Kitchen Garden Forum

Monday I was off work and decided the lawn needed a mow.
Would any of my three mowers start?
Of course not.

Well one fid but I accidentally fed it two stroke mixture and it died, then nothing I did with brass wire brush, clean petrol and cooking the plug on the gas cooker would revive it.

Saturday amongst various other activities I visited my favourite and excellent garden machinery specialist, Banks Garden Machinery the wrong side of Saffron Walden to me.
Fixed best mower on the spot, half hour visit, I left with a fully working Hayterette!
New spark plug, new throttle cable (pinching up), carburettor tuning and just £10 labour.

130 odd bags of compost delivered 09:30 Saturday for the allotment society shop, sold six today.
One pallet of Tippland standard modern potting compost and three pallets of Humax, peat based, cannot speak highly enough of it, absolutely first rate.

Today I are mostly mowed the allotment site paths and fiddler with replacement locks on our old front door, now the second door on my enlarged shed, far end.
Yes up-cycling , old advertising panels, 1mm aluminium 3mm plastic 1mm aluminium, painted and/or vinyl "wrapped" both sides, bar two which were plain white on one side.

Well done Peter, Is this what is now known as "very affordable housing?"
Seriously, it,s good to see such innovative recycling and Im sure you'll get plenty of use out of your new "Holiday" residence but with the luxury of part double glazing you'll have to watch they don't start charging you Council Tax!

The existing black shed is fitted with electricity, lined and insulated, has our old double glazed sitting room window and kitchen door. New extendipn was going to be all mine, but my beloved wife got a cross trainer, so part will be a gym behind the obscure but fully opening ex-bathroom window.

Looks like we are in for a deluge of rain today, they are saying as much as 60mm to 80mm of rain.....not funny.

Lovely to see a post from you Barney....and agree, the worse Spring i have known.

Grey clouds travelling north to south here, driven by very strong wind
Not a hope of any work on allotment. Might resort to a garden centre visit before 2nd RT appointment this afternoon.

Yes I think the only garden centre visits worthwhile at the moment are for coffee and cake ! I think they're going to have a hard time this spring. The one we visited the other day had a large number of early summer bedding plants for sale but really it's just too cold and windy for them to thrive and by the time it's warmed up the plants will only be fit for the compost heap.

The garden centre was offering a free tomato plant for all children for all purchases over a certain level but the plants were doomed to failure and it's far too early and cold to plant them outdoors so children will be doomed to disappointment and probably discouraged to take any further interest in gardening which I think would be a shame.

Our local Wyevale emailed me a couple of free £2.50 vouchers...no purchase necessary but had to be used over the weekend. They are really struggling with this awful weather. I went to Wyevale, used the 2 vouchers acquiring packets of seeds plus I then actually bought a couple of other bits..so their cunning ruse definitely works for them.

Just planted out a few peas and broad beans I'd started off in the greenhouse in root trainers, no sign of the seeds from the same packet that were sowed direct a few weeks ago.

my tomatoes are currently sulking in the greenhouse, which was 40 degrees last week and was 10 degrees yesterday. We've had torrential rain and a very strong north westerly gale today, the freshly leaved trees are taking a battering and the ground is covered with shredded new leaves.

peter. Old mechanics trick of years ago. after warming plug on the gas , rub points with a lead pencil.

Well after swapping all my work for today, we missed the huge amount of rain altogether that the forecasters said we were going to get....made me looked rather silly....

Ditto here as well OH! No gales of 50mph, but a bit windy & no rain all day. A bit of a nip in the air remains though, so the toms are sulking but apparently weather is improving!

Now where have we heard that before??

Sunny all day here, with a nippy northerly wind. Possible frost tonight, but things are going to look up from then .....

My neighbour demolished his garage late last year preparatory to his house extension and I scrounge all the timber, he was going to burn it! Excellent nearly inch thick tongue and groove cedar cladding left over from a job he did, some he used to fill in the garage door opening with concealed double doors and a non moving bit.
The double doors are the black bits, the fresher looking work was my old tool/mower shed floor, the shed I demolished to do this and that floor was the cedar and I had some unused left over. Hopefully I still have enough to clad up to the gap next to the glazed door. I suspect everything right of that door will be advertising panel.

That's a very impressive shed Peter. I like the idea of a gym.