Tuesday, April 19, 2011

I've been gardening today.

Well, after all it is the full moon. Before lunch I planted all of the main crop potatoes - I put 64 into two of the raised beds - the last two that I installed the other week. I've had to be careful how I planted them because the baby lettuce that I bought the other week - they are in one of those beds and I've had to fit the spuds all around them.

After lunch I planted this week's seeds - things like cauliflowers, broccoli, carrots, courgettes, beans, peas and so on - they all went outside and into place. In the smaller cloche I planted into small pots some more peppers, chilis, cucumber and gherkins. And there are already some of those sprouting up from a fortnight ago. I've also weeded out the strawberry patch in the mega-cloche. That's doing really well in there and it's a mass of flowers, looking like there might be a bumper crop, and quite early too. But then again, this magnificent spring has a lot to do with that.

But there is a down-side to this magnificent spring. When I finished weeding and planting, I gave everything a thorough watering. And with no rain for 14 days, all of the casual water, that in buckets and bins and tubs about the place, that's all gone. All that's left is my rainwater for household use and there's just about 150 litres or so of that remaining. I'm drying up and this could make things difficult here. I shall have to start a rain dance if it carries on like this.

But there's still some water for a shower and at 36.5°C I had one as well. And then off to the Anglo-French Group where I set everyone an exercise - I'd found some old notes that I had made, with useful French phrases that are used in everyday life. And so I set everyone to translate them from French to English, to keep them out of mischief.

And so apart from working on the Newfoundland web pages this morning, that was my lot. Tomorrow we are in the studio at Radio Tartasse again. Don't the months come round quickly?

3 comments:

  1. Sounds like you need either a well or a rally big water storage tank with a rainwater harvesting system.

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  2. His neighbour has a stream... What he needs to do is to either divert it or put a pipe in and abstract the water.

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  3. I have 2x205-litre tanks for the rainwater for domestic purposes, and a whole collection of other containers for water for gardening, mixing cement and the like.

    400 litres is nowhere big enough for domestic purposes I know, I really need at least 2000 litres, but that involves having a digger to dig a big hole, and also the eastern wall of the house finishing pointing and the roof putting on the lean-to there, and I'm a lomg way from that.

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