Golden Retriever Alarm Clock.

Are you tired after losing an hour sleep last night?

We have a Golden Retriever alarm ⏰️ clock in our bedroom.  Someone decided that Bronte can sleep in their bedroom.  Not me.

Often around four in the morning.  I find something sleeping on my feet.

I tell her to get down and try to go back to bo bos.

Then around seven or 6.30 yesterday morning.  We got the 🐕 s bark chorus instead of the birds Prog Rock Dawn chorus that lasts at least twenty minutes when you're camping.

Here is our four legged alarm ⏰️ clock Bronte:

Golden Retriever Alarm Clock.  Not the name of a Prog Rock band but a four legged get you upper!  When a girl needs to do her ablutions everybody needs to be called to get dressed and take her outside.

Heating Oil Tank Allotment Planters Progress.

 

I have filled eight of the half old heating oil tanks this week.  Two of them have onions planted in them and I have planted cabbage plants in another one. You can see my plant pots store in the builders bags beside them.

The new plastic raised beds  were filled with Buddleia branches, old tree rings, strawy fym, well rotted last years fym and top soil.

There's another two or three raised beds that need drilling drainage holes and dragged through the Haggard and through to the veg plot and they will filled with the same ingredients by yours truly.

I am going to look out for any more containers that I can repurpose to grow vegetables in.

Like I keep saying on here you don't need to have a garden to grow your own chemical free and fresh vegetables.

It really saddens me when I read online of allotment waiting lists in England.  It's the councils duty by law  to provide allotments and leisure gardens to people who request them and not to be Tory councils who flog them off to some private housing company.

I once lived in a council flat and I grew potatoes 🥔 in the upstairs window.  

Perhaps there should be an Allotment and Social Housing party or maybe it's time Labour created a Minister for the Allotments and Social Housing?    They should aim for the rural vote and for people in urban areas who wish to grow things locally.  I am available on a part-time basis?  

I am pleased with my raised bed planters.  They may be made of plastic but they're maintenance free.  "It's beginning to look a lot like Steptoe's". Remember their address? Oil drum Lane.  What was the carthorse called? Hercules.  I don't think plastic is ever going to go away, do you?

Daffodils In A Old Tractor Tyre In The Polytunnel.

 Repurposing my Ford 3000 tyre for a planter in the polytunnel.

I told you I wouldn't post a veggie post today.  

Do you think the Tate Modern will commission my floral repurposed art work?  A few waggon loads of Newcastle Brown or a few tickets to see Kansas  or Saga or Styx in the states or Canada will do?

Have a great Easter everybody.  

Here's a great rock song 🎵 by the one and only late Gary Moore.  I was lucky enough to see him play once back in 1986.

I will show you my plastic allotment raised bed project progress in my next post on here.

Onion Set Planting.

I still managed to plant up two of the new planters/raised beds with onion sets in the rain yesterday.

Notice the white root sock in the compost plug that I started off in compost filled plastic modules? 

I find they grow far better in module trays in the polytunnel than just pushing them into wet and very cold soil.  

The rest of the veg plot is wet and muddy but the new raised beds are fine and their  drainage means so much.  

I think raised beds are the way to go especially if you have clay soil and live where it is always raining like we do.   

It's been raining on and off here since last June.  I heard yesterday one  local farmer who housed his cattle in September and they have not been outside since.  Farmers are running out of fodder and they can't put slurry and fym out on their land or even put the cattle out on pasture.

We have lived here over twenty years and the last two years have been the wettest I have ever known in my life .  Then you get people saying climate change is not happening.  I am fed up with the rain I bet you are?  

The down side of having raised beds is that you bang your head on the lightshade!😀  

I promise I will do a none veggie growing post tomorrow.  

The Hugelkultur Old Heating Oil Tank Raised Beds Experiment.

I often write on here that you need not have a garden to grow your own vegetables and flowers.  Today hopefully this post will inspire people to grow vegetables where ever they are?   You can grow a lot in containers, plant pots and even repurposed plastic tanks be it in a garden, allotment or even a paved yard.

We came across some old plastic heating oil tanks and number one son's girlfriend had a brainwave and suggested making me some raised beds.  

Number one cut ✂️ them in half with his Makita saw and drilled one inch hole sized drainage holes.  Altogether there are nine of them.  They were all cut in half and there was no waste left over. Here's one I dragged and filled yesterday:

Upturned plastic containers soon to be permanent raised bed.

I have been reading 📚 and watching YouTube videos about Hugelkultur raised beds.  It's an ancient German method of stacking logs and branches and covering them with earth and fym and the wood 🪵 decays and feeds the vegetables and works like a sponge to absorb water.  Do I really need Hugelkultur in Hibernia🤔?  Hugelkultur sounds like the name of a German Prog or Post Rock band don't they?😄

I even shovelled in old weeds, fym, tree rings and topsoil.  The strawy dung and other wooden materials soon half filled my new raised beds. Then I topped them up with well rotted fym and some topsoil.

The first one I finished yesterday.  They could easily be used in a concrete yard and they are maintenance free and I will not need to replace them like timber raised beds will.  I never spent a penny carrying out the raised bed tasks.

I dragged and dug and filled four more yesterday .  That's five done and four to go. My Azada looks knackered lying prostrate on the soil.  You can also see my garden gloves which I had to take off to take a photo 📸 with my mobile phone 📴.

Plastic is not going to go away.  But at least we can repurpose it to grow our vegetables.  Raised beds are good because you need to bend down to the ground and there is a good depth of soil.  Ideal for gardens with poor drainage and lots of clay.

I am really pleased with our efforts and I was physically tired and aching last night.  

Raised beds can be made from whatever you have lying round and repurpose be it timber, stones, conrete blocks or plastic..  I have traditional raised beds with no timber sides and now I have my  recycled plastic ones.  The weather is horrendously wet and the water table is full.  Perhaps raised beds are the way to go?

I planted it up with cabbage plants 🪴 this afternoon.  They may not be aesthetically pleasing on the eye.  But they are functional and we have been resourceful repurposing discarded plastic products and they will last me out.

If only it would stop raining.

Home Laid And Homemade Japanese Onions Omelette.

We have freshly laid duck and hen eggs 🥚 every morning at present.

There are Japanese onions 🌰 growing in the polytunnel

The beauty of growing your own chemical free vegetables is you can pick them before they are mature.  You can not buy that freshness in a supermarket.  Or can you?  How long does it take for vegetables sugars turn to starches after being picked?

The Japanese winter onions were chopped up with the green stalks included and cooked for a few minutes and then mixed with the eggs and a omelette was cooked 🍳 for another few minutes.

It was delicious with a splash of Hot Wings sauce.  It was on offer in Lidl for 1.49 a bottle last week.

Any one else like onion omelettes?  Some times we make onion pizza.  I first sampled onion pizza at the Night Of The Prog Rock music festival in Loreley in Germany in 2017.  The bands were excellent and so was the onion pizza.  

Our breakfast ingredients all came from where we live.  We'll except for the spicy sauce that is.  Any one got any omelettes recipes? The hot and spicier the better please?
 

Another Trees Post.

 Second trees post of today. 

 I must be doing something right because I have had over 3000 views again today.  One day I will do a Yorkshire Pudding or Debby and get lots and lots of comments.

The old mental jukebox began playing more tree themed songs in my head and here's one of my favourite bands from Canada 🇨🇦  I have seen live twice.  Yes Rush of course. 

There may be no footity ball on telly today but at least we can watch some Prog Rock.

Another vegetable/foody post tomorrow folks.  Thanks again!