Category: Grounds (Page 2 of 7)

First cut for the top field

July 24, 2014 / stephen

Well, it has been almost a month to the day that we sowed the grass seed in the top field. Today’s the day to get the lawn mower out. According to most of the gardening books, as soon as the grass gets to about 3 inches long, you should cut it taking just about 30% off. This works well with our lawn mower on the highest setting.

It took a good couple of hours to cut the grass. The lawn mower is only small and although the field is largely flat, there is still around an acre to be cut. Today, the temperature is around 28C, so it is hot work pushing a lawn mower around. I can’t helping feeling that a push along lawn mower is not the right tool for the job! But it is the only one we have. Ideally, we could now do with some rain, but I think we are going to have to wait until Sunday for any rain.

We have just run the lawn mower over the new grass. It was about 3 inches long and we just took the top inch off. It was sown 4 weeks ago to the day.

The grass is starting to thicken out. We are not short of sunshine at the moment, but a drop of rain would be handy. There is some forecast for the weekend.

Winter cabbages planted out

July 24, 2014 / stephen

And this time, I have planted the cabbages under some netting. The last lot of cabbages (and broccoli, for that matter) were eaten by the wood pigeons. They made quick work of polishing off a dozen cabbage plants and about the same amount of broccoli.

We have planted these cabbages where the early potatoes were planted. We have harvested these and are now onto the main crop of potatoes. We have also planted more leeks and sown some carrots. We have just about finished all of the carrots that we grew earlier in the year in the polytunnel.

The onions seem to be doing well, but not as well as the weeds!

Now the early potatoe crop has been harvested, it is time to plant out the winter cabbages. There are two varieties here:

This time we are going to try growing cabbages under netting. The pigeons ate all of the summer cabbages. Last year, the cabbage fly ate most of the cabbages in the polytunnel (which was the wrong place for them anyway). Hopefully, we will have a bit more success with these.

In there, amongst the weeds, are 6 sweet corn plants. We would have had more, but for some reason I had problems getting the seeds to germinate. Goodness, whether these will flower, but we shall see.

New grass in the top field

July 14, 2014 / stephen

It has been two and a half weeks since we sowed the new grass in the top field. It seems to becoming on in leaps and bounds. No doubt the mixture of sunshine and showers recently has helped!

We seem to be costly picking up stones that are coming to the surface, as well as old clumps of dried out grass, but it is looking better by the day.

From what I can tell on the internet, the grass should be cut for the first time once it reaches 7.5cms and then it should only be cut to remove no more than 30%. The grass should be watered straight after. I think the grass is only around 5cms, so we are going to leaving it for a couple of weeks and then cut it just before it rains. Hopefully this will increase the growth even further.

Sunshine and showers are great for growing grass! It really does look green in these photos! It has taken 2.5 weeks to get to this stage.

New manhole cover for the soakway

July 14, 2014 / stephen

When we bought the property, there seemed to be a lot of manholes around the place that didn’t have proper covers. The covers were either old bits of plywood or large slabs of stone.

The rotten plywood covers (mainly on the septic tank) have been replaced with proper cast iron covers. This left us with one manhole in the top field that covered the access to the soakaway. We have no idea how old this soakway is, but when we tested it (by scientifically throwing about 40 gallons of water down it), it seemed to work. Rather than digging a new one, it made sense to reuse it and the rainwater from three drainpipes on the new extension flow into this soakaway.

This was originally covered by a large slab of stone and was covered by soil. We found it when we were digging the foundations for the extension. We have had to lift the height of the manhole so that the new cover is at ground level. This entailed an extra row of concrete blocks on edge. Then we were ready for the new manhole cover (and frame). This was cemented in and once it has all set, we will back-fill around the edge to bring it up to ground level.

The new frame in place. These seem to come in a number of different sizes, but never the right ones! This was the nearest fit. Next job is to cement the frame into place.

Frame now cemented in place. It won’t take long for it to go off on a day like today.

The frame has been cemented in place and the lid put on. As soon as this is all set, we will fill in the area around the manhole and reseed it.

Green haze

July 4, 2014 / stephen

The “green haze” has started to appear on the top field about a week after the grass seed was sown. While it has been dry for the last few days, rain is forecast in the next 24 hours. This is a bit of a shame for the Tour de France, but it is going to help the grass!

This is the view into the top field. While you can see the old grass to the right and left, the new grass has started to appear about a week after being sown. It seems to be growing daily!

The top field is now re-seeded!

June 27, 2014 / stephen

Well, we eventually got there yesterday and the top field has now been re-seeded. Just as well, since the weather has turned wet today. In fact, the wet weather was exactly what we did now that the seed is down.

We re-harrowed the field. This means raking it over with the tractor. Unfortunately, even more stones came to the surface, but these were quickly picked up and thrown to the side of the field. It also pulled up the weeds and wild grass that seemed to be taking hold. Next job was to used a seed drill on the back of a tractor to bury the seed just under the soil. This prevents the birds getting to it. We ran the seed drill across the field both horizontally and vertically to make sure that it was all covered. And just in case anyone is interested, we sowed the seed at 14Kgs per acre.

The last job of the day is then to roll the field flat with a heavy roller. Apparently, the more the ground is rolled, the faster the seed will germinate.

The end result looks fab and with any luck we should see some grass starting to germinate this time next week. Fingers crossed.

This is a seed drill used on the back of a tractor to place the grass seed under the surface of the soil. We made two runs across the field – one horizontally and one vertically. This makes sure we get the best spread.

Once the seed has been drilled into the soil, it is then rolled. Apparently, the more the soil is rolled the faster the germination. It will also keep deter the birds slightly.

Once the field is rolled, the finish is not too bad. Not bad for a field, not great for a bowling green. With any luck, the seed should germinate in about a week.

Reseeding the top field

June 11, 2014 / stephen

All of the rain that we have had recently means that it has been too wet to reseed the top field.

The wet weather did mean that it was easier to pick up all the stones, but now we are waiting for it to dry out before the farmer can return to reseed it. While it is too wet to sow, it is great grass growing weather.

All in all, we spent probably 3-4 days picking stones out of this field. Much longer than I thought, but now that we have restarted on the dry stone wall, much of this stone will be lost in the new wall.

We have had a lovely sunny day here in Yorkshire today, so hopefully, if it remains like this, we will be able to reseed the field next week.

We picked as many of the stones out of the top field as possible, but the rain has meant that it has been too wet to reseed. This is a shame since (ironically) it would be good growing weather for grass!

There is standing water in much of the top field. If nothing else, it means the dog brings most of it into the house once he has been out running around! He often doesn’t remember to wipe his paws on the mat.

Update on the vegetable patch

June 10, 2014 / stephen

The vegetable patch seems to becoming on in leaps and bounds. No doubt due to some of the (very) wet and (slightly) sunny weather we have had over the past few weeks.

The weeds and grass seem to be doing particularly well.

In terms of vegetables, we have potatoes, onions, cabbages (although the pigeons seem to have had these), cauliflower, broccoli (the pigeons like these too), sweet corn and some leeks. We haven’t attempted to grow anything in this soil before, so it will be interesting to see how the vegetables do this year.

We have also planted out some tomato plants in grow bags. While there are a couple of plants in the polytunnel, we have put the rest against the wall outside my study. This gets a fair amount of sun, particularly in the afternoon, and having tomato plants both inside and outside will hopefully spread the harvesting season. We will have to see.

We have only planted from the other side of the piece of wood down towards the end wall. We haven’t got around to clearing the last patch. I guess we will as we start to need the space.

All I can say, is that they must be desperate!

MMmm….without exception, the pigeons have managed to munch their way through all the cabbages that I planted. They are probably so fat they can barely fly!

Re-seeding the top field

May 19, 2014 / stephen

With all the building work now complete, we can turn our attention to re-seeding the top field. We took up all the top soil and subsoil when installing the ground loops for the ground source heat pump. Although we kept the top soil and subsoil in separate piles, the field is a bit of a mess. It is about 1 acre in terms of area.

We asked the local farm if he could help us re-seed it and his advice was to harrow the land first to bring all the large stones to the surface. Then to walk up and down removing all of the larger stones. Well, the field was harrowed last week, so we spent quite a bit of time on Sunday removing the stones. We are using the pickup as a wheel barrow – moving it forward as we pick up the stones. By the end of Sunday, we have covered about half of the field and filled two pickups full of stone. We are just piling up the stone at the edge of the field as this will be used when we re-build the dry stone walls.

We picked up the grass seed from the local agricultural supplier in Honley (Keith Drake). A single sack of seed should apparently be sufficient for an area of this size.

But first the rest of the stones need to be removed.

By the time we had filled up the truck for the second time, we had got about half way through the job of removing the stones. While Jo is back off down to London on Monday, it is one of my tasks for the week to get this finished off so we can get the seed down.

It was hot over the weekend and there isn’t much shade in the top field. Hats and suntan lotion required.

Final toppings added

April 22, 2014 / stephen

Yesterday (Easter Monday) we managed (with help from Gordon and Liam) to get all of the toppings on the remaining end wall. With all of the toppings in position, we have the opportunity to have a bit of tidy up. The remaining toppings are put to one side and the left over pallets are stacked in the back field. We do have some left over walling stone and this woo will be stacked in the backfield.

After the great weather over Easter, it has started raining today and it is due to rain for most of the rest of the week. Ah well, at least we made the best of the good weather.

Placing these large topping stones is definitely a two man job. They vary in weight, but are probably in the 50-75Kgs each. These is me and Liam carrying one into position.

These stones are heavy and often it is difficult to get two sets of hands on them at a time. This is my and Liam placing one of the topping stones – the sawn side is put to the back of the wall so that it cannot be seen from the sunken garden.

The back of the stones are chocked to ensure that the top of the stones are level (or nearly level). Occasionally, we chock the stones from the front, but we have to be careful as these can often be seen. You can see one further down the wall on the right. The chocks at the front usually run the entire width of the stone or even two stones.

When it comes to nudging the stones into their final position there is no substitute for brunt force. Gordon is pushing this one into it’s final position.

The stones are placed in position (they are not cemented into place). They are chocked to ensure that the tops are (more or less) level. Steel toe cap boots are a bit of a must. Liam is nudging this one.

Although it is wet today, we managed to get all of the toppings on the end wall yesterday. With enough time for a few drinks in the pub.

We have not built up part of the wall in the back garden. This is to allow access to get the flagstones into the garden. It is going to be a couple of months before we get around to laying the flags.