… is another man’s solar panel.
We are delighted that the radiator that we removed from our dining room to make space for our new french doors to be installed has been Freecycled to someone who is going to be making it into a solar water heater on his shed roof.
We want to make a sandpit for Piper, and even Ayrton to play in and have managed to find an old tractor tyre through Freecycle that we just need to go and collect from a smallholding about 15 minutes drive away.
We are going to sink the tyre slightly into the lawn in the back garden and then fill it with sand.
I found a couple of good links to ideas for sandpits:
It seems I got what I asked for at the end of my last blog post, there are a few bits of blue sky around and the sun is shining. Piper and I drove to Normandy this morning to collect an old tractor tyre from a smallholder there. We came home without the tyre, but Peter is going to go and collect it on Saturday. It needs a bit more muscle to get it onto the roof of the car.
We also stopped down at the allotment to plant our sweetcorn plants, and a few more calabrese and cauliflowers. Our bean seeds are starting to germinate, and some of the lettuces survived the battering they’ve been having over the past few days.
In the coldframe at home we’ve got lots of lovely big tomato plants that I need to find some space for in the garden. And some red and white cabbage plants too. The cucumbers have come up, and will be planted out on the allotment and grown up canes when they are a little bit bigger.
Still no sign of our water worms.
Yesterday late afternoon was the first time in days since we’ve been down to the allotment, and only managed to fit in a bit of speed-planting of cauliflower seedlings between showers. We’re having a lot of rain, which means that our water-butts are full and the garden and allotment are well watered.
The hard rain has battered our little lettuce seedlings that we planted a few days ago, I hope that they’ll recover, and I’m happy to report that the peas have finally come up, under a polytunnel-cloche where the birds couldn’t get to the seeds.
We could do with a few day’s sunshine this week, fingers crossed!
Pete discovered the other day quite by accident (someone has still got to explain that one to me) that lemons remove the mould that builds up on grout between bathroom tiles very effectively. In a subsequent experiment, we discovered that it’s also pretty good at getting limescale and other gunk off a stainless steel sink and draining board. You just cut a lemon in half (or use one that you’ve already squeezed juice out of), rub it well onto the grout or sink, and then rinse off.
And now Treehugger tells me that Lemons Help Hands Too, so I thought I’d do a bit more research. Here are a few more tips for including lemons in your life.
We ordered two 30-metre long water worm hoses and a compost trowel from evengreener a few weeks ago, and yesterday I got a letter from Blackwall (the company behind evengreener), telling me that my two 15-metre length water worms, compost trowel, two water-butt emptiers and compost caddy were not going to be delivered for up to 6 weeks because there is such a backlog on orders with all the water butt panic buying that has been happening lately.
Never mind, we seem to be getting a fair amount of rain at the moment and so the garden and allotment are not requiring much watering. And I called Blackwall today to let them know what my order was actually supposed to be, so I should eventually be getting the longer water worms and compost trowel minus the extra stuff I didn’t order.
One of my neighbours has asked me to help them plan their garden. They like ours, and have never gardened before, so I’m going to be designing them a simple garden and making a list of plants for them to buy to set them on their way.
I’d like to encourage them to put a few fruiting plants into the garden to promote the idea of growing your own food. Most people seem to like it once they’ve tried it, and there’s no better way of cutting out food-miles.
I’ll post the design and list to the blog once I’ve finished it.
UPDATE: I’ve handed over the only copy of the design and planting list to my neighbour without thinking about making a copy for the blog. Never mind, I’m looking forward to seeing their garden transformed.
We are going down to the allotment almost every day now to sow, weed, put in plants raised in our cold frame at home, and water. Piper is always keen to go to the allotment, her favourite activities including picking daisies on the paths, watering herself and the plants, and digging, in the only empty bed we have left.
We now have some of our tomatoes in at the allotment, others still in the cold frame at home, and some already potted up (tumbling cherry tomatoes) to stand on our soon-to-be deck. We have some red pepper seedlings in at the allotment and some at home in pots, an experiment to find out where they will grow best, sugar snap peas in, more pea seeds sown (the last lot were nicked by birds), and more carrots and beetroot sown (we’ve not had a very good germination rate on these two veg).
Our little green house has been looking rather scruffy of late, since we had the cavity walls insulated last year, and our methodical removal of wall paper throughout the house. So we’re going full steam ahead into making good and fixing up this spring.
In order to install the new french doors in the dining room, we’ve had to remove the radiator from under the window, and have replaced it with a new, more efficient Hudevad vertical radiator to the left side of the doorway. The doors, and a kitchen window to replace an existing kitchen door, will be going in on the 26th of May.
Our new kitchen has been ordered from Ikea (you can read Treehugger’s blog post about Ikea’s environmental and social reports here, and more about what Ikea considers to be it’s social and environmental responsibilities here), but as we are ordering a custom-made oak worktop, we aren’t going to be having the kitchen installed for another 10 weeks or so.
Pete has sourced the timber for our deck, from Ecochoice, and he will be building that himself in a few weeks time, once the doors and window have been installed and the decking has arrived. Ecochoice specialise in supplying sustainable timber to the construction trade.
We haven’t finalised our decision on paint for the exterior or interior yet, but are leaning towards ECOS both for their great colour range, and reasonable prices. We will be keeping our little house green, apparently it’s been this way for 30 years, so I’d like to keep it that way. As far as the interior goes, we are going to be painting our hallway, stairwell and landing/passageway upstairs, and Ayrton’s room.
The carpet for the entrance, stairs and all of upstairs (except the bathroom) has been ordered. We have 100% recycled tyre underlay going down, with a 100% British wool carpet.
We are still trying to source a light for the entrance hall, something made sustainably, perhaps from recycled materials, so if anyone knows of any companies in the UK that make modern sustainable lights, drop me a line. Or we may decide to buy second-hand and do a bit of shopping on eBay.
As our house was built in the 1930’s, a period that we quite like from a design point of view, we’ve endeavoured to maintain any period features that we had to work with (not many unfortunately), and have put back a reclaimed art-deco fireplace into the lounge, added a wall of William Morris wallpaper in the dining room, and bought a few art-deco pieces of furniture on eBay to keep them company.
It’s going to be a busy time for us over the next couple of months, but exciting and liberating too. The suspense is killing me.
I have recently discovered Read It! Swap It! A free website where there are currently 37672 books available for swapping with your unwanted books. You agree a swap by someone asking to swap a book with you and you choosing one of their books, or you browsing the library and requesting a swap with someone who will browse your books and either agree a swap, or there is the option to reject a swap if none of their books take your fancy. Books are posted between members, and your postal address is kept secret until a swap has been agreed. This system only operates in the UK. Since joining last week, I have had 10 agreed swaps, and received my first book yesterday. What a fun and economical way to reuse books. Come along and swap a book with me!
I was delighted to find some new environmentally friendly cleaning products on the shelves next to the Ecover in my local Sainsbury’s supermarket. Made by BioCare, both the bathroom cleaner with tea tree oil and the degreaser with citrus oil contain active ingredients sourced from plants grown by sustainable agricultural practices. They are made to be safe for the person using them, and to minimise impact on the environment by containing no aggresive chemicals and biodegrading rapidly.
The degreaser works a charm, my usually horribly streaky stainless steel microwave is shining. I will post again about the bathroom cleaner once I’ve tried it.
It’s felt like an age since I last posted anything on the blog, after a long weekend away visiting the folks-in-law at the seaside, and so much is happening on the gardening front.
At the allotment we’ve sown green beans, wild rocket and salad onions, and have planted out the cabbages that we started in the cold-frame at home. The tomatoes in the coldframe are looking great too, although after pricking out and planting on into bigger pots, I don’t know which are which anymore.
Our raspberry canes are growing better than last year. We transplanted them last spring and they didn’t seem to get over the shock. Pete’s built a support for them out of 3 bits of wood we had in the shed hammered into the ground with wire strung between them. We need to build some more supports this week before we plant our courgettes and cucumbers (still to be started off in the cold-frame).
We are having slug problems in the cold-frame, my first batch of cucumber seedlings were eaten down to soil level, and some of the cabbages were munched a bit too. Last year I tried smashed up sea shells lining the bottom of the cold frame, and while it reduced the slug problem, some of the tougher guys were still getting through. So this time round I’m trying a new product called New Horizons Organic Garlic Barrier that is meant to strengthen the plants and provide a granular barrier that the slugs won’t like. I will report back on how well it works.
So it’s just a matter of some warmer weather (looking forward to tomorrow’s forecasted 24′C), lots of watering, and trying to keep up with the weeding, and before long we’ll be eating lots of lovely fresh fruit and veg.
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