John's Allotment

I was going to mention the mix of imperial and metric !
Reminds me.... some of my friends are joiners , in the 70's the building trade was possibly the first to go metric. My friend went to the timber merchants. I want some 2" by 3" he said . The timber yard foreman said ,we are metric now its 50 by 75 . Ok my friend said I want 50 x 75 , about 12 metres please . No , no ,no said the foreman its priced per foot ! So you want 36 feet of 50 x 75 Now that's a true story.

 

What a great first year you have had John, vs the time expended on it thus far.
Onwards and upwards from now on !

Steve...

 

Hi John,

Sorry for asking a naive question, but what is the advantage of a such a cloche?

Thanks!

 

Good idea.

If the screw caps had been retained and fixed to a length of timber suitable for spanning that (and other) beds, the cut down bottle cloches could be screwed into the caps so they woudn't blow away in a gale (like we're having this weekend), or be dislodged by animals, etc., individual bottle cloches could be removed as seeds germinated and it would make the business of lifting (to check for germination) and replacing much quicker.

Going to try this myself both on raised beds and open ground (using some pegs driven into the ground with larger than nail diameter holes in their tops) with caps fixed to the battens (might get some from Wickes whilst still 15% off).

I already save larger size plastic bottles for snipping off bottoms and inverting on small canes pushed into mypex planting holes to make watering the likes of marrows, outdoor cucumbers, squashes, etc. easier, but now I'll also start saving all the smaller ones.

 

Thank you John!

 

I was wondering about whether they would need a small opening cut in them, what I'll do is put one of my 2 USB temperature data loggers in each of 2 adjacent cloches, one with lid on, other left open and download data into single graph to see how what difference it makes. Plus I could check the differences above ground and just below ground at seed level and repeat with different size bottles.

Cor, I feel another 'you know when you're an obsessive gardener' post coming on.