Back From Vacation

Posted on August 25, 2010 by thomas

I took a week of vacation last week away from home and the garden. I was a bit worried what would happen if my garden was left by itself at the peak of the season. The weather turned out to be windy and wet (and so did my vacation ), and below is a series of photos showing what I found when I returned home, but be warned – it’s not a pretty sight … actually it’s rather awful.

First of all most of the apples blew right of the apple trees before they had a chance to mature, due to the strong wind:

Fortunately my girlfriends dad cleaned up the lawn while we were away – thanks Peder!

This pile of rotting apples is a heaven for sugar craving wasps, but I managed to save some of the apples for jam. There are still some left on the trees so I think we’ll be able to make a decent amount of jam:

Before I left I wrapped my chicken coop project in a tarpaulin and it stayed on the coop the whole week, although the sharp edges punched a few holes in it:

I’m really looking forward to some dry weather so that I’ll be able to finish the project.

The rain water collection tank proves that the weather has been wet, wet, wet. 550 liters in a week:

It turns out that if bird droppings end up in a tank like this you’re likely to get a problem with bacteria if the water is standing still for too long. This can be a problem if you water crops which are not boiled before you eat them since the bacteria is carried into the kitchen.

My bean trellis took a hit by the strong wind and almost collapsed:

But the beans are have been growing fast and new ones are still developing:

My sweet corn plants have also been hit by the wind and one of the plants fell over. Not a pretty sight but hopefully we’ll get some fruits before the end of the season:

The squash plant didn’t waste any time – compare the fruits with my foot to the right:

The fruit near the ground is huge! But I knew that would happen. You need to check the size of your squash fruits every second day during the peak of the season. The same thing happened with my squash a couple of years ago.

Two different kinds of caterpillars in my broccoli?? Jebus… You guys must be hungry. It doesn’t even look tasty anymore:

The strawberry plants decided to grow all over the place:

and the tomato plants got hit with blight and the fruits are rotting… Sigh. :

I hope I can do a bit of damage control by removing wilted leaves and rotten fruits, to help the healthy tomatoes through the season.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a thriving cucumber plant with flowers and healthy fruit:

but my saved pea seeds looked far from healthy. I made the mistake of throwing the pods in a cardboard box with the lid on, so that the moisture couldn’t escape freely which resulted in mold, and some of the peas even started germinating! 2 x sigh… :

To finish off this crappy status, all of the potato fruits fell off and started rotting on the ground:

But then again – the flowers are nice:

I’ll leave you with a lonely bee on a white Cosmos flower:

and a video that show the fencing around my garden that is supposed to shield off against the wind, dammit:

What Is Going on in the Bumblebees Nest?

Posted on August 5, 2010 by thomas

A few days ago some of the bumblebees in my garden began acting weird. I was playing with my daughter outside in the garden when I spotted this fellow trying to walk across the lawn instead of flying:

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That seemed odd to me so I jumped over the fence into the kitchen garden to check out the bumblebees nest which they so kindly built in the middle of the plot. Unfortunately I was on to something because I found three other bees walking or sitting on the ground about a meter (3 ft) from the nest:

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I then checked the activity in the nest and found at least two bumblebees flying in and out of the nest like nothing happened:

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It seems that the bees are still active living their life, but some of them are having a hard time at the moment. A few days later I found two of the three bees dead outside the nest. R.I.P.

I hope this a natural cycle for them and not caused by human ignorance. If you know what’s going on please leave a comment below.

Building a Chicken Coop – Part 6

Posted on July 13, 2010 by thomas

I wanted to cut all the wood for the chicken coop into the correct dimensions before beginning the assembly, but two of the long studs had to be split into halves from one end to the other, and that was just going to take too long with an ordinary handsaw. Therefore I began the assembly and waited for a chance to go and get a better tool for the job, namely a jigsaw. I bought this powerful one made by Bosch:

The model is a Bosch PST 700 PEL, delivering 530 watts of work. (Apparently I have a thing about Bosch tools ) I comes with a laser aim, which I didn’t use, and it automatically blows away the saw dust before it builds up in front of the blade. It has some kind of pendulum technology, which I believe is causing the blade to not only move up and down, but also back and forth, which is a very nice feature – the tool is actually driving itself forward when it comes into contact with the wood. I’m not sure if this feature is related to the pendulum technology, but it sure is a cool thing.