Potatoes looking bountiful.
I really need to buy some of those potato grow bags when I move house.
Arriving to find a large delivery of bark chippings for the garden paths had been helpfully placed on the patio where our new greenhouse was to be constructed. We got stuck in by moving the bark chippings 6ft so Andy and his rag-tag bunch of construction engineers, John, Alfie and Nell could start building a greenhouse.
The beginnings of a Greenhouse.
This particular greenhouse was flatpack-on-steroids and so only the frame was finished today. I expect the panels will be put in soon.
Greenhouse progress by the end of the day.
There have been more hold-ups to vegetable planting. Soil conditioner had been ordered, Andy had been told it was delivered but no soil conditioner was to be seen. The silver lining is that we didn't have to move a couple of tonnes of soil conditioner.
Even without the soil conditioner other jobs had to be done. So myself, Nell and Emma set about evening out the paths with clay and topsoil whilst the greenhouse was being built. Next I turned over the compost pile, which is looking very rich and nutritious.
This was my third visit to the garden and I realised that I have not actually done any sowing, planting or plant-tending. So I was very happy to actually plant some potatoes in the bottom ground-level bed.
An open day is planned next Sunday (16th May), with activities and a chance to meet the people involved. Visit the DulwichDVG Project Dirt page for details.
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I visited Dulwich Park a while ago and after glancing at the noticeboards I spotted a flyer for the Dulwich Vegetable Garden (DVG) that was being established at the rear of an old ground keepers cottage. So I contacted Andy Bodycombe the project leader to see how to get involved.
So the Saturday after I was back with the hope of helping with the DVG. Three of us were there, myself, Andy and Tim. The garden currently has 8 raised beds and a large wheelchair friendly raised bed, and two non-raised planting beds, they also have a compost pile which has been started off with horse-manure from the riding school next door. Currently they are growing some beans, potatoes, rhubarb and onions, however they are a bit limited due to the necessity of having the soil pass some tests, which are being carried by the park. The land is owned by Southwark Parks, and they are paranoid about the quality of the soil, as such no serious planting until we get the all clear, they have been waiting 7 weeks for this to be sorted. Come on Southwark Council pull your finger out!
The mornings plan was to keep on top of weeding, line the wheelchair friendly beds with clay and build a bench. Moving clay is hard work, it took me about 6 wheelbarrow fulls. Now, the morning after, I'm feeling the unused muscles in my back complaining about all the heavy lifting they have done. The bench was worked on by Tim and Andy and they were finished in no time. We now have a place to sit and admire our land, there are plans to add at least two more benches.
Our bench, picture by Tim.
Other notable events are the finding of a bone during the weeding. I have no idea what animal it came from but it doesn't look human. I'll leave it to the interwebs to find out for me what creature it once was.
The mysterious bone! (Click image for larger version)
The garden is now waiting for delivery of a greenhouse and tool shed which should be all sorted within the fortnight.
The DVG can be followed on twitter, or more information about when work is being done can be seen by signing up to the DVG Project Dirt project page .
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In a nice game of "me too" with Peter Lewis, I decided to post the progress of my plants that me and my housemates planted about a month ago. The good new is that most of them have now sprouted, adding a nice touch of green to our house.
The garlic is growing very well, though previous experience says that garlic doesn't always turn out for the best.
The sunflowers are doing really well.
I'm most proud of my onions, they've been doing very excellently, and are going to run out of space soon.
[Poor-Man/Student Tip: Note use of take-away boxes as seed trays]
The jalepeno's and bell peppers have only just recently sprouted, I suspect its not warm enough over here for them to develop properly.
Unfortunately the avacardo, bird's eye chillis, and blue berries are not doing as well....
The next stage, which will be sometime this week, is to plant them into the garden. I haven't decided how yet, either they will get planted into large garden pots, or I'll try and make some space in the ground.
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In an amazing display of green-fingered-ness me and my housemates have started a little greenhouse/garden.
We have planted them inside, near a very large window, that gets a lot of sun gets very warm. Hopefully this will mean nice little seedlings in a few weeks, depending on the weather.
We have planeted the mundane, Onion, Parsley, Mint, the adventurous, Garlic, Jalepeno, Sweet Peppers, and the strange, Blueberry, Birds Eye Chillis and Aubergine(?!).
There is also a random bonsai tree, and a bean plant that I planted last year.
We have plans to grow carrots and potatoes too, but they'll be started in a few more weeks.
We now have our fingers crossed for lots of free fruit and veg!
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As many people know iPods batteries wear out, like all Li-Ion batteries. This plays quite well into the hands of Apple as they bring out new products people will buy them, as their old version just wore out. This could be alleviated by Apple making the batteries easy to replace by the average joe, but again it's not in their best interests.
My 3G iPod battery was starting to loose its ability to charge fully a few years back. I started looking into what I could do about it, what services were available to get it replaced, or if I could do replace it myself.
Apple charge £69, which I thought was a bit excessive for a part they know will wear out in about 18months.
I found a company, called Ipod Doctor that sell Li-Ion iPod batteries which you use to replace yourself, for £13-£15. They also offer a service to replace the battery for you at a much more reasonable £35.
The instructions to replace the batteries are on the Ipod Doctor, and they will send you the tools to replace the battery yourself too (They ask that you send them back, so they can be re-used). The instructions are easy to follow, and the actual procedure itself is not complicated. If you can put together a PC you should be alright taking apart an iPod.
Not long ago a friend at work complained that his iPod Mini only held charge for 5mins, so I offered to replace it for him. I had replaced a battery on a Mini once before, so it wasn't too hard to do it again. In fact it only took a total of 15mins of my lunch to completely fit the new battery.
So if you have an old iPod or know someone who does, rather than giving Apple even more money, have a quick look and see if you can replace the battery yourself.
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