KonMari 2018 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

GreyQueen · 14 April 2018 at 5:34PM

I have also acquired 22 kg of coffee grounds, 10 kg of racehorse dung, two bundles of bamboo bean sticks and a tarte au citron. Three of these four items are going onto the allotment, can you guess which one isn't? :rotfl:

The latter was my reward for dragging the former around. My horse has come around the course successfully although he has not won. I'm £2 down but it was worth it for the adrenaline rush.

Slinky · 14 April 2018 at 5:43PM

Didn't have a bet this year. Last year OH had a horse in the works sweep but couldn't remember what it was. Which meant we didn't cheer at the end when we should have done as his horse won.

Our friends bought a house with carpet buried in the back garden. I don't think it had a body rolled up in it.

Knit_Witch · 14 April 2018 at 6:19PM

GreyQueen wrote: »

I have decluttered £2 at the bookies' on SeeYouAtMidnight for the National. Hope he completes the race uninjured. Anyone else having a flutter?

Only a couple of squidles at the pub on their sweep (can't even remember which nags I ended up getting for me and Dr Witch :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:)

GreyQueen · 14 April 2018 at 9:10PM

I don't grow spinach, silvasava, I grow chard. Feral chard. Cannot recall the original price of the pkt of Rainbow Lights chard which is the predecessor of ten years of feral chard, but it was probably < £1 and has been the best veggie money ever spent.

Stuff's virtually indestructible. A couple of weeks ago, I had to dig up half a dozen overwintered ferals as they were in the way of the potato patch. Huge gnarly rootstocks, clarted with earth. It was a wet day, so I parked them like a small fleet on the top of the soil elsewere, expecting the tops to die back. Did they heck, the weather has been so wet and damp that the uprooted plants are still growing. I shall harvest some baby salad leaves tomorrow.

Hydroponics? Pah, this gardener can grow things out of the soil.

News from Plot2, today's installment.

OK, still feeling a bit wicked off about the tussock-and-bin-bag situation and hoping I don't bump into my ex-lottie neighbour in town until I have cooled off a bit. Sooo, decided to tackle The Berm.

This is the section at the top of the allotment where a load of inorganic garbage had been slung, covered with earth to create a raised berm about 3ft high and 4 yards wide, which had then been colonised by brambles, nettles and my most favourist wild plant ever (heavy sarcasm) - Grrrrrreater Bellbind! This is colloquially known as Hellweed, and various other things unprintable in a proper and decent forum like wot this one is.

I tooled up with mattock, gloves, digging fork, giant trug for the roots and giant plastic sack for the inorganic trash. And then, mes amies, Cold Steel and Stubborness met Vegetative Trash Pile Hell.

Winning! The Berm is now The Slight Slope, copious amounts of plastic flakes, binder twine, pottery, glass, two lids off Vitalite tubs, fragments of flowerpots and other ghastly rubbish and bagged.

I have also dug up another large piece of sheet metal, older and frailer than the WM flank, which looks vaguely agricultural. Plus something the size of a small hardcover book, weighing about a kilo, heavily corroded and which looks like nothing so much as a giant hinge.:doh:

Have never seen anything like that, if it was a door hinge, you'd need a castle or something to fit the door. I have put it to one side and will brandish it in front of visiting plot holders to see if anyone has a clue what it is.

When the 25 kg plastic sack is full I shall sort out the contents into recycalbles and non-recyclables, wash as necessary, and try to get a least some of it back into the materials stream.

[Deleted User] · 15 April 2018 at 7:14AM

gardeners seem to garden in all sorts of ways, roughly divided into the randoom gardener,the sow itself anywhere with free and random self seedings then there is the ordered gardener, the ordered sow in straight lines from a packet and planted plants in their own spaces with the hoe killing off any self seeders.

I guess it is natural to be one or the other, depends on the sidedness of the brain. I am the latter. I have finished my sowings, even cucs, beans,courgettes and squash, warm enough under cover but the time of year when they will be in and out of my house. I have attained self-discipline this year, only sown as much as I can eat or store. No doubt that the veggies will get their own back due to having lots more room to exercise their growing rights

I am about to unpack my re-bounder from its bag, bring it in from the shed, need to bounce to make strong bones.

I love chard, multi purpose spinach -like with stalks like celery. The newly sown seeds are sprouting. I sow fordhook giant, the geen one, it doesn`t bolt. My spinach last year bolted

re old seeds v new seeds: old sunflower 60% germination, kalibos 20% if that. New duncan 100%. I am waiting for year old soaked beans, sown 5 and need 3 to germinate

GreyQueen · 15 April 2018 at 7:35AM

I plant things in neat rows, kittie, and I like them to stand to attention and salute when I pass by. But I also allow things to self-seed and stay where they grow if they're not too much in the way. The latter applies to wild plants as well, particularly things beloved of bees such as common mallow, which is definately one of the commonest weeds on Plot1.

I also acquired fumitory from somewhere a few years ago, a blow-in, which is pretty and bee-friendly. My sunflowers are all self-sown, as are my pot marigolds and the feral chards, of course.

Am easing into the day, will on the lotties for most of it, my young pal with the car will be bringing up the coffee grounds, the dung and the bean pole bundles and we shall have a cuppa of flasks and something of high calorific density and a good old chat.

I have plans which will acquire a lot of effort, hence the justification for the calorific; mattock will feature strongly. I'm gobsmacked that anyone does heavy clearance work without these, they're the bomb for digging up bad things like bramble roots, of which I have plenty.

Have a good day, everyone. GQ xx

Karmacat · 15 April 2018 at 9:00AM

Hope it goes really well today, GQ, I'm glad you've got help in transporting the organic stuff ... as for brambles, hmm, the younger roots are definitely diggable out with a good strong garden fork, but I can well see that I might need an actual mattock for the big stuff, which I'm getting to just now: as I get to the back of the stock of branches I need to store upright for the bonfire (which is going well!) I've found an enormous bramble root - its actually grown up through a rhodendron thats 20 feet tall, and growing back down through it again, to make new bramblets. Mattock might be a jolly good idea

[Deleted User] · 15 April 2018 at 9:04AM

oh yes mattocks and azadas. I had a mix from when I started the concrete allotment, gave away the big heavyweight azadas when I was on my own and anyway the hard work was done with them. Amazing tools, to be used with tough boots

http://www.get-digging.co.uk/

I kept two hand azadas and the mattock-like lightweight azada with two points. The heavy azadas sliced through the soil as though the soil was butter but I didn`t need them any more and re-homed them

I just went to see the azadas in my home shed and realised that I need to sharpen these three tools. I used half a bottle of redundant oil when I sharpened on the allotment yesterday, even lawn mower blades and everything moving on anything was oiled. They will be satisfying to sharpen, I will soon see the sharpener turn the oil to black oil as it removes metal and makes razors

More seeds ordered today, 4 different small kales, I will only be growing 2 of each variety but kales kept me going through winter again this year, I bought them from the farmers. Someone told me about making smelly garlic wash to keep whitefly off. Whitefly is why I didn`t grow them last year. I will have 000s of spare kale seeds so will now do what I used to do and keep seeds in lock n locks in the fridge all year

Bouncing has started, easy peasy to remember as I watch the kettle in the kitchen

GreyQueen · 15 April 2018 at 9:25AM

I have a a pick-axe style mattock. There are two blades to the head, each with a cutting edge of only a few inches wide, and one is set at 45 degrees to the other.

The main edge is used in a chopping motion, I lift the mattock to about waist height and let its considerable weight chop it into the roots of whatever. Because the blades have a slight curve, you can also rock it back and forward, once it's under something, to lever it up.

It's funny but some people have gardened for lifetime in this country and never used a mattock, never seen one used or even heard of them. You let them have a go with one at a tough task, however, and you'll have to fight to get it back again. They go off with shining eyes, vowing to get their own, too.:rotfl:

It's an excellent product which sells itself after a real-world demonstration, isn't it? Mine came from Axminster Tools, you buy the head and the handle separately. I chose a hickory-wood handle rather than fibre-glass or beech. Hickory is one of the toughest American hardwoods and is reckoned to be highly resistant to shocks.

Well, some of the horrors it's helped dig up on three allotments now, it'd better be shock-proof.

ETA; glad the bonfire pile is coming along nicely, Karmakat. We're now in the six months of the year when bonfires aren't allowed on the allotments, a rule to which I adhere most strictly. It's a damned nuisance but there you go. I am already building a burn bag to be the core of the early October bonfire. In fact, I shall build about three of them over the coming months, as I tend to have about 2-3 fires in the six month burning season. The bad roots are going to be dried out as much as possible and turned into potash via the bonfire, come early October.

Karmacat · 15 April 2018 at 11:56AM

Hi GQ! I imagine shock resistance is incredibly important on a tool used for such heavy work - it sounds wonderful!

The bonfire pile outside my back door is a thing of beauty

I love the way a bonfire will take a huge pile of wood and make it such a small pile of ashes

that can soon be added to the soil to benefit everything.

Standing the branches up in the new place has also meant I'm able to clear out this set of paving stones where the previous owner of this place had a barbecue. I've let it become clogged and overfull

weeds have taken root around it, there's earth there, more than 6" high (I think this was grass sods, I planned to have full, big borders, but couldn't see it through when I got ill) and I also just got rid of quite a bit of rubble I found - did a builder leave it there? I can't remember putting it there, but I must have.

I've only found that rubble because I stacked the bonfire branches vertically in a separate place

and now the rubble can become part of the bulwark for my soil against the slump to next door's garden, which is slightly lower. I'm really happy with that

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KonMari 2018 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

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