Paper logs & briquettes - Part 2

We finally bit the bullet and ordered one of those cross-handled briquette machines from the internet.  Despite my whinge last year about the upfront cost and relatively poor returns compared to coal (see my previous post) it seemed a much quicker and simpler way of making free paper bricks than the rather tiresome process of using our home-made versions.

Incidentally, this year we paid £6.30 for each 25 kg bag of run-of-the mill house coal, 50p (and 8%) more expensive than last year...

We actually bought a top-of-the-range briquetting press, for £20 delivered, although there were lighter-duty versions available on eBay for around a tenner.  This one seems to be of more robust construction and even has round plastic handles - I wouldn't want to be putting my full body weight on the thin steel sections of the cheaper versions, at least without very thick gloves to protect my hands..

After a full day-long shredding and tearing campaign, we let the mash soak for around three days in a big plastic container.  A whole year's worth of eBay invoices and other old bills, plus a couple of months of free newspapers.  There were even a few thick glossy catalogues in the mix, from Tesco and Argos et al, around half-an-hour each to tear them up by hand into usable paper strips.

the briquette press and the container with the mash....

Removal of the Wind Turbine....

A couple of months ago, I noticed the wind turbine had stopped producing electrical energy and so I took it down and had a good look at it.

It turned out to be a relatively simple fix, just to replace a drive key that had sheared on the gearing, but in the end I decided not to repair and re-erect it. 

So now it's languishing in pieces in the shed and workshop, the reason being it's simply not cost-effective for it to continue to operate - see my previous post.

I haven't totally given up on domestic wind energy though - I'd still like to design and construct another and larger experimental version of perhaps a combined Savonius / Darius vertical axis machine.

Watch this space for future developments....

Who let the slugs out....

Usually, at this time of year, we'd be wading ankle-deep through slugs in our garden.  It's damp yet still relatively warm, conditions in which they have thrived in previous years.

However, this year there are hardly any slugs or snails to be seen at all.

I know almost nothing about the procreation of slugs, but I can only assume that they made their babies in March in the expectation that warmer weather was on the way, but the very cold April killed them all off.

Not that I'm complaining.  We may have lost some of our vegetable crops to many other factors this year, but none of them were attacked by slugs, usually one of the most serious pests in our garden.  

Roll on another cool April next year...

Restoring an old Die-cast Lantern....

My wife's away at the moment, visiting relatives and friends in her native country.   One of the list of '...orders...' she left behind was for me to tidy-up my workshop.  

She's been away for over three weeks but is due back very soon, and so I thought it best to tackle this particular item on the list....

As part of the clear out, I identified several non-electrical bits and pieces which could safely be stored in one of the unheated sheds in the garden.  So I hauled these items down the garden path, but when I was stashing them in the smaller shed I came across the old die-cast aluminium lantern that used to hang beside our front door.   

It was in a very sorry state, but despite the wife's objections I'd hung on to it with a view to one day perhaps cleaning it up and putting it back into service - when we bought the house, it was one of the first items to be ripped out during the refurbishment works.

So I dug it out and had a closer look at it.   With the nights closing in and the wife due to return to our local airport on an evening flight, I thought the illuminated lantern might be a pleasant 'welcome home' symbol after I'd picked her up from the airport, and therefore now would be the right time for a restoration.
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After a little initial scraping and wire brushing....

Garden Review 2013 - Fruit & Veg...

With September now in full swing and the autumnal equinox fast approaching, it's a chance to review our successes and failures during the fruit and vegetable growing season....


SUCCESS ....

Tomatoes - in early March, we'd started these off from seeds in 3" pots on the kitchen windowsill.   This meant they missed all of the effects of the very cold April, and the weather had recovered to more seasonal norms before they were planted out in the new greenhouse.  We've had literally hundreds of tomatoes from our 14 plants, and there's more still to come.  With the amount of headroom we have in this greenhouse, there's fruit on eight or nine trusses on each plant.

tomato plants in August...

Growing Raspberries & Cranberries from Seed...

For some time, we'd been toying with the idea of growing soft fruit bushes from seeds – there's plenty of space on the greenhouse shelves for starting them off.   Growing fruit from seed is a fraction of the price of buying rootstocks, even if they're bare-rooted.  The major downside is that it may take much longer to get the plants established from seed.

It was actually more difficult to find seeds than established plants, although I had managed to find one eBay supplier based in Lithuania selling seeds for raspberries, blueberries, cranberries and blackcurrants, among others.  I suppose an even cheaper alternative may have been to buy some fresh fruit from the market and then prepare our own seeds from a few of them.

However, we ordered some raspberry and cranberry seeds for around £1 per packet, and they arrived at the beginning of June.  

Looking at the instructions provided for each type of fruit seed, they were both very similar.  To cool the seeds for at least a month, and preferably longer, presumably to fool them into thinking it's darkest winter from which they will then awaken and burst into life when the temperature is returned to normal.  This process is called 'stratification' by the horticulturists.

Rescuing Blackcurrant Canes....

In the local Poundshop earlier in the summer, they were selling some small blackcurrant plants at 2 for £1, half the usual price because they were bare-root stock and it was already late May, well past the time when they should have been planted.  They were in a sorry state - all had some sort of new forced growth although it was very pale in colour due to the absence of light where they'd been stored.   They were labelled as Ribes Negrum, so they're a true blackcurrant, and the variety is 'Ojebyn' which seems to be a popular European variety from an internet search.

Anyway, we bought ten of them for £5, got them home and unwrapped the roots which at least were still moist from the polythene wrappings.   We stood them in a bowl of water and then pruned them back to just above where we could see new buds.  On one or two, the new pale growth was only an inch or two long, so we left these on thinking that they were short enough to fully recover.

after pruning, soaking in a bowl of water