Friday, June 15, 2007

Plumbing and more composting



Bought grafted cucumber and aubergine (£3.50, £2.50 respectively) and planted in the double height "mega compost" box. Uncovered the squashes and built a "fleece tent" over the cucumber/aubergine end.

Installed some blue mdpe 25mm pipe, with connectors to 22mm speedfit and valves to fill both the buried barrel and the water tank saved from the loft extension. From that tank am running a hose pipe and just letting it empty onto one of the plots at the back. The entire pipe is now watertight and thus siphoning is much easier, not requiring to refill the entire pipe each time, plus the flow is much greater than previous attempts with siphoning.

Salvaged 3 skip bags from some work in the street. Placed 2 by the black compost bin, and one at end of the double height box at the front. Filled all three now with alternating layers of the raw straw/menure mix, soil, compost and any bits of vegetation going spare. Takes a whole evening to fill each one, but it's done and they should make very good compost some time next year.

Some progress on the next box -- using the purlins (3"x10") construcuted a single square 5'x5'. Now "bolted" onto the side a smaller piece using just 3 lengths of the purlins...basically using up all that size wood I have. thats about 5'x3'4". That should nicely cover the two beds at back right. Been digging soil out of those to fill the skip bags.