Sunny Day

Due to the weather I have had to mow and strim the main path of the allotment site today. The grass was over six inches in places.
The dug about thirty square yards of plot 18. Damm bindweed is still in there.

Hope this nice weather holds and I'll do some more Sunday.

It certainly brought out the plot holders, had six up there most of the afternoon.

Dig that!

Great day today, son's rugby went well.

Showed Simon the bit of plot 1 that will become vacant soon, he wants it, so I need to drop a note through Peter's door so they can get in touch and arrange takeover.

Started digging on plot 18 and got through about 20 sq yd.
Had to clean the spade every five uses, I have a "cheapie" dutch hoe head (handle went years ago) and that is perfect for spade cleaning as it is thin pressed sheetmetal.

Gaynor & OH appeared while I was digging, so was able to explain the soil heaps and show where I am heading with the fence, they said they would clear the odds & sods blocking the next section when they are next down on site.

Moved on to cut down all the dead stuff on my herb patch, while I was doing that "D" appeared, I had offered him my blackcurrant bushes as I want to get rid of them. I have a row across the plot which are in the way of rotovating etc, so I want them out. Anyway "D" dug up three and barrowed them off ot his plot, he may come back for the rest. Now that is a result, someone else does the hard work for a change! Cleared all the dead stuff and piled it up.

It has dried out alot since I last posted, I no longer have seepage running across my plots, but it is still pure grease just by my shed door.

Yesterday I made major progress on getting all the bits needed to be able to use my Howard rotovator as a plough, now I just need the one bit I'll probably never find.
The wheel axle extension that allows the wheels to straddle the plugh cut and earth roll.

Free plot - taken plot.

Had a phone call from the landlord during the week.
Diane was giving up plot 12a as they had never managed to get to grips with it and they had a prospective tenant already off the waiting list.
Phoned him yesterday, he pottered down in sensible hobby-nobby boots within half an hour of being rung, showed him round and he took it.
100% occupancy again.

Earth moving posting.

After Thursday's transportation debacle it was my good fortune to have previously booked Friday off, so I have had a nice day.

It took five minutes to walk home from the allotment site.

Dog and I took darling daughter to school, then dog and I walked to the bakers where I got some fresh ginger danish, macaroons and a freshly baked loaf, while the dog had a dump en-route. We went home where I had a cup of tea and a ginger danish, while the dog drooled a bit and then had a lump off the end of my danish. Then we both went gardening.

The soil on my plots is as axle grease, this is due to their location. Not to put too fine a point on it my two plots are a disgrace, as each has a stream running through it, To the south a primary school lies at the top of the hill, then its playing field slopes down to a wooded bank, where a public footpath lies between the school fence and allotment site fence. Inside the site fence a bank drop roughly two to three foot to the top of my plots.All the rain, runoff and soak-in comes down the slope and into my plots. On plot eighteen it is oozing out of the bank and down through the herbs into the cultivated area. On plot seventeen it oozes out behind the shed, runs under and leaves it standing in a pool. The shed is up on bricks so is ok, but the water then trickles through the fruit terrace and on ito the cultivated area.

So not really up to doing much beyond a quick inspection, plants transplanted from mothers garden are OK, bluebells up, primroses flowering. Bought in daffodils are up, leaves are anyway.

So continued my fencing, over on the other side of the site, plot 1, which is next to the old main gate. Where as it is under the hedge next to the ditch, it was quite dry, - for a given value of dry at least.

To be able to remove the old fence, (not yet, but ready to) and to insert my day's target of three new posts, I had to clear 30' x 2' x 10" of lovely crumbly moistly dry soil, this was the result of the previous plot tenants weed and rubbish disposal policy, "pile it against the fence". I guestimate I moved somewhere between two and three tons, in half barrow loads nicely balanced for my back.

The weather was a complete contrast to the stormy winds of Thursday, bright sunshine, light breeze, in fact so warm I was able to work in boots, trousers and T-shirt.

Once the target was reached I packed up and as the dog had behaved so well we went for a walk . I lay out an large old plastic compost sack and a piece of "pan scourer" carpet underlay doubled over on top of that, dog sits or lies on it depending on what is going on around us. Today she resisted the lure of looking for squirrels and did not come and stick her nose in the way of the spade.

To tell how wet it is generally round here, the noise of her running in the public green spaces we walk in was akin to someone playing the bongos with an inch of thickset custard on them. Much to her disgust she got bathed when we got home.

Finished the day by doing the weekly shop, then went to an allotment society committee meeting, but that is a whole different story.

Stuck in trains, rather than gardening, a rant.

Thursday was "interesting" as in I wish it had not been so.
Started around late morning when the cafe facia opposite work exploded out of its frame, leaving the flourescent tubes undamaged, the plastic sheet shattered as it went across the pavement and some of the largest bits whacked into the rear quarter of a passing doubledecker bus. How the passing pedestrians and bu passengers avoided injury amazes me. The plastic whilst translucent was quite thick and sturdy, must have been fairly rigid as it snapped rather than bent.
We were all advised around four to leave work early if we used trains, sadly that advice came too late for me. Went at five, via the usual two tube lines to Tottenham to find the One station shut with no relief buses and no prospect of trains running again that day. Bit hard to fix overhead power cables while the wind that brought them down is still blowing. So I took a cooks tour of the underground, extended by Liverpool Street being shut due to a fire alert, to Monument where I walked to Bank and then took two Central Line trains to Debden and finally to Epping. At Epping eventually got a one-man-operated singledecker bus, poor chap took nigh on twenty minutes to process some of the queue into a stuffed to the gills bus and off our bus groaned to Harlow, where a deserted and windy bus station awaited us. After a longer wait a bus heading for the general vicinity of Stortford. Got dropped off half a mile from home, on my normal route to walk down to the station, so walked home.

What takes somewhere between an hour on a good day and an hour and a half normally, took four hours.

A dry day at last.

Rhino had a rugby match this morning, a hard fought and honourable 5 - 5 draw against Harpenden.
Light wind, compared to yesterday, no rain, even reasonable light 1/10th cloud with nice sunlight.
When I came home decided to set out for the allotment site to fence, as my plots are both still too greasy to permit any useful work.

Just took the tools in the trolley to start with as I was unsure how greasy the ground might be. Decided the best thing to do would be the next braced, or straining, post. This turned out to be the worst post of the whole fence, could not do it inside the old fence as Cath & Colin have a raised mound in front of the old fence, so had to work outside the old fence, which was tricky as I had no flat ground to start with. What I had to work with was a six to seven foot deep ditch, with a foot wide ledge just outside the fence, which until I got to work with the spade was a slope down into the side of the ditch. Not as bad as it sounds because there were some field maple and blackthorn up to 2" diameter to give me some footholds.

Once I'd made a platform to work on progress was rapid, barring the ditch negotiation each time I needed to fetch stuff or get back to work. I had the upright's hole done within half an hour, went and got the upright on my shoulder and it slotted in just right. The brace holes preparation was done within another half hour, then back home with the empty trolley to get the braces and three bags of ready-mix concrete. As per usual the brace holes needed more taking out to fit and as per usual the old posts reinforcing concrete intruded, meaning I should really have been a foot further to the left, but it was managable.

Once all that lot was bolted together and concreted in I still has enough daylight left to finish off the fifteen foot length. Planted two dog-roses in the gap between the new fence and the deliberately left length of old fence, then sewed both fences together at each end of the old length. All the gale force wind of recent weeks had taken the bramble and pushed it over, so what I'd trimmed to vertical was leaning away into the ditch at fortyfive degrees.

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable afternoons exercise with some concrete results.
Now there is the small matter of the eleven upright posts needed to fill in between the two bits of work described above.

How did it go?

Pretty much to plan, actually.
Fifteen foot of six foot high chainlink in and ready, three hundred to go.

All posts in, all straining wire strained and all chainlink attached to starining bars and wire.

However, it all took alot longer than I intended and I ended up doing the straining wires and clipping the chainlink to them in the dark. The nearby streetlamp and a person who always has his halogen floodlamps on allowed me to see reasonably once it was properly dark. One of those silly things isn't it, it has to be really dark for a torch to be of use.

It was just too dark to join the remaining bit of old wire to my new wire, so that can await another day. It is firmly behind brambles to anyone on the outside. Fortunately that six odd feet is in good nick, further along it has rotted away.

Next job is to get some conversion bits from the fencing supplier, they had run out of two way braced, so supplied some corner ones with conversion brackets. Problem is they gave me enough brackets to do one post, but gave me three corners.

It is supposed to rain Friday, when I next have a dryish day, I'll fit another two-way-braced post at the next kink in the line of the fence and then start to fit the plain uprights, as there are a good dozen or so, that will take a while.

Exciting Pictures!

Not really.

This is me arriving with my nice new garden trolley from Coopers of Stortford. That's three nine foot angle iron posts, three bags of ready-mix postcrete, two spades, a bag of hand tools and a post hole borer in there.

Just to the left is the post fitted the other day.

Here is that post in close up, braced across to the original gatepost.

The work plan was to replace the two rusty posts visible to the left and right of the round metal pipe front right. Then to replace the chainlink, leaving a section of the old chainlink running from the original gatepost across to roughly the first rusty post, where it is to be clipped to the new chainlink.


Nice big pile of bramble trimmings, plus some bits of apple tree.
When I took the photo I had intended it to show the fence, but all that shows up are the rusty posts and then only if you look carefully.


This show the composted neolithic burial mound with a spade for scale.

The brambles had scaled the fence and arched down to land about where the spade is, there are occasional roots nearer the fence, but the majority are to the right.





This is a detail showing the scale of rot in the wire, you can see the pig wire patching.







Below is a movie clip of the length of replacement I have targetted. The sound is not galloping horse sound effects, it is a tape measure and some bolts, plus a couple of brackets in my pocket, bashing into each other.

Steady as a rock.

Did a bit more today. The old bit of fence where I'm working is |\ | /|\ then lots of |. The first braced post has one half of the original main gate on it, so that stays and next to it about ten inches in is my new braced post. Twelve foot along is the next original double braced post and today I removed it's braces, a hacksaw and lump hammer job. Both came out of the ground easily, one had only about a bricks worth of concrete on it! One brace got doctored with hacksaw and brace-and-bit to make a cross-piece between the gatepost and my new post. All manual labour as, doh, I'd not recharged my rechargeable electric drill, amazing how slow drilling metal by hand is compared to electric assistance. Result satisfyingly unshiftable, steady as a rock.

May get some more done tomorrow and take some pictures.

Civil Engineering

Well, I must not let so much time slip by between posts.
Keep thinking, "oh that's not worth doing a blog-post" and before I know it a month has gone by and I'm trying to remember all the little snippets, so here goes.

I measured up for hedging and it did NOT rain on me.

Only thing to happen in the greenhouse is the peppers have died. A whole week of frosty fog has seen them off, not too surprising as I do not heat my greenhouse.

Slugs have been a real problem as all my winter carrots seem to get attacked, suppose I should be used to this by now, but I keep forgetting and trying to keep them in the ground and harvest as needed through the winter.

Apart from that the plot is embarrassingly bare, the winter brassicas have been a failure, I have about ten small cabbages and some very undersized kale plants, together with some really poor red brussel sprouts, markerpen thick stalks and no sign of sprouts.

Two weeks ago the hedging arrived, together with canes and spiral guards. Of course the weather has either been soggy or frosty fog and so I have heeled the whole lot in on the allotment and will await more suitable planting weather.

Thursday my £900-odd worth of chainlink fencing was delivered.

Yesterday I set to with a vengance and put in the first braced end post by Gaynor's plot. More work needed than should have been as her predecessor on the plot had a reather casual attitude to weeds. OK I've pulled up this huge pile of weeds, ah that chainlink looks like a good place to pile them up against. End result the profile of the plot goes ; Main path, ten inch vertical drop, cultivated (not recently) area, then another ten inch higher bit in a gently arching mound, with the original fence embedded in it a full spade deep. It is like an elongated stonage burial mound

The one-peter operated post hole boreing corkscrew is really good, twelve turns, lever it up and pull out with 6-8" of loose soil on top and a plug stuck round the spike. The top of the corkscrew is like a T and I wedge a tool handle end in the old fence and under the T and pull the end up. Saves the back.

Today I cleared ready to start work along two thirds of Gaynor's plot, cut back the brambles and overhanging selfseeded apple tree to allow clear view of the existing fence. Then I dug off the burial mound alnong to where the next braced post will go. This is only about twenty feet as there is a kink early on in this run. To do the rest of the burial mound I'll need the barrow to wheel the spoil to the only bit of the plot that's relatively weed free. Gaynor should benefit as the soil that's coming out is soft and crumbly, unlike the rest of the plot and very unlike the yellow-brown clay that came out of the bottom of the post holes. Just hope she does not freak out at the pile of bramble & apple trimmings, will have to ask the council to take that away in the new year.

Tomorrow will be round the out-laws and the day after will be hitting the sales, so no more posting of either sort for a few days.