KW-30 Fruit picking

Jams and wines and vinegars ahoy!

I think you could say that the potager is now full. We have squeezed the final bean and the ultimate cabbage into their respective beds for some sunshine and growing. The weeding is up to date, all is mulched, and we’re even almost complete with the edges.

6 kilos of gooseberries. With more to come!

Whilst this is true, I do still have two trays of beans, one of brassicas, and a couple of roots still to manage. They are going to go up to the vineyard where we have still not admitted defeat, and the bean element of that needs bean poles. These will be coming from the alder plantation down by the lake.

Five years ago, I decided that a variety of biomes was a good thing, but that the massive area of swamp was just a bit too big, and that I would plant the edges of it at least with fast growing, water loving trees. I went for black alder (Schwarzerle), and planted about 50 of them.

There are now thousands and the lake is all but inaccessible. There is still plenty of swamp, but should anyone want to go and cut a hundred new bean poles, they are just about the exact right size and if I do nothing but clear some paths for walking, I’m definitely going to end up with all the beanpoles that I could possibly want. So I shall do that.

We got some tomato house work done! The first pour of the base is now finished. My lovely assistant, Adele is going to be leaving us today. We are all very sad.

The Week Ahead

This week is fun. Because the pirate brain seems to have intuited that the food stores for the winter are more or less assured, I have found myself suddenly capable not just of thinking of the major projects for the year, but I have started tinkering with them. And so this week we shall:

• Make more bean poles.

• Weed, water mow.

• Start on the jam making. There are raspberries for picking now! Also in this is to weed the soft fruits again. I am not telling you this because it is interesting, I am telling you this so that I don’t forget!

• Make a solar collector for the hot showers project. Yes. I copy pasted this from last week. That doesn’t mean that nothing happened last week. We took delivery of quite a lot of PEX tubing for the collector, and acquired a lot of black matt spray paint for the finish.

• Work on the kitchens. Deep clean and transform one into the cooking for eating kitchen and one into the cooking for preserving kitchen

• Pick some potatoes. I want to try making potato flakes for storage,. So let’s do that

• Get the wood to the sawmill!

Pirate Gardening Tip of the Week

Pirate gardening is mostly old man gardening. It was old man gardening when I started with my first vegetable plot 30 years ago. So really, it’s just the ancient ways of doing things.

Grow Nettles.

If you have any space to grow a patch of nettles, you should definitely consider it.

If you don’t, it’s worth your while once a month in the spring and early summer going out with a big bag and some strong gloves and finding yourself some and making your own nettle soup. The best liquid fertiliser money can buy for free!

Nettle soup in the making. At this point, you can still get close to it without some sweet smelling flowers stuffed into your nostrils.

Nettles have very deep roots, and pull up minerals from deep in the subsoil, and they are crazy high in nitrogen, which is essential for young growing crops and anything green and leafy which you want to harvest. Plop them in a big bucket, fill it with water, and when the smell gets so intense that you can hardly go near it, get it in a watering can, and bring some nettle joy to your young plants.

But now, if you are already making your own, stop putting it on tomatoes. We want big strong healthy tomato plants right up until the point when they start making tomatoes. Now we don’t want leaves, we want big juicy red tomatoes. So no more leaf-making juice!

I’m off now to go and see about the rooms for our new guests. We have a family coming for a few days to learn a bit about what we do here, and to pick raspberries. Looking forward to it, and it should be a good week.

Until then, my pirate lovelies, take care of each other and yourselves and don’t forget to buy your tickets for the collapse laboratory. Let me know if the price is off putting, and we can work something out for sure

Your loving

Pirate Ben

xoxo

https://www.thebarracks.de/the-collapse-laboratory