Where the hell do you start?

I've recently found myself in the position where a client has offered to drop ship for me, partly to give me greater freedom of layout/content/style than they'd be happy to risk on their own domain and partly to see if I could come up with some form of drop shipping "template" that could then be rolled out to a wider audience ... either way they're to cheap to pay me the development hours ... So, now I have a conundrum, do I attempt to bend an existing shopping cart to work ( and look ) the way I want it, or do I try and bend b2evo into being an e-commerce solution?

Each has it's own advantages, using off the shelf e-commerce software means that it already does all the tedious stuff required for a shopping cart to function, but I'd spend god knows how many man hours learning the system, and especially the code, before I could begin to use it for a drop shipping site. On the other hand, I'm not to shabby with the evo code base so I'd be able to crack on and add all the custom stuff required to make this all work ... within my lifetime. The downside of using b2evo is that it's not exactly geared up to be an e-commerce solution out of the box.

Decisions, decisions

I guess it all comes down to "which is the better use of my time?", currently my thoughts are "use an e-commerce package and face the 'now make it available to a wider audience' bridge when I get there", by then the chances are that I'd have a much deeper knowledge of the chosen packages code base and in the meantime I could make a few quid ... but ... there's always a "but" huh? ... *if* I went the evo route then I'd save myself a load of learning and, if I needed to, I could change the core in cvs to add any hooks 'n' stuff that would make my life easier long term.

So ... hands up if you think I should go the evo route

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I don't

It's been a fair tad since I last bothered playing with google for pond pumps, but I'm somehow on the second page of google for the search term, and I get a fair bit of traffic from pond related searches, and all because Barry said a blog would never get to the top ... then he made me promise to stop trying because I was getting a smidge to close for comfort

Anyway, this post is nothing about getting to the top of google for

Pond Pumps

because that'd be childish, I mean, he admitted defeat when I got close ... and I'm waaaaaay to old to be childish .... right?

He'll kill me if I get to number one ... hmmm, I wonder if his lawyers could successfully claim it was suicide and not murder?

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No surprise that it rained

Once again I'm starting a post off with "been a tad since I last posted". It's not because I have nothing to say, it's because I've had bugger all time spare to make a post Ideally I'll find the time to create a gallery concept/skin that works, and then I can just upload all the pictures I take on a daily/weekly basis to show how things are coming along .... don't hold your breath though, I've not had the time/inclination to do any coding for many a month now

Anyway, back to happier thoughts/times ... we're already at the point where the plot is starting to provide ingredients for our meals, it may only be radish and the occasional lettuce, ohhh and a few herbs, ohhh and some spring greens ... but it's only May, and the season's only just starting to kick in. Most of the beds are now full of stuff, I've one more bed in the large greenhouse that will soon be filled with sweetcorn ( true gold ), squashes ( butternut & courgette ), and the odd runner bean and borlotti beans ( about 10' row of each ) which will keep the broad beans, pak choi and beetroot company. Our own little greenhouse, that's recently had a bloody good spring clean and is looking good as new, has been press ganged into holding some of the less robust seedlings, mainly the sweetcorn and the runner beans, because the small greenhouse is starting to get a smidge full of dahlias.

Asparagus for 2013!

After spending a bored afternoon, on one of the sunny days, rearranging the piles of bricks that sit on the concrete base, beside our lil greenhouse, I managed to not only find a space for our water butt, I also managed to sneak in a 11'x4' raised bed. Mind you, when Barry noticed his only comment was "why didn't you just dig a bed in the field, it would've been far easier! .... so, being ever the opportunist I mentioned the fact that I was contemplating the possibility of slapping in 4 more 15'x4' beds in the field ( "but only if I cope with the space I have this year, because you'll want that back next year" ) ... god loves a trier and all that huh? ... and I'm living proof because, not only did Barry go "sure, no problem", he followed it with "you may have the same space next year ... if not more" ... damn, how cool would that be? At the same time he mentioned that the space I'd slapped the raised bed on was where he was considering building a shed to house our lawn mower(s) ... ooops ... the good news is, it won't be this year.

So, I decided to use the new bed to raise some Asparagus seedlings, after checking that I had enough time to plant seeds this year, as it's faaaaaaaaaaaaaar to late ( and bloody expensive! ) to buy 1 year crowns for this season. Apart from saving me a fortune ( £2.05 compared to £20+ huh ) it'll also allow me to select the best 20 male plants that grow ( males produce more spears than females ) and I won't have to "wait the extra year" that you normally do by growing from seed because I wouldn't be able to buy 1 year old crowns until next year. The bad news is, I have very little time to get the seed ordered and finish prepping the bed up.

I'm a plant doctor!

I can't remember if I mentioned in my last post, but a couple of weeks ago I went round to my dads and he had some very leggy tomato plants that were crammed together in little 3" pots, the good ones were just about able to support their own weight, so I offered to take them away to see if I could improve them as I had better growing conditions and far more time than they did ... So, off I meandered to the potting shed with them. I decided that I could definitely save 4 of them by slapping them into 12" pots and burying them as deep as I could, the others were pretty much buggered, and that's when the experiment I ran earlier this year paid off. One of the things I'd done with the worst of my plants was to decide "bugger it, they'll die anyway", so I cut the tops off and rooted them .... and it mostly worked ... So, I did the same with Sue's tomatoes.

As you can imagine, decapitation isn't something that a plant enjoys to much and they spent quite a bit of time looking pretty dead. I'd slapped them under the misters in the potting shed so they'd at least get some water through their leaves, after that it was a race to see if they'd grow new roots in time to stop them dying. One week on and not only had the plants recovered but they'd also started to put on some new growth! Meanwhile the ones that I'd slapped into tall pots had decided that they weren't going to be out done and have promptly produced their first set of fruit! Damn, here's me growing my own tomatoes in as close to ideal conditions as I can provide and they're beaten to the fruiting stage by a bunch of gangly plants ... I may never live this down

The ex-coal shed

By a lucky coincidence I managed to get some free time, some sunshine and a sledgehammer, all at the same time. A tad of grunting later and I'd dropped both our side and our neighbours side of the coal shed, I even managed to leave the dividing wall intact! Unfortunately since then it's pissed it down every time I've had some free time so I haven't been able to clear up all the rubble and take it to the tip. In true frugal fashion I'm going to be reusing any bricks that I can salvage to build a raised bed along the back of next doors garage. Eventually this will be converted into a kind of 9' x 3' greenhouse / cold frame, but first I have to wait until the strawberries have stopped fruiting as I'll need to dig them up before I can start. Once the bed is built I'll then be able to sort out the tuft of grass that we lovingly call a lawn.

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I wonder what he thought of all the peas!

Wow, doesn't time fly!

Now that the weather's starting to get a tad warmer, just a tad mind, things have started to happen faster, it won't be long before I have to start putting stakes in to support the peas, and I still need to make a Munty frame for my runner beans which will be going in next month, but I'm getting a tad ahead of myself. Before I could plant anything I needed to get the 4 beds in the large greenhouse and the 3 beds in my own little plot sorted out. For most of them this meant rotavating them and adding a liberal amount of chicken shit to them, apart from the bed that I'll be using for carrots and parsnips as they don't like rich soil. The good news was, I didn't need to rotavate the brassica bed, as they like firm soil, so I just tidied up the surface and called it done.

The first bed to be ready was my pea bed, probably because I had some company whilst I was doing it, even if that company was an ugly frog So now I have ½ a row of peas ( Kelvedon Wonder ) and ½ a row of Sugar Snaps growing merrily away under some netting to keep the foxes off. Some time in the next week I'll be doing another ½ row of each of them so I should get a reasonable cropping period. Not long after they popped up I had a visit from DD who's known as the Pea God on the allotment forums that I'm a member of, so I got the chance to point proudly at my 2" tall peas

Brassicas like it firm

As I mentioned, I didn't rotavate the bed where my brassicas are going ( Calabrese : Quick Heading, Broccoli : Summer Purple Sprouting, Cabbage : Greyhound & Rouge Tete Noir ) as they like really firm soil, so firm in fact that you're advised to walk on the beds and then walk around the plants after you've planted them. Normally you're advised to avoid walking on beds at all costs as it can damage the soil structure, which is never a good thing. To plant them I just dug a hole slightly bigger than the pot they were in, slapped them in the hole, sans pot of course, and then did a kind of shuffle around the base of them to really firm the soil up, I must have looked like a demented Indian who'd forgotten the steps for the rain dance, but if it works then it's worth it. A couple of days later I had to replace one of the plants with a spare as it had keeled over, and I had plenty of spares so it was easier to just replace it than to try reviving it.

The next bed to get planted up was the onion bed, it's now chock full of onions! 200 Red Barons, the few Ailsa Craig & Bedfordshire Champions that had germinated. I also went out and bought some onion sets to fill the rest of the bed due to the naff germination of the Ailsa & Bedfordshire, these were planted at the same time. Along one edge of he bed I left a strip so that I could successionaly sow some pickling onions ( Paris Silverskin ), about a ¹⁄₃ of this strip has now been sown, I'll be sowing another ¹⁄₃ every couple of weeks so I should have a continuous supply.

The 3 Sisters

Sounds like the title of a porn film huh, but it's actually a planting arrangement that's meant to really work, I guess time will tell. Basically you throw sweetcorn, runner beans and squash in the same bed, and they kinda get on in a beneficial manner. The corn becomes poles for the runners, although I'll be adding a Munty frame, and the squashes roam through the bed space between the corn so you get a decent return from a single bed. I decided to use the longest bed for this and put 2x7' rows of broad beans ( Super Aqualduce ) at one end, and a 2' strip across the bed for successional sowings of beetroot ( Pronto ) at the other end. This leaves me with 20' of bed space which I'm going to be doing the 3 sisters with, Runner Beans : Cherokee Trial of Tears & Borlotti, Squash : Butternut & Courgettes, Sweetcorn : True Gold. I'm also going to be using the spaces between the squashes for lettuces ( little gem ) and Pak Choi until they get so big that they fill it all.

As 20' of sweetcorn would be a tad much to eat/preserve all in one go I've sparked some off *really* early, and I'll be doing another "slightly early" batch next week, and then a "normal time" batch some time in may. If they all live then I should have hopefully spread out my harvesting period over the space of a couple of months. If they don't live then I'll just sow the whole 20' space at the correct time of year and then hope like hell I can cope with the glut when they harvest I've also sparked off a couple of squash and a couple of courgettes early as well, so that the sweetcorn doesn't feel all lonesome in the bed by itself. I was tempted to start some of the runners early as well, but I don't have a lot of the seed so I'm not going to risk it. I'll be saving my own seed at the end of the year, so if I have enough space I'll be able to play with more early stuff.

One day this will be full of tomatoes and chillis

The small greenhouse

If my experiment had been successful then the small greenhouse would have had a dozen or so tomato plants growing in it by now, but it wasn't so there isn't. The main reason for the failure was that the heated beds in, the potting shed, didn't get turned on as early as usual and I couldn't provide enough light at home in my little lightbox. Ah well, there's always next year huh? The good news is that some of them survived and I still had the other half of the seeds, so I sowed them a few weeks ago and most of them are now coming along nicely, they just won't be as early as I was hoping for. Rather than just stare at an empty bed I decided to throw in a couple of rows of radish ( Cherry Belle ), beetroot ( Pronto ) and lettuce ( Little Gem ) and they're all growing nicely, although not quite as fast as they'll do now that it's started to get warmer and lighter.

I've also been using the small greenhouse as a kind of giant coldframe for the seedlings that didn't need as much heat but, now that it's getting warmer, most of these are being moved outside to the large greenhouse. We've also started moving the first batches of Dahlias into the small greenhouse where they'll stay until they're ready for planting, sometime near the end of May, so it's rapidly beginning to fill up and will soon be very over crowded. I've also lost a few feet of the bed in here as Barry needs it for one of the varieties of Dahlias, it'll only be a few plants so I'll probably just grow a few less tomatoes ... and it makes me feel less guilty for extending my beds in my normal lil veg plot in the corner

The Veg Patch

Last year I decided to join an allotment forum, although I'd been lurking there for a fair amount of time already. After reading about how other people lay out their plots, and why, I decided to re-arrange my lil patch in the corner, I also took the opportunity to square it off, which has gained me a few extra feet of length on the beds. I'd already decided to get rid of the bed that ran across the top of the patch as it was a nightmare to rotavate and maintain but, after all my reading, I'd now decided to rearrange my current 3 beds into 2 wider beds and to put a path along the side fence, instead of having a bed tight against it. The end result is, I now have 2 x 15' x 4' beds with a net gain of 20'² of bed space, although the real gain is much more as I can now get 3 rows of spuds into one bed instead of 1 row of spuds each in two beds. I still need to finish sorting out the second bed, it'll be used for carrots ( Lisse de Meaux ) and parsnips ( Tender and True ) which means that I need to rotavate the arse off it and remove all the stones, which will involve me sieving all the soil ... all 15' x 4' of it!

Successional Sowing

I've mentioned successional sowing a few times now, it sounds really easy in theory, you just make successive sowings of seeds to extend the cropping period. For example, my radish take approximately 6 weeks to crop, so if I want to have a continuous crop of radish I'd sow a new batch every couple of weeks and Bob's yer uncle, you have fresh radish every day for the whole season. In reality it's a lot harder than that, mainly because you forget to sow a new batch until you've harvested the last batch! So, this year I'm determined not to forget and I've put aside various bits of bed space specifically for veg that I'm going to sow successively ... I guess I'll find out soon enough how successful I am

Back at the ranch

Considering the size of our tiny lil back garden I'm pretty impressed but what we've managed to cram in so far and we've still got more to put in. The garlic and shallots are coming along nicely especially since I gave them a high nitrogen feed, which has reduced the yellowing of the leaves and the Egyptian Walking Onions have just started to poke their noses through. The rest of the bed has some spring onions in, which have just started to germinate. I can't wait to be eating my own garlic and I can use some of them for growing next years crop. About the only thing I'm missing in the Allium family is some Welsh Onions which I'd love to grow, so if anyone's got any that they can let me have then let me know.

The strawberries, which did crap last year, have got some flowers on (yay), they must have known that I'd intended digging up the whole bed so that I could make a decent raised bed that I can turn it into nice sized greenhouse. Now I'm going to have to wait until a lot later in the season, and I'm going to have to find a new home for them ... which is going to be a challenge in itself! So far my Asparagus hasn't put in an appearance, it didn't do so well last year either, so if it doesn't have a blinding year this year then I'm either going to re-home it or bin it and use the space for something that works. I'd hate to give up on it though, so I'll probably think of somewhere I can home it, and maybe get a few new plants at the same time.

I've not really done that much with the other beds at home yet, mainly because I'm going to be dropping the coal shed some time in the next couple of weeks and I'll have to redo those beds when it's done. Once I've finished them I'll be using them to grow a few salad crops and herbs as it's always good to have a few handy for a quick meal without having to traipse back to the field because I forgot the lettuce

Still todo

I must ask Barry if he minds me starting a couple of compost heaps, made out of pallets of course, as we easily produce enough compostable waste and it means I could slowly raise both the beds in the field which get pretty waterlogged in winter. I also need to clear the space on the concrete beside our lil greenhouse so that I can stick a raised bed in there, which I would either use for my strawberries or the asparagus. The good news is, if we use all the bricks on building work I'll be able to slap in an 8' x 4' raised bed and still have room for my water butt.

At home I want to knock the coal bunker down and convert the strawberry bed into a raised bed / greenhouse, I've still not worked out a good design for it though, and it's been delayed by the strawberries actually looking like they'll make an effort this year. At the same time I'll finish laying out the salad and herb beds which means I'll then be able to sort out the tiny bit of green stuff that we call a lawn. I'm also considering building a couple of large planters for under the front windows but the Mighty V's not entirely convinced ... yet

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These will soon be rooted up and well on their way to being full plants

Get out the scalpel

Damn these buggers grow fast! Less than a week after we put the tubers on the benches and they'd already started to throw off new shoots so it was time for Barry to get his scalpel out. Different people grow dahlias in different ways. Some, like The Mighty V, just leave the tubers in the ground and let them regrow ( if they survive ) the next year, but the plants start looking crap by the third year, so I'm always replacing them with fresh ones. Others, mainly the yanks I believe, split the tubers into individual "chicken legs" and then plant each of them up, which allows them to get about 1/2 dozen or so off each parent plant. We just throw the whole tuber into a tray, water it and then take cuttings .... lots of cuttings ... from the first flush off about a dozen Trelyn tubers we've already taken 70+ cuttings, which is about all we need for this year, but we could easily get a couple of hundred more if we needed them.

When you take cuttings it's really important to to make the cut directly below a leaf joint as this is where next years cuttings will come from, assuming you want to take cuttings next year of course but we always do. They're easy enough to root up, if you have some rooting powder then just dip them in that and them slap them in some seed compost. If you haven't got any rooting powder then just slap them in some seed compost. If you haven't got any seed compost then just slap them in some compost ... as I said, it's real easy ... then stand welllllllllllllll back, because these buggers grow like there's no tomorrow.

Each of the trays holds 77 cuttings, so we're about half way there

The greenhouses

The large greenhouse is now cleared, so during this week I'll be rotovating it ready for sterilising the beds next week. Then I'll be doing the same in the small greenhouse which means that I need to get all my seedlings hardened off ready to move into the top end of the large greenhouse so that they don't get killed as well. It's taking me a fair tad longer this year than normal as I've been a smidge ill for the last few weeks and haven't really had the energy needed, but we seem to be winning so far. I'll also be dropping the sides on the large greenhouse to help keep the warmth in and the wind out as the sterilising agent needs the soil to be over 10°C before it's active ... cool, I'll be in my shorts in no time

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We finally started!

We finally got round to sparking off the dahlia tubers this week although, like everything else to do with the dahlias this year, we're a fair tad behind as some of them should have been started a month ago. Unlike growing veg, or non-show flowers, this may come back to bite us on the arse as everything about their life cycle is strictly timed and we may have just irreparably screwed up that timetable, it pretty much comes down to how fast they start to throw cuttings. With a tad of luck everything will work itself out in the long run but if it doesn't then it's not the end of the world as we're less interested in showing this year due to other time constraints, so it's mainly about preserving our varieties. The fact that this is also our last year as world champions, and we have no hope of defending our title as they're being held in Canada this year, doesn't really help I guess.

And they're off!

I've been around dahlias for years, so I *know* how much they can change from day to day .. hell, sometimes you feel that if you sat there quietly enough then you could actually watch them grow ..... but the speed that the tubers have started throwing shoots is pretty impressive to say the least! We've only had the tubers on the beds for a week and already the majority of them are throwing shoots, even the mary's and bryn's which are normally a tad on the lethargic side when it comes to recognising that it's a new year.

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