a particularly bad example of one....

Half of my crop has these 'scabs' all over them, which is really annoying! Though they look abit black in the picture, fresh out of the ground they were brown in colour. At first I thought I might have had blight though having never had any diseased potatoes of any kind I was not sure! So On to the RHS website I went to confirm my fears that it was blight. 

As it turns out the most likely candidate was not blight but Potato Scab!And whats worse it was probably my fault. The RHS says....

Common scab is caused by Streptomyces scabies and powdery scab by Spongospora subterranea f. sp. subterranea. Both are pathogenic micro-organisms and cause rough, scabby patches. Scabs appear during summer and persist on harvested tubers throughout storage.

It turns out the above diseases are at there worst through dry periods in the summer and I have to say I was not watering them enough. We had the hottest and dryest summers I can remember for a long time and certainly since I have been gardening and I was watering at the same levels as last year where we had a far wetter summer. So I have lived and learnt from this experience.

The spuds though won't go to waste, the most scabby ones have been boiled up as mash and fed the the chickens, they love it, Others with minor scabbing will be eaten first and hopefully the good bag will store well for winter. As a small back up I have some Nadine potato's growing in a tub for some Christmas new potatoes.

Bokashi Composting

I have not met many people yet who use the Bokashi composting system (thats a bad way of putting it as I do not exactly go round asking people if they use it) and this surprises me as its an amazing way to compost. If you have no idea what I am talking about I will give a brief idea of what Bokashi is!

Bokashi is a method that uses a mix of microorganisms to cover food waste to decrease smell. It derives from the practice of Japanese farmers centuries ago of covering food waste with rich, local soil that contained the microorganisms that would ferment the waste. After a few weeks, they would bury the waste that weeks later, would become soil.

Basically you buy or make your own Bokashi bran, this is just bran that has been inoculated with certain 'good' bacteria that help the decomposition of food waste. You place your food waste, which unlike any other composting methods can include meat and dairy, into a bucket. The bucket must have a lid that makes it air tight when fastened on as the process of decomposition with bokashi needs an anaerobic environment to work. When your waste is in, you sprinkle on some bran and close the lid. Repeating the process until the bucket is full. When this happens you leave your bucket and let all those micro-organisms get to work for a few weeks, the waste is basically fermenting or pickling. If when you open your bucket you smell a sweet pickled smell the process is working.

What is a little strange about this process is the fact that the waste you have put in looks no different at the end. Don't expect to find a pile of lovely compost just yet. If you buy a bokaski bin they are basically buckets with a tap, similar I guess to a wormery or a homebrew barrel. The tap will give you your first product! A very strong liquid fertiliser rich in good micro-organism. I dilute mine 1-100 and it works fine, other sites suggest this might be overkill so next year I will experiment with that a little. One you have captured you fertiliser and the food waste has fermented for several weeks you can do a couple of things with it. I myself put it in the compost bin. by digger a hole in the centre and then put my bokashi waste in. Making sure to cover it all over with a bit of soil or what's in the compost. Leave this for a month or too and it will degrade in the compost. I left mine in over winter and cleaned out in the spring and it was brilliantly black moist compost. Your other option is to dig it in to a trench in your flower or veg beds and cover over with soil. A few months down the line if you dig were you buried it you will find a very rich black soil.

Bokashi has many uses and it really worth taking a look at, if you are really into being green it something I think you should try. As I said above ALL food waste can be composted safely with bokashi! Here is a video that probably explains it all a little better than me.

A Poor Gardeners Addiction

I have been a busy bee in the garden recently with several little projects. Two of which have been garden planters for next year. With money being tight both have been made with free wood and things I had around the shed! I posted a few months ago a strawberry planter made from old waste pipe which worked well and I promised an up date on how well it was doing. Well nearly all is good with the planter however next spring I will make one big change to its design and that is to install an irrigation tube inside it. I found when watering it I was wasting large amounts of water and feed as it ran of and out of the planter. This addition will get its own post I'm sure.

I have to admit something now, I have a problem, a problem that is slowly taking over my everyday thoughts and effecting important decisions in my life! I am addicted to PALLETS! I have even started stealing them! I walk down a road and see one there I will come in the night and steal it! I spend hours of my life thinking about them, what i can make with them and where i can get some from! Its just not healthy anymore.....but I am just not ready to give them up.

Over the last year or so I have collected a few and made a few little planters here and there like this...

Its pretty ugly but my carrots did fine it it! I also built a garden theatre/shelf for plants, a gate and a bird house.

Now I've taken the next step in pallet addiction, THE WALL PLANTER!

This is an extremely common thing to do amongst the Pallet addicted peoples of the world, numerous examples can be found on the web if you go and look! This is my own very ugly one. Built with the pallet my greenhouse glass came on and some left over pallet bits. The back of the pallet is lined with some old hemp sack I had in the shed. I reckon many of you are looking at it and thinking "what a pile of ugly s#*t" and you would be right. But a lick of paint some compost and some plants it will come into its own! I hope.

Building a Second Hand Greenhouse

I recently bought a very large second hand greenhouse online, it is 8ft x 12ft in size. I got it I think very cheap at only £80 from a site called preloved. I was shopping around on ebay where much smaller ones were going for well over £100. It was local and I collected already dismantled, which was great for time saving on collection (it never easy going to some one you don't knows house and being there long). This came back to bite me when it came to building again.

I don't do jigsaw puzzles ever, so to have hundreds if not thousands of bits in a pile with no idea how it all went together was very daunting. At this point I was wishing I had dismantled it myself. There are many lessons to be learnt from how I went about this project! If like me you get a greenhouse already dismantled and no instructions on how to rebuild it this is how to do it.

1. Ensure you have in stock extra greenhouse nuts and bolts, the cropped head type are extremely useful later on if you have missed out putting the standard square ones in. They can be slid into the rails after you have already bolted it together. For Cropped head see image below. Also extra glazing clips as you will not have all you need.

2. Sort out all your parts in to piles, each pile containing the same parts. From here you can work out what parts are what and if you have all the required frame. As if its already dismantled on arrival you just do not know its all there. Luckily for me it was.

3. Make sure you have a greenhouse base in place. I did not do this first, I skipped straight to step 4. As i understood it from reading online your greenhouse will be bigger that the stated size by a few inches. So I built my frame first to gage its true size. My base is made up of some old paving slabs that were already in the garden. Most people either use something like this or lays down a concrete either as an entire floor or for just under the frame. Make sure it is level and sturdy as this is what anchors your greenhouse to the ground.

4. Intuition and Common Sense. build your frame starting from the sides. I built my entire frame in half a day without instructions. I found that the greenhouse was designed in a way that makes it simple to erect, parts seemed to me to go on certain place by just taking of consideration. This said I did put things together and then take them apart again as i had done it wrong. If you can have a second pair of hands and another brain you should easily figure it all out! So build your two long sides first and then add your apex's. One you have these in place you can add the roof  and you have a complete frame. Stand in side of it its starts to feel like a greenhouse a little.

5. Put your frame on your base and fix it down. I drilled into my slabs and fixed it down with 4 inch screws. The fixings were one in each corner and several along the sides. so it was well and truly anchored. Only a tornado is going to shift it.

6. Level your frame, it will be a little wonky and sqew in places. To do this take a level and check were its out and adjust your frame by loosening bolts and strong arming it into position. This pays dividends later when you come to glaze it all.

7. Glaze you greenhouse, when i bought my one I knew I was going to be short on glass so I ordered in some 4mm polycarbonate for the roof only so I would have enough glass for the sides. As it turns out even with this I am short as I broke several panes. When glazing, Glaze your roof first as you will have easy access to it while you have no sides on. The glass will be dirty and needs to be cleaned and the best was to do it is with warm water some cleaning product like flash and the big tip.....SAND. Place your payne on a flat surface drop a small blob of sand and scrub your pane with a sponge. It will come up like new. If like my greenhouse you have different sizes of glass take a moment to work out what glass goes where. With my greenhouse the sides needed one small pane and 2 large on the long sides. You will need to clip the glass to the greenhouse and the video below helped me work out how you did it.



When adding glass to the middle and top you will need another clip that the glass hangs on. There are to types and I used both. The first one is prefabricated and useful for the middle panes of glass as it keeps the level of the glass perfect, I think its called a Zclip. This is what it looks like....

And it works like this, you hook it to the bottom pane and sit the upper pane into it.....

For the top pane I found the following clip was best as it is flexible and helps give the best fit......

With all this you can get glazing and you will have it done within no time I promise. If your unfortunate like me the angles apex may be broken so invest in a glasscutter or buy some pre cut to size.

8. Get Growing!

I am sure I will have missed something out but if your doing this project you will work it out. It can be a little daunting at first but you will feel fulfilled by the end with your achievement. I know I am as I have a 12 x 8 greenhouse that has cost me less than £200 and some of my time.

If anyone has any questions regarding there own greenhouse build dont hesitate to ask I may be able to advise a little.

I Built a Fence and a Gate.

I built a fence, all by myself. Granted it was not a big one but it looks good I think. Plus it does the job of keeping the Hens of my veggies and confusing the cats.I am pretty chuffed with it  and even better my partner is too (which is always the most important thing). The Garden in now divided into four small sections starting with the paved patio type area next to the house and then the flower garden in between the shed and what is now the chicken zone! And beyond the allotment and green house.

The garden however looks a mess, I have several major projects on the go, including the greenhouse glazing (almost done) and some raised beds just infront of it (also almost done) So everything else looks rather shabby. The hens are not helping either and have escaped several times in to every part of the garden. Hence the fence and soon a new gate to the flower garden.

From Sun to Rain

This has been an amazing summer so far, I can not remember such a sunny and warm one since I was a kid in the 90's. It's been brilliant! Even when the rain has come its still been warm and the garden has loved it! On the other hand it has made me rather lazy and many garden jobs have been neglected, my excuse as used by many nationwide "It's Too Hot!" has left me procrastinating. 

The big summer project, the greenhouse has seen little forward momentum for several weeks. My heart sinks at the thought of glazing it all on my own, I don't know why it's just not a job I want to do. If I could afford it this is something I would pay someone to do! 

With the weather being so good my veggie patch had started to produce enough that dinner time is almost all home grown. This has to be the best part of the year and fills me with great satisfaction. My new potatoes were a dinner time sensation! 

The rain has now arrived and I am glad of it, it great to not water the garden. 

The Stress of Keeping Animals

So the last couple of days has been ever so stressful as one of my chickens became ill. I have only had them for a few weeks and they have settled in very well and become very used to me already. They come running when I appear, I must spoil them with bread scraps to much! The Chicken that became ill was Speckle, when I let them out of the coop she was very lethargic, and was dribbling profusely. 

At first I thought it was from the heat, its been very very hot here. So I let her be for a while. In the time I left her alone she had become worse, sitting in the couple not moving and doing that eye thing chickens do when there not well. I picked her up and on her chest was lots of mucus that was extremely smelly. Its was a sour  smell and well I knew something was up then. Luckily my neighbour is a veterinary nurse who also volunteers for a rescue centre and so Speckle was whisked next door. 

So it turns out Speckle has Sour Crop which is an infection of the crop. The crop was empty and she was not eating and drinking so we have had to force feed her a wet mash for the last few days to build up her energy levels as well as some probiotics too. We have also given her some medication which seems to have ridden her of the infection for now. That first evening she looked terrible and I was thinking that we might lose her through the night, but by morning she had perked up alot but was not feeding still. As the days have gone by she has improved greatly and today she has been running around and eating for herself. Happy Days.

What got me was the lack of good information online about Sour Crop. I read various forums and pages all with differing accounts on how to treat it etc.  I expected to have to deal with illness with my flock but i was not expecting to have to deal with it so soon