- Thread starter monkeymark
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Onoff
In the land of the unfinished project I am King!
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Today I acquired:
4 bags of manure free from here:
A greenhouse frame with no glass from my brother.
A frame for growing runner beans made from galv CHS Tubeclamp and fittings. I made it for my Dad 20+ years ago but he can no longer garden.
I'm planning on "growing things"! At 55 I'm a later starter.
Next to get a bean trench dug in a sunny bit of the garden.
4 bags of manure free from here:
A greenhouse frame with no glass from my brother.
A frame for growing runner beans made from galv CHS Tubeclamp and fittings. I made it for my Dad 20+ years ago but he can no longer garden.
I'm planning on "growing things"! At 55 I'm a later starter.
Next to get a bean trench dug in a sunny bit of the garden.
A trip to the local car boot today.
It doesn't look much, but there are a few kilos of steel there. The hot rolled plates are 6, 8 and 10 mm thick. The shiny (under the rust) cold rolled plate is thinner. I was feeling it by the time I got it back to the car. It cost a fiver in total, which is fair considering I've spent much more buying similar odd bits off Ebay for projects. It's good "Pratting about in the garage" material.
Three Morse taper drills off the tool dealer there. A tenner for all three which again is much better than Ebay prices. The big one is a very obscure 59/64ths which I bought purely because I knew it was a size that I didn't have. I will complete the collection up to 1" one day. A 20mm and 3/4" make up the rest of the collection. They are well sharpened too.
I missed out on three wooden sheet metal slappers by a few seconds. Gutted. They sold for two quid! They were well-used, so I'm not sure if that meant they were really good tools or just plain worn out. I'll never know.
It doesn't look much, but there are a few kilos of steel there. The hot rolled plates are 6, 8 and 10 mm thick. The shiny (under the rust) cold rolled plate is thinner. I was feeling it by the time I got it back to the car. It cost a fiver in total, which is fair considering I've spent much more buying similar odd bits off Ebay for projects. It's good "Pratting about in the garage" material.
Three Morse taper drills off the tool dealer there. A tenner for all three which again is much better than Ebay prices. The big one is a very obscure 59/64ths which I bought purely because I knew it was a size that I didn't have. I will complete the collection up to 1" one day. A 20mm and 3/4" make up the rest of the collection. They are well sharpened too.
I missed out on three wooden sheet metal slappers by a few seconds. Gutted. They sold for two quid! They were well-used, so I'm not sure if that meant they were really good tools or just plain worn out. I'll never know.
25.4_mechanic
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Don't worry, I also only found my way back to the garden in my fifties
- now I am in a Europe-wide network for the preservation and reseeding of old crop varieties and active in the fight against the industry's attempt to make it illegal to grow your own seeds with patents on natural creatures like plants
- and you can do this for a very long time in your life, they even say that life itself would be prolonged this way ....
Carsten
--
Onoff
In the land of the unfinished project I am King!
- Messages
- 12,915
- Location
- Sevenoaks, UK
25.4_mechanic
Member
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- Germany, southwest
If the Lidl step drills are anything like Aldi ones, treated with a hint of care, you might find that chocolate is pretty hard wearing. I bought some a long time ago, found they were quite good, so next time they appeared I bought a couple for "spare" . . . they are still "spare" a decade later. DIY use of course, but still reasonable use with building, modifying competition cars.A trip to lidl, picked up a couple of trolley`s ( good for 250kg watch this space), some chocolate stepped drills for the cordless drill box and some batteries.
Arc Tourist
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I also bought a couple of the Lidl step drills awhile back, and as you say, they are hard wearing. They seem to be my go to bits for everything that doesn't requires a precise size or deep hole.
DAPPH
as dyslexik as I'm daft
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Run your bean & pea trenches north to south like grape vines & potatoes etc. if you can so the plants get sunshine on both sides of the plants for a better harvest .
Line the bottom of the bean trench in six inches of sopping wet newspaper , cover that with six inches of horse muck to make the hot bed and top it over with six inches of fairly fine sieved soil so once the roots reach the nice moist bed the beans will have a consistent level of moisture to draw upon . If you don't have enough bean sticks use two 8 foot tall upright posts set true & stabilized with adjusting < guy ropes at each end use 18 inch long stakes and a cross bar then bring off the bar to make a tall tent shape .
Use as many 6 mm guy ropes as needed to be pegged out a foot or so from the centre line . Plant the seedlings or sow seeds an inch or so to one side of these stakes two or three plants /seed per string . Use slug pellets regularly to protect emerging new bean shoots as slugs & snails just love them or better still if you have th money use a nematode slug & snail killer as they don't harm birds , pets & hedgehogs .
It's also a good idea to plant /sow in pots an extra half dozen beans in case you need urgent replacements ,.they can always be composted if they are not needed by the time the plants are 18 inches tall.
You can do the same for your peas too as they are stronger than the traditional willow wand or bamboo wigwam growing frames) Once you start to get flowers on th plants help set the flowers in the cooler late afternoon with a fine spray headed hose so insects are more attracted to the flowers by scent and the chance of a gentle drink . The spraying also helps agitate the flowers to put pollen in the air for self fertilization as well.
When Munchkin was 8 ( 12 years ago ) I set up an automatic time clocked micro misting watering system , we grew loads 42 inch long runner beans on our bean bed made up as above . Not one of them was woody /scaly or otherwise in edible . Consistent access to the best nutrient rich moisture laden growth medium is the key here .
Over the years moving the deep bean & pea beds over the blue clay garden a few feet each year we've managed to deep dig and fertilize much of the back garden .
I also fed the bean & pea beds with a gallon of tomatorite type liquid feed down old sink waste pipes directly into the top of the newspaper base once the flowers had got going and kept doing it till the frosts killed the plants . Picking regularly we'd more than enough legumes for three families as well as the three of us . I still dry , freeze , pickle or pressure canned the surpluses . These days now there is only two of us I've changed things a bit so there is less heavy work & not so much veg .
Takling to my wife yesterday if Putin carries on being a nutter past the end of the month that may well change as I'll be growing and storing a much as I can .
DAPPH
as dyslexik as I'm daft
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Re:- The button cells ..A trip to lidl, picked up a couple of trolley`s ( good for 250kg watch this space
View attachment 338464
View attachment 338466
As I only tend to use AG13 & 2332 's( ?) buttons I got fed up of having several part emptied cards of cells in the battery drawer ..had a look on line via eBay and found you can now get cards of 25 or 50 of a single sized cell . They worked out at 5 cards for under a fiver IIRC . So I got a couple cards of each , of which all have use by 2027 / BBF dates stamped on the cards .
Rannsachair
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57 today, a few gifts from my Amazon wish list influenced by this forum: Bosch knife, knipex snips.... My son is building me a control panel with invertor for the new mill.
slim_boy_fat
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Happy birthday Tom, and many of them 
. Have these 
.
. Have these .
Mick Annick
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Happy Birthday Tom, dunno what use that hammer is though to an metal botherer…
Rannsachair
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I am rubbish at woodwork, though been doing a lot around the house recently so thought a quality hammer would be a nice to have, half the rubber grip has come off my old one. Should probably of asked on here what to buy, Estwig reviews were pretty good.
@Rannsachair Happy Birthday - but the important question is "when is the mill arriving?"
