the daydream fund challenge thread

Rummer

CTC that is really close! So sorry that you have been put in this position, fingers crossed the perfect property turns up soon.

Just to check can I start sowing lettuce in modules in the greenhouse yet or am I still to early?

alfie_1

CTC... oh my lord, i think that is the pits !! and thats no pun intended just the politest answer i can give on here...
is there not an envoiromental issue here ?? i would be off to my council to get my "banding" reduced as this must have sadly devalued your house ?? i hope bidder no 1 has all the wrong answers to thier questions and the land owners come cap in hand to you and you get your dream "patch". dont give up yet....
just had a thought tho ,if a supermarket being built maybe a "worker" /the company may buy yours ??

be positive anyway and good wishes

COOLTRIKERCHICK

you could be right Davesnave/alfie... so will see what happens in the next few weeks...My offer was based on 'pay your money take your chance' type thing... even if planning was refused etc, then at least i would have had a bit of land, not to far away to escape to for a few hours etc..

by all accounts the estate agents and the seller didnt know anything about the refused application in 1994, plus there was a refused planning in 2000 for comerical type use ( cant tell you what it was, as it will/poss pinpoint the cottage).. the estate agents said the seller didnt want to pay the estate agents to do some reasearch about the land, so then they knew what the land was really worth...

I have been onto the council about the potential environment issues, but until the dust etc become a nusiance, then there is nothing we can do.... what i have got to watch, is that if i am phoning the council every 2 mins, then they might not take the situation serious in the future...

where you can see where they are tipping the old coal spoil, the developers eventually want to turn that area ( and along side our house) into a retail park:o...... total nightmare....so you can now see why i am so desperate to even get a bit of land etc to escape too....:rotfl:

lostinrates

CTC, I'm so sorry. It must be so hard.


I had a migraine this morning and surfaced at about lunch time. nothing done here today. I have a clean queen friend coing tomorrow with her baby (the only baby I've ever seen who is also always clean and unstained..) so have to hit the hoover tonight...but head still not quite upto it.

lostinrates

Ooh, I just found out the event here next month has sold out. The person putting it on is wondering if she could put on six a year,monthly through summer. Excellent! The company we hoped would build the agricultural building we need for the roof space for solar haven't come back to us, which is a HUGE shame, we'd like to have got that going...as its low cost for us, now. I'm not aware of another company doing this so its another waiting game, but it would have increased profitability greatly.

But with the even looming I'm back to rather fluffly worries about decorating here. Having exhausted every terracotta paint on the market I'm now thinking about using ochre yellow in the courtyard and grey-ish greens on the outer walls. I want it to look smart but not cold, and as a lot of the painted surface is now breeze block I'm worried greyer greens may look too industrial, but greeny ones too...playground.

choille

Hi all - hope all goes well with the dreamers.
I've been busy trying to get stuff done, but it's snowing today - really had enough now.
CTC - Hope things are not too bad. I have to catch up with everything.
Had a time ebaying stuff & that is addictive.
Alfie I'll get back to you soon if I may.

Rummer

My beetroot has started to poke its head out and my peas have sprouted! Finally planted some more cauliflower to replace the ones I killed and I have sown some cabbage too. The first round of lettuce is in and I have marked in my diary when to resow it, I really am aiming to keep a regular crop through the summer so for all the plants I can successively sow I am writing the dates in my diary (much to my OHs amusement!) Over the next couple of days I will get some other bits and pieces started but as we have had a few snow flurries today I will keep them indoors with the hardier things going in my newly clean greenhouse.

Compost wise I have a bit of a dilemma, we have some of our own but it is not enough to fill the new pots I have or to completely top up the beds we have not to mention the new planters I am saving for. In the past we have bought giant bags from DIY stores when they have been on multi-buys but I feel this is not cost effective and I was wondering if buying in a load of compost would be better? How would I go about calculating how much I would need bearing in mind it is to fill containers and beds? I have checked with my local council and they do not sell compost so I will also have to figure out where to get it from.

Davesnave

Sounds to me that those vendors are cheap jacks, CTC , but you've shown them how to do the research! Even if nothing comes of this one, you've gained experience and made a few connections with the planning dept too, all of which will stand you in good stead. Lir and I did that sort of thing for years, probably dealing with half a dozen or more councils each. While it didn't lead anywhere positive for a long time, it taught us the issues we'd need to consider with any new properties that came up.

Rummer, the sort of compost we make on a heap and the sort that's sold in bags are two different things really. I'd use the former on the beds and the latter in pots, but I don't use anything as it comes out of a bag. We mix compost as we go here to suit whatever it is we're potting, but a basic kind of mix would be multipurpose + some grit + some sterilized soil + a little sharp sand. I say 'some' because there's nothing very precise about it! When it feels right, it's right!

We're lucky enough now to have soil we can just dig up & sterilize on site, but at our old nursery we used to buy in soil from wherever was cheapest. With multipurpose compost, we always used B&Q in the big bags. They used to deliver for free if you bought a large amount, but those days are gone.:(

With us, making potting mixes is a bit more complex than the above, because we recycle old potting material and all our waste is put through a big microwave in a closed container for 15 minutes. This kills all the good and bad organisms and most weed seeds, but the material can be mixed in with brand new compost and (probably!) soon recolonises with soil organisms, especially if a very small amount of chicken poo pellets are added. We do this for ornamental plants only and it has never caused a problem. We also use composted bark in our mixes because it is cheap, but like the council compost, (which is similar) it isn't easily obtainable everywhere.

We are not organic, nor would we ever be for ornamental production, because to do that competitively requires the use of chemical fertilizer, like Osmocote. We had some dear friends who used to be 'peat free and organic' in their nursery production, and that was fine at the start of the season, but by July/August, their stock in pots always began to look rather unhealthy. I think peat-free and organic is fine for young edible plants though, and we will go down that route asap.

rhiwfield

CTC, heart goes out to you, we've got a friendly rebuild nx door atm and thats bad enough!

Lir, great news on events! Let OH decide on paint colours, if you like it, all well and good, if you dont, at least you've got someone to blame

Rummer, in the past I've done as Davesnave suggests and bought in the compost for containers. But it gets pricey and last year we used instead the free municipal stinky stuff. Its made from shredded garden waste plus the kitchen waste scheme and goes thru an industrial composting process and gets pretty hot. Had several loads so far and no nasties survived the compost process. The leachate from it is pretty impressive (:eek:) BUT all plants survived and we cropped well on the toms/cucs, less so for the spuds in buckets, but that could be down to the variety (pentland javelin) which did poorly in the beds as well. In any case, we're cutting back on some containers to reduce watering.

Going to be a busy day! Apart from the daily college trips for DS2, DW needs picking up from Cardiff after a visit to DD2 and GS, all the usual jobs plus 4 cu metres of green logs to stack (after building a spare stack with the pallets (hopefully) delivered with wood)

Like Rummer we've a fair bit on the go with toilet roll inners of broad beans and parsnips, and trays of sweet peas, thunbergia, lots of tagetes, lobelia, sweet peppers, gutter lengths of early peas and a few sunflowers. The two trays of new pots are all chitting well (Rocket and Maris Peer) and they'll be going in in a week or two.

And we need more stuff as most of the home grown fruit & veg has gone, either to us or the hens, who have nearly cleared the overwintered greens.

lostinrates

We had coucil compost where we were last. I wouldn't have it again personally. It didn't have any guts IYKWIM and some needed sieving.