Lupins - now slightly less Ignorant

I have two Lupin plants in the garden that where an impulse buy from the supermarket early last year - I believe I paid a couple of pounds for them and they've done me proud.

I always seem to forget just how big they grow both in height and spread - note to self for next spring: give them a bit more room to avoid losing the plants next to them!

Plant one

Plant one is planted in a sunny spot - it gets sun from about 11am through to about 8pm and is always ahead of it's sibling in flowering.

Plant two

Plant two is planted in more shady spot, it gets good sun but for a shorter period of time, slower to come to flower it still produces masses of flowers albeit somewhat smaller than plant one. Both plants are in fairly good soil owing to bags and bags of compost in the raised beds although these sit of a clay heavy soil.

In my bid to be less Ignorant I've found out that Lupin (Latin: Lupinus meaning 'of Wolf') are perennial and good for locking in Nitrogen to the soil which is beneficial to other plants - in particular Cucumbers, Broccoli & Squashes. I was also surprised to discover that the beans can be edible and contain up to 40% protein which is close to Beef, however you need to note that in an unprocessed state the Beans are poisonous causing some pretty nasty symptoms - to render edible they need to be boiled and then washed for a week.

Further reading revealed that a species called Tarwi, (Latin: Lupinus mutabilis) is an edible variety without the risks of normal Lupins that can be easily purchased and grown - I think I'll be trying these next year!

I've always had a soft spot for Lupins, loving the bold spikes of colour they bring to the garden and the way little drops of water gather in the leaves reflecting the light, looks like next year I'll have the best of both worlds with flowers and food!

Jewel in the Crown

Apples Under Attack...

My Apple tree (hopefully soon to be an Espalier) is under attack! I noticed a couple of leaves were skeletal,  nothing left but the main veins, on closed inspection I noticed lots of little green caterpillar's busily munching away many of the appearing to hang by their jaws only - quite an impressive feat really.

Rather than squish them all or use a pesticide I detached the leaves which where a lost cause anyway and discarded to a wild bit of the garden where they can take their chances but will probably just become part of the food chain, on checking the rest of the tree I couldn't see anything resembling eggs so I'm hoping that's the last of them.

Leafroller Catapillars?

I've been trying to identify exactly what they are, lots of Google image searching for Green Caterpillar with Black Head on Apple Tree Leaf hasn't managed to confirm, I initially thought they were Leafroller Caterpillar's - that said I couldn't find any evidence of leaf rolling, might be they are too young, and the heads seem to be darker plus these have a row of black dot's down each side - can anyone confirm what these are?

How I built a Pallet Chair

I've enjoyed recently being able to get in after a day in the office and relax in a comfortable chair made from an old pallet in the last of the days sunshine surveying my extensive estate and marvelling at the way everything is coming to life; I also made a mental note to myself tonight that I really need to take make a record of just how big certain plants grow, not just their height but also their spread. I enjoy the garden having a slightly random/anarchic feel but several plants are dwarfed and hidden by others - I guess the trick is to have planed randomness - something I think will take quite some time to master!

In a previous post I said I'd provide a run through of what I did to make my Patio set - so here goes how I made up-cycled chairs from old pallets

Step 1 - Creating your pile of Timber

First job is break up the pallets, brace yourself for this job, it's nasty - resulting in bad language, splinters and a bruised thumb from too much enthusiasm with a hammer. If you Google how to break up a pallet you'll come across many theories and ideas - one of the more interesting I found utilised a hefty Garden Status and two breeze blocks..... I'll let you pick your weapons and you'll find out what works best for you but note each pallet seems to come with it's own challenges. I used a small crow bar, a hammer and a heft screw driver - for the more stubborn pallets I used a JigSaw to cut out the usable timber and discarded the rest to a relatives wood store - pallets burn very well!

One more point worth noting - pallets come in two preserved flavours - heat treated and chemical treated, this is usually indicated somewhere on the pallet, I made sure there was an HT stamp on the ones I used.

Once the pallets were dismantled I graded the wood into piles of rough & very rough and then set to with my master construction, I'd doodled some rough design ideas and searched the internet for inspiration - I'd like to say I was working to detailed designs with all the measurement calculated - but I can't so I won't - Instead with a rough idea in my mind, in the best of traditions I made it up as I went along!

First I created the seat & backrest side frames, this primarily involved measuring the number of deck planks between my foot & knee whilst lying on the deck and then laying the wood onto the decking to get the correct angle, once the timber was marked up I then had the bright idea that a curved seat would be more comfortable than a flat one (my posterior is not the most padded as I have discovered sitting through some particularly long & mind stultifying meetings - I find bum numbness is an excellent measure of how engaged you are), to achieve this I used the jig saw to cut a shallow curve into the Seat Side frames and curved the front of the posts so there wouldn't be a sharp angle cutting against the back of the knee's.

With the seat posts cut to shape I then screwed the seat & backrest posts into position - I'd recommend using coach bolts for the joints to ensure their sturdy.

Seat & Backrest Posts fixed together.

With the side posts in place I then used a slat to join the two sides placing it just behind the back rest posts to provide a little more support, the width of the slats was once again calculated using exact scientific principles - I sat on a plank of wood then added on a good few inch's to allow accommodation of a more robust posterior than my own.

Basic Frame In place

With a couple of slats in place to steady the two sides of the frame I then turned to the front legs, I used sturdier timber taken from the pallet sides for these which would also allow reasonable support to the arms of the chair.

Front Legs attached

The tricky construction complete it was then a simple but repetitive task to add the rest of the slats, each drilled with 4 pilot holes and then securely fastened making sure the screw heads where countersunk to just below the wood surface level to avoid catching anyone sitting.

Slats in Place

Final task was to sand the chair down - splinters were likely to a real issue if not, luckily I'd bought a small  electric sander for a previous DIY task in the house - an hour or two later, a lot of dust and a lot of noise which I discovered half way through seemed to be caused by the vibration off the Sander being amplified by the decking the job was done. 

Sanded and ready to relax in

When looking for inspiration on the internet many people went to great lengths to disguise the fact that the chair was built from a recycled pallet, filling the old nail holes, varnishing or painting - personally I like the rough & ready look, showing their origins - on  commenting to my long suffering partner that I thought they looked 'honest', I was greeted by derision & laughter - I'll keep my artistic airs to myself in future me thinks.

Waste No Space

I've mentioned in a couple of posts that the back of the garden is a steep slope, it's about 4 meters square and for quite a while was true 'set aside' land left to the weeds to slug it out for dominance, on the odd occasion madness would grip me and I'd attack it with the strimmer before wearily conceding defeat whilst wondering how much strimmer line I needed to buy before attacking it next time.

Now I'm lucky enough to have a south facing garden and this area gets full sun for the majority of the day, it seemed a real shame to leave it to the weeds especially when I wanted to grow more veg - so I hatched a patient plan, one that wouldn't require miles of strimmer line! Early last year I gathered up all the empty compost bags I could find and covered the areas I wanted to put the raised beds (and my miniature wild flower meadow), weighting them down with a collection of bricks, rocks and surprisingly useful old metal washing line posts I'd taken an angle-grinder to when I built the decking , I left things well alone for a good nine months.

When I eventually lifted the sacks I had pristine earth, weed free and good to go with the minimum of effort, utilising wood left over form the old fence we'd replaced I built raised beds and then managed to fill two of them with compost from what I'd thought was a very small compost heap - still surprised how much it yielded.

View from the top

The result is a little rough and ready but it's allowed me to get a crop of veg in and a couple of tasty meals worth already, the next step is to make the area more productive and less purely functional, I have a glut of plants needing a home and figure flowers around the veg will probably be a good thing and help with the aesthetic!

View from the bottom

Infestation

I have a plant, yet another that I don't know what it is but I'm happy to see it grow and do it's thing; it's been in a large pot for the last couple of years, it bursts into life in spring developing masses of leaves before tall shoots spring upwards and small pink flowers appear usually in mid to late spring - this year it's been later than usual along with most plants to be fair but now it's flowered is looking a bit bedraggled - initially I thought it might need re-potting or a good feed but on closed inspection it's crawling with aphids.

Now I'm not sure the Aphids would cause it's current bedraggled state and suspect it's a combination of needing a good feed and re-potting but I'm amazed at just how may Aphids are crawling over it (and please correct me if these aren't Aphids, I know they're normally green), it's surprising that the flowers are still upright with the weight of them and the lack of sap. I don't know anything about Aphid control, initially I tried squishing them off with my fingers but soon gave this up as a losing battle and am letting nature take her course.

I've been thinking I may plant this out rather than re-pot, my raised beds at the back of the garden are surrounded by Dandelions & Buttercups - a never ending war; I covered up an area with old compost bags last year to kill of the weeds and have sprinkled wild flower seed this year to create a miniature ( and I do mean miniature - about 1.5 x 4ft) wild flower meadow - I think I can find a space for this somewhere & it can do battle with the local weeds and add a touch of colour, may even attract some beneficial insects.

Peas won't be long...

This year I've expanded my selection of veg and touch wood it seems to be doing well, last year I had potatoes (about one bags worth!) a few Radish, some very woody Beetroot and about two very stunted and misshapen Carrots; this year I've added in two additional raised beds on the back slope of the garden and planted Potatoes, Broccoli, Beetroot, Carrots, Beans (2 varieties) Rocket, Lettuce, Radish's (first crop eaten & enjoyed) and Peas.

The Pea's are coming on a storm and the pods are fattening up rapidly - it won't be long until we can harvest the first crop.

I lost the first few plants to slugs & snails within a couple of days of planting, always really annoying & frustrating when you watched a seed poke it's shoots above the soil, full of potential, only to see it mown down by a voracious appetite. I try to avoid using chemicals due to my daughter who loves to help me out in the garden still having a tendency for tasting anything that looks tempting and secondly because I like to think there's always an alternative way. Randomly browsing the web a few days later I came across a tip to use toilet roll tube around the base of Peas, I didn't think it would work, surely the slugs & snails would happily climb up & into the tube to munch the fresh shoot I thought - but clutching at straws I gave it a go anyway and to my surprise have found it works a treat.

I'm now using toilet roll tubes on lots of different plants (should have lots of Sun Flowers this year!) while they get established and as long as the base of the tube is below soil level it works, you can even half the tube so only half an inch is above ground and it still works - no idea why the slugs & snails don't like it and one of these days, maybe when Winter rolls in and the Garden is not so habitable I'll try and find out.

Mystery Plant....?

So in typical fashion, on finding a bag full of unidentified bulbs in the street I had to plant them and have been quite surprised that they have all sprouted in vigorous fashion, the question now is, what are they?

Mystery Plant?

I'm hazarding a guess it's some kind of Lily but really have no idea - can anyone help solve the mystery?