Archive for June 9th, 2008

Strimming fun

Monday, June 9th, 2008

All our rubbish. The skip was empty when we arrived Mr and Mrs Carrot. We didn't grow these ones unfortunately Our new toys! Strimmer and a hose Before strimming I'm making a dent in the jungle

Lucy having a go Much neater now, still some to strim though Spinach and Mizuna getting massive Preparing the end bed for more potatoes Starting to earth up the Kestrel potatoes

Neatening up before the Picasso potatoes go in Potato fertiliser, applied when earthing up Kestrel potatos all earthed up, Picasso ready to go in Giving the new crops a watering Glass cloches have come off the courgettes now

Our new incinerator! In need of a new coat of paint Sturdy grate inside the incinerator Maker's plaque Incinerator's main door

Air inlet and ash hatch - currently rusted shut It's hungry! Nice sturdy carrying handle Tip top chimney hat Pan inserted into the incinerator

Lid on Disco Squash A nice trough we salvaged from the skip

Vrrrrrrrooom! That’s right, we now have a strimmer! Maybe I’m a bit too excited about it, but I have a soft spot for powerful (30cc, don’t laugh) mechanical toys. We originally went to Focus to get a strimmer and were going to buy a Mcculloch model for £69.99 but luckily they were out of stock, meaning we ended up visiting the Argos next door where we found the same model for £59.99! Not only that, but they were also selling another more powerful model for £47.99, bargin. We got the cheapset model, a Spear and Jackson 30cc petrol strimmer.

It was quite easy to get the strimmer running. It uses a 40:1 mixture of unleaded petrol to 2-stroke oil which are easily measured out using the mixing bottle that the strimmer comes with (it also comes with some 2-stroke oil). After strapping it on nervously, Lucy had the job of pulling the starter cable to get it running. I’m happy to say itgot going without incident and nobody was horribly mamed in the process. I did manage to stall it a few times fairly quickly though. The engine needs to be run at full speed for a few seconds after it’s first started to warm things up.

Once I’d got the hang of things it was pretty easy to chop the jungle of grass back to a decent length. In fact it was quite an enjoyable job and very relaxing, the time really flew by.

Before the strimming adventures we had found out from a nice lady on another plot that we could request a skip from the allotment owners, to be delivered free of charge so that we could get rid of all our remaining junk, which was a nice surprise. A few days after Lucy spoke to the lady that owns/runs, she gave us a call to let us know when the skip would arrive. We were advised to get in early because in the past they’ve been filled up with all sorts of junk, not just allotment waste. It came on a Friday morning, so we both took an early lunchbreak, ditched work and headed down to the allotment to clear all the junk. When we arrived the skip was basically empty apart from a couple of bits of broken glass. The picture above shows what it was like when we’d finished filling it up…It was truly brimmed to the cram.

Another new addition to the plot is our lovely blue incinerator. Lucy had been whiling away the hours with her favourite hobby of looking for free stuff on the Free to Collector section of the Friday Ad website, when she came across the incinerator. It was being given away by a couple that live 10mins away from us, as they’d never found time to use it and it was taking up too much room. The advert had only been put up a few minutes before Lucy saw it, so she phoned up straight away and we offered to take it off their hands. They accepted! As it was too big to fit in Lucy’s car, the couple giving it away kindly offered to deliver it directly to the allotment for a fiver to cover the fuel costs (They had a nice big white van). A day later, a bit of heavy lifting and a short drive find it now in its new home at the back of our plot. We were thinking we might try and use it as an oven/tandoor to do a spot of cooking in…we’ll see how that goes later.