Recent content by olly-buckle

Don't know how it is in your climate, but if I don't get peppers well started undercover in the first couple of months of the year they have trouble reaching maturity before the weather starts to deteriorate.

Absolutely certain of it, me too. The only question is 'When?', that they can't tell you. ;)

The missus picked up a tray of nice little greyhound cabbage from the farm shop, they have good, healthy looking plants, must get them in tomorrow, meanwhile I have been doing a bed with roots, parsnip, turnip, carrot, beetroot, and radish so far. It is the only bed that was cultivated properly...

The one potato that was showing a shoot caught the frost, but has put up a new one from 1/2 an inch down the stem, and the others are starting to show green as well. The forecast is good for the next week but they definitely get covered if they even talk about frost from now on, hopefully not.

You were well busy, Sean. The patio pointing is a good reminder, something I must do too if it is going to be dry and frost free.

This morning the forecast said minimum of 2 or 3 here tonight, so I finally got around to moving all my bags of potatoes out of the greenhouse and making some much needed room. Now they are saying 0 to 2, well they are in a protected spot where the hill slopes away from them, fingers crossed.

Because my father and brother were both biology teachers we used to get odd animals brought to us. We had a pigeon once from my brother's friend who had a holiday job in the park, it kept going in the park keeper's shed. It wouldn't leave the house, and if you threw it out the window it would...

Been looking at milkweed on line, can't see any with a leaf quite like that, they mostly appear to be long and narrow and rounded at the base, but there are a lot of them, I think someone said eleven growing wild in Ohio. The milky sap they are named for is toxic, and can cause nasty irritation...

Looks a bit like me on a good day, Tetters. My main bird problem is pigeons on the greens, don't need a scarecrow for them, I just throw a bit of wire or two down round them and the pigeons go "It's a trap, it's a trap, don't go near it.".

Blooming chilly wind. Mostly I have been filling sacks ready for potatoes. roll the sack down to the bottom, put in a layer of wood to hold moisture, then leaves and all the stuff I sweep up around the chopping block and work it down into the wood, then a bit of well rotted manure, then I...

I'll bear that in mind for the future, with the present job buckets are actually made to hold stuff and move it and work great. Not a lot in the garden today, we visited a new Sri Lanka restaurant in Hastings, The missus had a masala dosa and I had a thali, very nice, but it took up a big...

I once saw a video of a hedgehog climbing a brick wall, quite tall, when he got to the top he rolled off and bounced on his spines.

Went and picked up 9 more buckets of horse manure. I picked up a little 'festival trolley' a while ago, it was only £4 and it looked really handy. I can get 3 buckets one on top of the other on it and pull them the 60 yards or so to the car, then I get 3 rows of three across the lowered back...

Planted a row of 'America' Spinach, good to be putting seeds in the ground. It is so cold I was doubtful, but the packet says from Feb. Planted my first tray of Alicia Craig tomatoes and put three of my earliest 'moneymaker' tomatoes in the warmer greenhouse, I have kept the three best ones...