Kitchen Garden Forum

Aintree is roughly eight miles from we’re I am,I would think the horses will need mud boards to get round on

Could start a new vogue for water polo,

Seriously though, why are our planning Authorities not starting to insist that new homes in vulnerable areas are built on stilts.
. Surely this would save a lot of long term misery I,ve long wondered why new homes arn,t built to incorporate solar panels of some kind and tanks for rainwater collection for loo flushing. We must have the technology to do these things. We just indulge in too much short-termism and lack of forward thinking. Maybe we need some more "nerds and weirdos" in the Dept of the Environment.

Had a brief reprieve from the rain this morning so managed a few hours down at lottie to check on things. When I say reprieve it was still drizzle but no squally heavy proper rain, left when that started. I had to stomp the brassica's in & hammer in the supports as they were on an angle & even had to go through the onions as some of them were also blown to one side to create a hole one side of the roots. The broad beans ditto so good time to set up the string & raise the netting. My DIY fence was still standing which pleased me no end, but the old guy who criticised me using stakes not fence poles (shop was closed) was not down for me to have a wee gloat. I know as if I would?

At least this weather means no frost & continued growing by the plants so I managed a pretty good harvest of Kale, PSB, Calabrese, Leeks & Kalettes. Tomorrow's line of storms down here will no doubt have me hammering again though!

it's absolutely chucking it down sideways again here

It's solid here - gritter just went past.

Are you prepared for the hosepipe ban?

I got all excited about Sunday being OK & started making my '2 do' list! Hmm? Not looking good now! Come on nature it's a big list already thanks to your weak bladder!

I noticed one of my plum trees in blossom today it blossoms early every year but I’ve never had a plum on it

Fingers crossed for plums this year.

Finally removed all the trash and old soil out of the yard. The next job I'm not really looking forward to (because I just want to start spawning plants everywhere already) is building the greenhouse! And still haven't found some garden tiles within range for a reasonable price.

That soil looks really soaked Elmigo and as bad as my garden here. Guess it will be a while before it dries out. Building the greenhouse will be a rather soggy chore !
Am curious. What are you going to be planting in that squared wooden frame?

1½ hour power cut this morning after stormy night, gust of 65 mph highest in the run of bad weather. Looks like we'll get a bit of a rest from the wind after lunch until it gets going again on Monday.

Have you ever considered getting a storage battery for your panels, Geoff...although I know they are very expensive!

Primrose wrote:That soil looks really soaked ... in that squared wooden frame?

Definitely going to take some time to dry a bit more, although the top layer appears to dry pretty quickly if the rainfall stops for a moment.

Going to use the wooden frame for small herbs: parsley, chives, rosemary maybe, don't know yet. Still trying to figure out where to put it strategically so it catches alot of sun but doesn't take up way too much heat during hot summers...

oldherbaceous wrote:Have you ever considered getting a storage battery for your panels, Geoff...although I know they are very expensive!

PowerVault https://www.powervault.co.uk/about-us/ are a UK firm who use second-hand batteries from electric cars. Because they can optimise useage and recharging the use is very appropriate and modular. If I could generate, I would probably install something like this.

I looked at these a while ago and decided they wouldn't pay. I sent the figures to the last company that tried to sell me batteries and they didn't even come back with a quote so must also have decided it wasn't viable.

We generate 4,800 units pa
Of this directly used is 55% or 2,640
So available to go to battery 2,160
Presently 480 is going to immersion and 1,680 is being exported to grid

Even if we recover all the 2,160 units pa at say 14p the £300 pa or so wouldn’t show a sensible return on the capital.

We use an electric range cooker with an eco mode that means it ticks over at night and comes on in a morning. We have a North-South roof ridge with panels facing East and West so the East panels output often contributes to the morning warm up and the West panels cook the evening meal hence why we directly use more than half what we generate. However, if storms are going to become the norm perhaps we should reconsider as a backup system.