![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettI didn't (unsurprisingly) get the greenhouse, but looking at it did substantially clarify my thoughts and the eBays do regularly contain less fancy greenhouses that, actually, probably will perfectly well do the job now I know what I'm after.
I have also found a source of relatively cheap used scaffold boards, those being what I have decided I want to construct my raised beds with, so hopefully I will get my act together to actually buy one of these greenhouses and then I will rent a van and get A to chauffeur me long-sufferingly around the place. (Preferably in time for this growing season, but I'm cutting it a little fine there.)
Finally, in terms of hardware purchase, I... had a pair of cheap shitty secateurs that I was using, on Sunday, to start condensing my various teasels into a form that would fit in the compost bin. (They've been standing since last summer so the birds have had all the seeds they were going to, and anyway the bin is ridiculously overengineered such that I can compost weeds in it, which is pretty great.) And I was getting slowly more perplexed about them seeming slowly less and less effective until the lower handle broke off in my hand, at which point I realised that the decreased efficacy had been due to plastic deformation, and while on the one hand this is somewhat irritating on the other it meant I could by some more secateurs that were actually fit for purpose now I was gardening more without feeling so guilty.
So I have! And I now own a pair of Kew-branded ratchet anvil secateurs (on which I spent significantly less than that, not least because I didn't need the sharpener because I already have a whetstone, thanks), and a second-hand Felco Model 2. (I'm fond of Felco not least because my mother was given a pair by one of her good friends lo these many years ago as, if I remember correctly, a wedding gift; he died a few years back, and then last year she was grumbling at me about how she'd finally had to replace them and nothing else on the market now was anything like as good as her thirty-year-old set from her friend. So I sort of Looked at her, and asked her what exactly the problem was, and collected them when next I was visiting and took them home and took them apart and replaced the spring and sharpened the blade and oiled the mechanism and now they are working just fine again, and most of the 30 minutes' labour was in fact working out what that style of spring was called and what size exactly I was looking to replace.)
In terms of my upcoming jobs and planting...
Well, I need to spend some quality time pruning the Ribes bushes various; the plot came with a red dessert gooseberry, a redcurrant, and what-I-think-is-a-jostaberry, all of which are a little neglected and tangled. Tidying them up was on the list for Sunday immediately after the teasels, but a pair of secateurs that couldn't handle a teasel was... erstrecht not going to cope with actual wood. They also need top dressing with manure and then probably mulching, but that can wait until after I've tidied them up a little.
Next door, I've come to the conclusion that what I want to do with my ground-level bed (squash, pak choi, and failed calabrese last year) this season is set some broad beans and peas going down the middle around now, and then sow quinoa down the edges some time later. On the one hand, it's not known that this is a good idea; on the other, intercropping legumes and quinoa is a topic of active research and growing trials, and it looks to me like it ought to be sensible, so no doubt you will collectively get Running Commentary while I experiment.
At home, it's time for me to get the purple chillis and the orange bell peppers started (if I'm going to); that can't really happen until we're back full time, and while I'm happy to heat the house to a temperature that is safe and adequate for me to exist in when I'm actually there most of the time, that is... less the case when I'm away. (I'm attempting to resist the temptation to acquire a heated propagator.) Also the tomatoes, though there the thing I really need to do is work out where I want to put them -- whether I want to grow them on at home again, or if I'll be looking to plant them out at the plot.
Which is a general problem -- the working-out-where-to-plant-things. I'm dithering but probably about to come down on the side of putting the saffron bulbs in around the base of the cherry tree; I think I know where I'm going to put the comfrey once it's established itself a little better; and I'm tentatively leaning towards growing the poppies-for-seed in a patch of mixed wildflowers. (WHERE, though, Alex, you need to work out where you're going to put this. Probably also in the general vicinity of the cherry, if we're honest.)
But. Yes. Priorities: getting misc. seeds started; actually sourcing and constructing my proper raised beds so that I can plant out into them (which will inevitably involve More Weeding); pruning and dressing the Ribes; and working out what I want by way of asparagus, because my mother has offered to buy me some crowns.
So, you know, if you have asparagus cultivar recommendations, please by all means go ahead! I prefer the stems to the tips, and I am resigned to growing at least some purple...
I have also found a source of relatively cheap used scaffold boards, those being what I have decided I want to construct my raised beds with, so hopefully I will get my act together to actually buy one of these greenhouses and then I will rent a van and get A to chauffeur me long-sufferingly around the place. (Preferably in time for this growing season, but I'm cutting it a little fine there.)
Finally, in terms of hardware purchase, I... had a pair of cheap shitty secateurs that I was using, on Sunday, to start condensing my various teasels into a form that would fit in the compost bin. (They've been standing since last summer so the birds have had all the seeds they were going to, and anyway the bin is ridiculously overengineered such that I can compost weeds in it, which is pretty great.) And I was getting slowly more perplexed about them seeming slowly less and less effective until the lower handle broke off in my hand, at which point I realised that the decreased efficacy had been due to plastic deformation, and while on the one hand this is somewhat irritating on the other it meant I could by some more secateurs that were actually fit for purpose now I was gardening more without feeling so guilty.
So I have! And I now own a pair of Kew-branded ratchet anvil secateurs (on which I spent significantly less than that, not least because I didn't need the sharpener because I already have a whetstone, thanks), and a second-hand Felco Model 2. (I'm fond of Felco not least because my mother was given a pair by one of her good friends lo these many years ago as, if I remember correctly, a wedding gift; he died a few years back, and then last year she was grumbling at me about how she'd finally had to replace them and nothing else on the market now was anything like as good as her thirty-year-old set from her friend. So I sort of Looked at her, and asked her what exactly the problem was, and collected them when next I was visiting and took them home and took them apart and replaced the spring and sharpened the blade and oiled the mechanism and now they are working just fine again, and most of the 30 minutes' labour was in fact working out what that style of spring was called and what size exactly I was looking to replace.)
In terms of my upcoming jobs and planting...
Well, I need to spend some quality time pruning the Ribes bushes various; the plot came with a red dessert gooseberry, a redcurrant, and what-I-think-is-a-jostaberry, all of which are a little neglected and tangled. Tidying them up was on the list for Sunday immediately after the teasels, but a pair of secateurs that couldn't handle a teasel was... erstrecht not going to cope with actual wood. They also need top dressing with manure and then probably mulching, but that can wait until after I've tidied them up a little.
Next door, I've come to the conclusion that what I want to do with my ground-level bed (squash, pak choi, and failed calabrese last year) this season is set some broad beans and peas going down the middle around now, and then sow quinoa down the edges some time later. On the one hand, it's not known that this is a good idea; on the other, intercropping legumes and quinoa is a topic of active research and growing trials, and it looks to me like it ought to be sensible, so no doubt you will collectively get Running Commentary while I experiment.
At home, it's time for me to get the purple chillis and the orange bell peppers started (if I'm going to); that can't really happen until we're back full time, and while I'm happy to heat the house to a temperature that is safe and adequate for me to exist in when I'm actually there most of the time, that is... less the case when I'm away. (I'm attempting to resist the temptation to acquire a heated propagator.) Also the tomatoes, though there the thing I really need to do is work out where I want to put them -- whether I want to grow them on at home again, or if I'll be looking to plant them out at the plot.
Which is a general problem -- the working-out-where-to-plant-things. I'm dithering but probably about to come down on the side of putting the saffron bulbs in around the base of the cherry tree; I think I know where I'm going to put the comfrey once it's established itself a little better; and I'm tentatively leaning towards growing the poppies-for-seed in a patch of mixed wildflowers. (WHERE, though, Alex, you need to work out where you're going to put this. Probably also in the general vicinity of the cherry, if we're honest.)
But. Yes. Priorities: getting misc. seeds started; actually sourcing and constructing my proper raised beds so that I can plant out into them (which will inevitably involve More Weeding); pruning and dressing the Ribes; and working out what I want by way of asparagus, because my mother has offered to buy me some crowns.
So, you know, if you have asparagus cultivar recommendations, please by all means go ahead! I prefer the stems to the tips, and I am resigned to growing at least some purple...