What Jobs Are We Doing in the Garden Today... MK3.. 2013

Matthew, leafmould.......you collect up all the fallen leaves and rot them down to use as a mulch.

 

Back to feeding the birds and giving them a bath to freshen up with.
Not much else I can do there at the moment.

 

Thawing out the outside tap and the hens' drinker.

 

Fleeced my cyathea Australia's and my Washingtonia robusta, and also wrapped their pots with bubble wrap.

 

Smashed the water logged ice rink for the ducks.
Defrosted the chooks water.
Ran back inside, on crunchy frost hard grass, cos it's a wee bit nippy out there.
Returned to give ducks and chooks some corn to warm their cockles.
Walked back inside, on crunchy frost hard grass, cos I slipped the first time

 

Windy out, keep having to go out and put back a piece of the greenhouse at the moment.

 

Just looked over at the Barometer. OMG. It's dropped one heck of a lot in less than 12 hours!! 74 millibars? ( Ten to the hour on the clock face ). If it keeps going down we'll be in "Grand Pluie" then theres only "Tempete" left. Think we're in for Stormy Weather ,
Jenny

 

Added a more sensitive thermostat to the heater in the greenhouse as the built in one seemed to heat up faster than the air around it & cut the power too early.

--
Last week it got down to -4.9 in the garden & a recorded -2.2 in the greenhouse ; hopefully that was because I had the temperature sensor against the wall, the max-min in there didnt get lower than -1.. still too cold for my poor bannanas huddled in the corner:

-- hopefully they will be OK, I will know in a week or so.

Tomorrows job is getting the temperature logger I picked up in the week to register the two sensors out there ; once thats done I can connect it to the PC & get it to text me if it thinks its too cold.. pure geeky pleasure !

 

I think that is money well spent. Quite apart from what you have noticed about the thermostat on the heater being too close to the hot air the hysteresis of cheap thermostats is dreadful, so it may just be that which has caused your Min temperature recorded to be so low - i.e. it could easily be 10C between the OFF Max and coming back ON again at the Min. That is also hugely wasteful of fuel (assuming you are overheating the greenhouse by 10C when you hit the Max and the thermostat cuts out, or you wind up with dead plants because it hits 10C below the target before it cuts back in again :(

It might be lousy hysteresis that is letting the temperature fall to -2.2C - rather than the thermostat being too close to the warm air?

What have you bought?

I've been playing with some sensors by AREXX
http://www.arexx.com/arexx.php?cmd=goto&cparam=products#measurement
and some USB Plug in devices (i.e. not wirelessly transmitting, just recording/logging until next plugged in).
http://www.conrad-uk.com/ce/en/prod...erature-Humidity-Data-Logger/0510035&ref=list
Both work tolerably well, but I have serious misgivings about both of them (I'll do a proper write-up when I have a bit more time)

Hence I'd be interested to here what you are planning to use

By the by, what were you using to measure that the Min fell to -2.2? I couldn't read my mercury Max/Min thermometer to within 2C ...

Ah, typing that, I reckon you have a digital one Quite often display to 0.1C but specification says "+/- 1C" - so why do they make them display to 0.1C then a sceptic (me?!!) would think they were trying to hoodwink the buying-public into thinking them are mega-accurate :(

 

Cutting some greenery for the fire places and refilling the Squirrel/bird feeders

 

Covering my fig bush/tree with a bit of roofing twinwall plastic should have done it a month ago. I grows against house/conservatory wall corner so is a bit protected. Lovely and sunny at the mo 10/30 I feel a cuppa coming on. Then leaves lovely oak trees but they do make a some work.

 

The birds have eaten nearly all my holly berries! Last year I protected some for wreath making and as soon as I hung my wreath on the front door the birds went for the berries on it. It was really scary looking out the door viewer which is sited in the middle of where it hangs.

 

Low on berries here too Scrungee.....only last week the Holly was covered in them....i should have protected it

 

Today I threw out some of the dying summer bedding, planted some Ajanias to replace the expired bedding in pots. Took cutting from the semi-dead pelargoniums, then raked the beds over..