Roaming Zebra

It looks like our red-onions, and probably shallots have been killed off by the recently (last year) onion fly affecting the Midlands.

Steph was at the plot yesterday, just for a bit of a wander, and one of the other plotholders said he thought our red onions look like they’ve been attacked.

I went up today to inspect the damage. Decided to leave the red onions in for now and see what happens with them. Did remove the winter onions, which I’ve been thinking about doing, and some are starting to flower. Some of them have obviously got a bit upset about having wet feet from the recent rains, and some are damaged by the onion fly larvae. Hopefully the rest will be OK and store for a while without too much further damage.

Cleared several barrow loads of weeds from the winter onion section. One now has peas planted – assuming the pigeons don’t get the shoots – a liberal application of bits of polytunnel and 1/2 drinks bottles to distract them has been added! Planted out the celery into one of the gaps from the onions – it was all looking a bit pot bound, which apparently celery doesn’t like.

Also planted out the remaining 8 climbing French bean plants as well as a couple of onion squash/pumpkin/courgette plants to fill the gaps – don’t really need any more plants, but they might as well get used!

Not very happy with my beans in general – everyone else’s runners are going up the poles. Mine just sit at the bottom. I’ve tied them to the poles at the bottoms – the few that had grabbed on themselves have grown better, so maybe they just need a little direction!

A couple of plot-holders also mentioned the grass in the middle of the plot, and that maybe I should give it a spray. I wasn’t sure if it was a hint that I should do something about it, so I took up their offer to borrow some weed-killer spray to tackle the grass. I’m probably not going to be able to get up to clear it in the next couple of weeks anyway, so the weedkiller should have done its job by then and it’ll all be easy to remove

In the middle bit we didn’t really have plans for this year anyway, though we’re thinking of planting some grapevines either late this year, or into next year. If they are allowed that is.

All in all though, I think a reasonably productive afternoon at the plot!

The site treasurer was talking about buying a roll of enviromesh, which is quite expensive in shops, but across the site a big roll should hopefully work out not too expensive. I think it might be worth getting some to protect the onions, and maybe carrots next year!

I’m wondering what next is going to break at home? We’ve had a spate of things over the last six weeks, starting with the cistern filler on the bathroom toilet (it was taking about an hour to fill!), that was a relatively quick job to fix – though I had to change the isolation valve for a new one as the original plastic push-fit was impossible to turn on or off. It now has a shiny new metal push fit connector with a little tap on the isolation valve.

Next we had the fridge-freezer, which just randomly decided to stop chilling for long periods of time, and ordering a new one was a right PITA. It did eventually arrive, though about 2 weeks after the original date it was supposed to (the delivery company kept changing their mind about if they had it in stock). And it only just fitted in the back door!

And of course the lawnmower decided to pack in as well. I think we got a good deal on the new one (20% in Homebase at the time, and I got a 15% off voucher for using an AMEX card). And admittedly the new mower is much lighter and easier to use, but still I’d have preferred not to but a new one.

Oh and the display is malfunctioning in the car at the moment – the bit in the driver’s console which is supposed to tell you the radio station, just doesn’t do that bit anymore. Its under warranty, but I’ll have to take it into the garage to get it fixed, and just at the moment, we need the car to be available!

Last night, the kitchen tap decided that it wasn’t going to turn itself off. Its been stiff for a while and we’d actually decided which tap we were going to buy to replace it. The old one obviously new it was going to be replaced, so just failed. Quick rush to B&Q to get a new one – they didn’t have the one we’d picked and we needed to get it sorted just in case things started moving with the baby! So several hours later, I managed to get the new tap in place. Of course the box had those plastic seal strap things that are a pain to remove, and the edge of one was sharp which cut my hand to start off in the shop.

The box didn’t say if it included monobloc hoses, and the box was sealed, so I purchased a pair just in case, and thought push-fit would be quicker to install. To start with, the push-fits wouldn’t actually screw in to the tap – its got four hoses coming out of it as it has a pull-out hose built in. The push fit hoses are a tiny bit bigger than the supplied ones, so they didn’t fit meaning I had to resort to the supplied set. Now the old tap had screw fittings, but the opposite type to the ones on the new hoses. And the old tap hoses were a different diameter, so I couldn’t just swap them out. Incidentally, I also had to modify the cupboard interior to fit the new tap into the hole. Finally I got it all nearly screwed in, when I found the metal retainer underneath had to be pushed along a long bolt from the bottom, which I’d already nearly fully tightened. So I had to dismantle it again. Got everything in, but wasn’t sure about the top mounting, but I seemed to have used all the bits. Anyway, tested with the water on, started packing stuff into a box for the bin, and found the base bit of the tap sandwiched inside some foam packing. Disassemble again to install it, and reassemble. Get it all together and test, and the hot water hose decided from all the movement to pop off the pipe underneath pouring water everywhere. By now its 11.30pm, so I get it back together mop up a bit, but decide to leave the hot turned off at the service valve just in case. Finally this morning, I was happy its all together. Just noticed there’s a tiny teardrop leak on one of the valves, should be a quick tighten with a spanner, but who knows!

Grrr!