Blocked and pipes

After leaving the foundations to dry for a while today we got the first row of blocks in. These’ll need a day or two to dry before we can put the next row up.

As summer has arrived we now need to think about watering the plants,  we have been doing it by hand with the hose pipe but, we like to do things the easy way, so we put in the spay and drip watering from last year, only this time we put things together in a more permanent way so that we don’t have to do a massive amount of work each year to put in the watering.

The veg garden now with watering ready for the summer.

Weird Weather, Cement and Onions (again)

Every now and then the weather in La Palma can sneak up on you and do something that you don’t expect. Like this morning when I opened the bedroom window to see this sight. Yes that is the top of the cloud layer that you can see. Because the house is about 500m ( 1,640ft in old money)and under the right conditions the inversion layer can be very low and the cloud is stuck below us.

You can also see how the cloud flows up the deep ravines along the north coast leaving just the ridges visible.

Then shortly after sunrise something strange happens and the inversion layer rises in altitude and the cloud follows and before you know it you are enveloped in cloud.

And while on the root we spotted these guys working and it looks as if the lower section of our road which goes down below the main road from our house and loops back up is finally being concreted (it was just a dirt track in places).

And after harvesting here they are all 85 Onions, and considering we put in about 100 that's not a bad, they just need to dry a little on the roof and they’ll be ready to be strung and that will keep us in onions for a couple of months.

The start of the steps, and onions

The main task for this summer it again to try and get the rest of the house painted, before we can do this we have to get the ground out side the front of the house up to a level, We had started this a while back just before Helen had her problems with the blood pressure.

Anyway today we finally got to pick up where we left off before. The first item on the list was to prepare the foundation for the wall which will go up to extend the steps a little wider. Embedded in this is a tube (the big red one) which will carry the pipe for the watering under the path.

Another thing is that most of the onions have done well and are starting to go over which means that they are about ready to pull up.

This weird looking structure is in fact the old wooden railing which used to be alongside the steps but needed to be taken out before we could do the work. Once we have finished this will be fixed up and made good before being put back alongside the new steps.

One down, One to go

Well my SOS was answered and the blocks have arrived, so all that was left to do was put them in. Here it is the first compost bin finished.

Later on it will get some wooden slats at the front to hold it all back in, but for now it’s ready to take the compost that we have.

Looking at the side you can see part of the second bin starting to take shape, this will be finished at some point in the future.

Living on the fat of the land

Well June is here and soon it will be the end of the school year and the start of the lean two months when we don’t have any income coming in, so to help with this we are growing a lot of our own veg. Here is a general view of the whole garden.

Carrots, onions and beetroot are all doing well. With another set about to go in, We have had some trouble with cut worms, a type of moth caterpillar which likes to live in the soil and then pop up and chew through your plant just at the point where the soil ends. Very annoying and hard to find and remove.

Here's a wider shot with the previous crops in the foreground and further back the peppers and then the tomatoes. The first lot of peppers we put in didn’t survive, but we think that it was due to the fact that after we brought the plants that we went to visit some friends and left them in the car and we think they got too hot.

The leeks continue to do well, but the lettuces suffered a bit from the damp weather we have had, and some pest problems (slugs and snails). Also the courgettes aren’t doing well due to the weather and the lack of male flowers, meaning they aren’t producing much at present.

Early days at present with the cucumbers, we haven't  got anything from them yet.

The tomatoes are taking over and going crazy.

Meep goes to investigate the strange clumps that have appeared at the bottom of the garden, those are the Calabazas Meep.