Allotment on 20 June 2012 before the Rain!
Archive for June, 2012
Allotment on 20 June 2012, before the rain!
Sunday, June 24th, 2012Andy builds a Geoff Hamilton Cloche!
Saturday, June 23rd, 2012A fellow allotment holder “David” gave me some 20mm plastic water pipe, and with bits of wood from the wood shed, a few nails and screws and a staple gun, I started to make a Cloche, to protect my Cauliflower from the pigeons and white cabbage butterflies.
I think it’s great when you can build something for free, rather than purchase something ready made. The design is based roughly on the Geoff Hamilton design, and many allotment holders up and down the country have made similar versions.
I think if you are an allotment holder, I think it’s some sort of right of passage, building your own Geoff Hamilton Cloche!
Here, Toby Buckland, makes a garden cloche, based on the design
here is a sequence of pictures of how I made mine….
Robin delays me tidying my greenhouse!
Saturday, June 16th, 2012Weather is bad, more rain, allotment is probably washed out again, so time to turn my attentions to tidying up the damaged green house in my garden.
I started to tidy the greenhouse, and noticed a Robin (Erithacus rubecula) had taken up residence on the nest, with three/four chicks!
Oh dear, I’ll have to delay that job then!
greenhouse, needs a tidy!
Robin (Erithacus rubecula) on the nest
Andy’s Citroen Xsara central locking goes bonkers! – But now fixed!
Tuesday, June 12th, 2012bonkers – a technical term for stopped working, or you walk away from the car, and it opens the doors again, and also my drivers electric window has stopped working!
A quick scoot over to the Citroen Xsara Owners’ Club, and quickly searching the Electrical forum, this seems to be a very common fault, where wires in the “door connector” have broken. A quote from the forum “Citroen acknowledged they’d used wire that was too thin and brittle many years ago.”.
A quick post, with the symptoms, just to get a response from Xsara Owner’s to confirm the issue, the problem was as follows:-
1. drivers door electric window does not open or close, using switch.
2.
a. when a key is used in drivers door lock does not open/close central locking on other doors.
b. when key is used to close passenger door, locks close and then open.
c. when remove is used to close doors, it opens again.
So, I had a few minutes today, it was not raining, so I thought I would have a quick look…a few broken small wires, must be easy to fix! I had expected to find two or more broken wires, to my surprise I found a single quite large (green with yellow bars) wire that had visibly broken, I checked all the other smaller wires, and none were found to be broken.
This large heavy guage wire, caused me a few issues, it must carry high current at this guage, so I used a heavy guage wire from an old UPS, and spliced and soldered the broken wires together as per @The Wrinkly Ninja suggestion, this would also prevent the existing wire from breaking again. I had to use my high power soldering iron to “weld” the joints together, and then used heat shrink to seal the joints.
Door Wiring Connector on Citroen Xsara Phase 2
broken wire - green with yellow bars or spots
fix in progress - new yellow wire to join the broken wire
new wire soldered and jointed, heat shrinked
Thanks to @Captain Slow, @The Wrinkly Ninja and @Wheeler at the Citroen Xsara Owners’ Club, my central locking and electric window are working again.
Also Many Thanks to JLB Electronics, for the heat shrink and heat gun. Reliable, fantastic prices, quickly delivery and do not rip you off on postage! The new Maplins for the 21st Century!
Congratulations! You’ve earned lifetime membership to EE
Wednesday, June 6th, 2012I’ve just received an email from Experts Exchange, it reads
Welcome to the 5 Million Point Club.
You’ve done it: you’ve earned enough points to become one of the founding members of our Five-Million Point Club. You’re among an elite group of experts who will have a membership to Experts Exchange for life.
Thank you for your generous contributions! Here’s to many more productive, exciting years solving technology problems together.
and I’ve got a new badge to display….
VMware vEXPERT 2012 New Logo
Saturday, June 2nd, 2012what more can I say here it is:-
Andy’s Asparagus
Saturday, June 2nd, 2012My joints are aching, I spent a long day on the allotment preparing trenches for my asparagus beds yesterday. I’ve planted four beds of asparagus with the following asparagus varities – Backlim, Gijnlim and Purple Passion.
In the past few weeks, I’ve also added another two rows of strawberries, to add to the existing two rows of Elsanta, I’ve added Amelia and Marshmarvel. Amelia is a late cropping variety from June to September, Marshmarvel is an early cropping variety from May to September, peaks in June, with possible second crop later in the season. Elsanta is a mid cropping variety from June to July. So better ask my Mum, how to make “Jam’n’ Jerusalem”! because I could have a few starberries next year!
I’ve also added a few rows of sweetcorn, planted jerusalem artichokes and horseradish, completed moving the goji berry and raspberry bushes, I think the redcurrent, blackcurrant and whitecurrent, gooseberry bushes have not taken – possibly too dry.
My water butts have arrived, I’ve finished preparing the rest of the allotment to add other vegetables this week. The allotment has been bone dry, hence the need for water butts onsite to store water, we did have a wet day last week, which has helped me with not watering every day, since the rain.
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