May sun takes affect

A retrospective post about how the garden looked on 26th May.

The leeks remain unchanged, still looking like blades of grass and starting to be overtaken by grass and weeds. I’m a bit fearful of weeding them, I’m sure to pull out a lot of them in the process, so I’m going to leave them alone but as a result I’m not very hopeful of a worthwhile crop either. Mental note: next year plant in seed trays and then transplant when larger, that’ll give them a head start above the weeds.

The broccoli seedlings are starting to make themselves known and showing above the weeds:

Since this photo was taken I have weeded this area and the broccoli seedlings are looking healthy, I have lost a few, but still plenty to give a good crop.

The runner beans are climbing nicely:

The jam jar on the right is my beer trap for the slugs, they just keep coming.

And the potatoes have rocketed up:

And they’ve got even bigger since, the recent rain will aid them further.

Onions aren’t developing much, so nothing to report there.

Onto fruit, not a huge development, strawbs look plentiful, raspberries not showing as fruit just yet, but the biggest development is the Damson tree, we have fruit:

Ah, in this photo you can also see where I planted a few spare seed potatoes in the soil pile, they are growing well there too.

I’m planning on growing some lettuce too, I might be taking on too much, but I’m sure I’ll cope.

Spring in the garden (again, but with pictures) #gardening #green #money

The end of the garden needed some use, so I’ve taken up gardening!

I went a bit mad this year and planted all the onion sets I bought in a 500g net, I’ve got onions everywhere! I need my neighbours to take up growing their own so we can share sets, seeds etc. Whilst we are deciding what to plant in the front, there are onions there too, at least it adds some green shoots rather than plain soil. Notably the sets in the front were untouched by the blackbirds, but there are a fair few missing out the back where they spend more of their time.

The front onions LHS:

A few plants then some more:

The front onions RHS:

(argh, weeds growing too now)

At the back:

The new apple, plum and damson trees are showing signs of blossom and small leaves, but the old bramley is still pretty bare.
The pixy plum:

The damson:

The Bramley:

The Spartan apple tree:

It is about to flower, when the fruit buds come they are to be taken off so it puts its resource into growing rather than a couple of tiny apples.

The raspberry is slowly sprouting some leaves:

We really enjoyed the bush last year (our first year here), so I’m hoping it will provide a nice crop this year.

The strawbs are flowering nicely:

They were poor last year, so fingers crossed for this year. They are in big pots, I feel like planting them in the garden, but it’s another thing I should have done already and I don’t want to disturb them at this stage.

My runners are about 10cm high, slug munched, but hanging in there:

I started them off in the door-less green house, some weren’t ready, so they are waiting to be transplanted:

(a lot of slug pellets surround them now, at least 20 dead slugs I’d seen within 24 hours!)

Broccoli and also leek seeds sown, eagerly waiting to see some growth there (see top image between the new trees, broccoli on left and leeks in centre, right will hopefully be potatoes).

I’ve been meaning to plant my potatoes for some weeks now, they’ve sprouted (chitted) a little, but as they have been in a cool place they haven’t done that well. I keep putting them off as there’s a fair amount more digging to be done, but this weekend maybe…

I’m amazed how into this growing my own I’ve become, maybe my love of food and hate of spending money combines into a good (second) hobby for me. I do hope it’s worth it, we should save a fortune and really make the most of what I hope the garden will provide us.

Spring in the garden #garden #green #money

I went a bit mad this year and planted all the onion sets I bought in a 500g net, I’ve got onions everywhere! I need my neighbours to take up growing their own so we can share sets, seeds etc. Whilst we are deciding what to plant in the front, there are onions there too, at least it adds some green shoots rather than plain soil. Notably the sets in the front were untouched by the blackbirds, but there are a fair few missing out the back where they spend more of their time.

The new apple, plum and damson trees are showing signs of blossom and small leaves, but the old bramley is still pretty bare.

The raspberry is slowly sprouting some leaves, we really enjoyed the bush last year (our first year here), so I’m hoping it will provide a nice crop this year.

The strawbs are flowering nicely, they were poor last year, so fingers crossed! They are in big pots, I feel like planting them in the garden, but it’s another thing I should have done already and I don’t want to disturb them at this stage.

My runners are about 10cm high, slug munched, but hanging in there.

Broccoli and also leek seeds sown, eagerly waiting to see some growth there.

I’ve been meaning to plant my potatoes for some weeks now, they’ve sprouted (chitted) a little, but as they have been in a cool place they haven’t done that well. I keep putting them off as there’s a fair amount of digging to be done, but this weekend maybe…

I’m amazed how into this growing my own I’ve become, maybe my love of food and hate of spending money combines into a good (second) hobby for me. I do hope it’s worth it, we should save a fortune and really make the most of what I hope the garden will provide us.

Food tips

Surrey County Council are trying to cut household food waste and there are some interesting tips we can all benefit from:

http://www.lovefoodsurrey.com/questions

I never thought you could freeze cooked rice for a start, even though ready meals are frozen, I assumed it was uncooked rice.

Biannual mileage total update – #cycling #green #money

I’ve updated my spreadsheet and my biannual cycling mileage totals are:
2008 (H2) = 1600 miles
2009 (H1) = 1100 miles
2009 (H2) = 1400 miles
2010 (H1) = 1500 miles
2010 (H2) = 3500 miles
2011 (H1) = 3700 miles
2011 (H2) = 3600 miles

So I’m doing around 7000 miles per year on my bicycle rather than in a car, saving me a fortune!

See last post about this here

Light snow, to ride or not? #cycling #snow #winter

This morning I looked out onto the back garden and couldn’t even see the mess that I call my lawn, or the path to my “bike” shed

So I went out with a view of assessing whether it was suitable for commuting to work, it didn’t look good to start with

A closer look it wasn’t that deep

The garden dwellers weren’t happy either

Anyway, I decided I’d go for it and I wasn’t on my own either

My road was pretty virgin snow as nobody uses it, I failed to take a photo, I was having too much fun.

Busier side roads were more passable

The main roads were clear more or less and I arrived safely and happy I’d braved it and not resorted to using the car

(shame about that one, the lens must have misted up on my phone)

I’m looking forward to the Friday night ride home now, ride safe, have fun.

Today’s commute took some tenacity #cycling #wind #weather

Today’s commute took some tenacity, compared with a my normal speed ride in it took 15 minutes longer! At one point I was cycling up a hill towards the end of my ride at 5.5MPH thinking if the wind would start blowing me backwards at some point. The Met Office site says it was a head wind of 20MPH gusting at 45MPH, but I think that one was even more.
My bike felt so very heavy, but of course that will be the non-aero nature of my setup, cyclingcoder would have been fine.
Today might have been a good day for a rucksack and a road bike.

Some unfortunate property owner has four, yes four fence panels to fix, they weren’t even all together, it was one up and one down all the way along his/her fence. I’m just hoping my bike shed survives.

I still enjoyed the ride in, of course, but gosh am I feeling tired (and running late) now.

My tip for riding in windy conditions is to not ride in the gutter, you should never do that anyway, but ride even further out than normal to put cars off from squeezing past and give you that extra buffer when the wind buffets you.

I propose to scrap vehicle excise duty and increase fuel duty

I like sums, so let’s do a few based on my limited knowledge of the figures involved…
Average car mileage is 10K miles.
Average car vehicle excise duty is £150.
150 / 10000 = £0.015 duty per mile
Average modern car does 10 miles to the litre.
0.015 * 10 = £0.15 duty per litre.

15p per litre wouldn’t really impact the massive fuel pump price we have at the moment.
So I propose to scrap vehicle excise duty and increase fuel duty by 15p per litre.

This would have cost savings to government including
1. Wouldn’t need to police or prosecute people for no tax
2. Wouldn’t need to post the reminders / forms in the post i.e. delivery costs
3. Wouldn’t need to administer the scheme
4. Wouldn’t need to pay a cut to the post office for taking payment etc
5. Wouldn’t need to maintain a whole heap of webpages dedicated to it

Benefits to me
1. If I do less miles I pay less duty
2. Car drivers won’t be confusing the duty with road tax, so it will help equality on the roads between vehicles and bicycles
3…. there are more I am sure.

Benefits to the environment
1. Extra fuel costs makes people focus on doing less miles
2. Less paperwork and resources wasted

Small one-off costs
1. Closing the scheme
2. Changing the law
3. Retraining traffic police
4. A small number of job losses

Why did I write this post?
Lots of reasons, but mainly because I hate hearing “cyclists have no right to be on the road, they don’t pay to use the roads” come up as often as it does.

See also ipayroadtax.com, a website dedicated to the misconception about the duty.

The end of the bendy bus is a good thing for cyclists

They were long and bendy, but today is apparently their last day (see BBC) and I think cyclists should rejoice that they are no more. I do hope bendy buses never make a come back. Of course a minor section of the public with accessibility needs are deemed to be impacted, but local dial-a-ride services are available and money should be put into them rather than special (and expensive) buses.

Our next concern is of course the super massive gigantic lorries (see the CTC campaign against them). These types of vehicle have no place in built up areas, if they want to have them on motorways and have loading/unloading at designated places (a bit like train freight) then good, but allowing them onto minor roads is just going to lead to more deaths in the name of progress. I hate this kind of progress, things are fine now, make things safer if you want to make progress!

3 years cycling saved me £1845 in car costs

My biannual cycling mileage totals for the past three years:

2008 (H2) = 1600 miles
2009 (H1) = 1100 miles
2009 (H2) = 1400 miles
2010 (H1) = 1500 miles
2010 (H2) = 3500 miles
2011 (H1) = 3700 miles

of these 10060 miles were commuting miles or at least miles cycled instead of using my car, this roughly equates to £1845 (given the cost of petrol at the time plus 5p wear and tear per mile). Of course if I didn’t still have a car the savings would be three times this, but the car costs me money even if I don’t drive it anywhere!

The reality is that I took up cycling as my main hobby and stopped my other sporting activities, in doing so this money has paid for about half of my cycling hobby, which is a lot less than I was spending on either of my previous hobbies (football and badminton). Of course, most of the three years I’ve been collecting clothing, tools and a couple of bikes, so the hobby cost will keep falling (unless I keep buying bikes) and maybe even end up being a hobby that pays for itself (or even better; a hobby that truly saves me money).