Book doing well!
It’s been a busy old week, not that I’m complaining. Nothing worse than kicking your heels and wondering where the next penny is coming from. The book is doing really well, I know it’s early days and not long enough to be certain but I think it might be a hit. Val was looking on all the online bookstores and it was coming up well in the bestsellers lists for gardening books. #4 in Home & Garden books, gardening fruit & vegetables on Amazon and #5 on Play.com. I still can’t quite believe it.
We’ve had quite a few sales through the web site as well, I’m on the third delivery now of 100 copies! The poor postie looks around suspiciously when he empties the box for whoever has put all these envelopes in.
Mind you, you wouldn’t believe how difficult getting stamps can be. I’m sure our local post office thinks they’re on ration and I’m being greedy. It’s getting like an old soviet state. “You have had 2 stamps! Why you want more? Capitalist stamp hoarder!”
To add to the fun, while I’m in Mr Grumpy mode, they’ve put the postage prices up nearly 12%. It now costs 78p instead of 70p to send a copy out. It’s not a lot, I know, but it annoys me how they talk about 2.4% inflation and yet postage goes up 12%.
Allotment Rent Increase
The allotment rent bill arrived, that’s gone up 10% to £22.00 a year, per plot. Why? What extra are we getting? Then we have the council tax and water bills. Excuse me, there’s no shortage of water. It’s pouring out of the sky most of the time.
The rate for 2006 was £18.00 per plot and 2007 it was £20.00 per plot so it has risen by 22% over two years. Have wages gone up by that? The basic state pension has risen by 7.66% in that period.
Oh well, come the revolution, it will all get sorted out and there will be free allotments for all.
On Wednesday I did a little bit of potting on, some peppers and aubergines got moved up into 3″ pots. The racking in the lounge is now pretty full and Val’s starting yet more flowery things off. These do make excellent compost material at the end of the year.
Super New Propagator Arrives
With the overcrowding in the lounge and the tomatoes being forced onto the bottom shelf by the flowery things, it was in the nick of time that my new propagator arrived. Effectively it consists of a large metal heating plate on which 4 top quality Stewart seed tray sized propagators sit.
New Propagator in Home Greenhouse
Most useful is a temperature control box with a sensor on the end of a wire that you can insert into the compost and keep that at the preset temperature. I’ve got a couple of cheap electrically heated propagators but the problem is that they are always on. All it takes is a sunny morning and the temperature shoots up in the greenhouse causing the propagator to cook the seedlings.
This new one keeps the temperature up but switches off when it is warm enough. I tested and calibrated it by using my recording indoor / outdoor digital thermostat with the outdoor sensor in a seed tray.
In an age where everything you buy has been engineered to be just about good enough to last until the guarantee runs out, flimsy and fragile, it’s a real pleasure to have some solid British engineering. Built to last as long as possible and to take some abuse.
There’s a full size photo of it in this months Photo Gallery
The tomatoes, which have got a little leggy in the bottom bunk, are now snug and warm as well as getting plenty of light in the greenhouse.
Planting Onion Sets
I much prefer growing onions from seed rather than sets but I’ve been late in sowing this year and in a bit of a panic at being short of onions, picked up a 500gr pack of Stuttgarter onion sets.
The large raised bed on plot 29 got around a couple of ounces of fish, blood & bone fertilizer and an the same of chicken manure pellets raked in before planting them out. I prefer fish, blood & bone to something like Growmore. They’re both balanced fertilizers but the FBB is slower to release and more gentle even if a little dearer to deliver the same amount of NPK.
Anyway, covered the sets with some netting primarily to keep the pigeons off and to keep them a bit warmer as a cold snap is forecast.
Tidying & Weeding on Plot 29
Having got the onion sets in, I weeded a couple of the other deep beds and did a bit of hoeing. Larry keeps threatening a cultivation order if the plot’s not pristine so I thought I’d better be safe!
I’ve still a fair bit to do on plot 29, having been concentrating on plot 5 with the new raised beds and that.
It’s a good job the season is off to a slow start this year, because I certainly am. We’ll see how the rest of the year shapes up.
Digging over on plot 5
I’ve still some digging over to do on plot 5. I’m just single digging but it’s still quite heavy with the clay soil. The huge amounts of compost that have been added, not to mention leafmould, leaves and other organic matter have really improved the soil structure and drainage since I took it on but it’s still heavy.
So a couple of hours on Saturday were devoted to digging, just 5 months later than schedule. Once done it will only take half a day to rotovate the whole plot down to a fine tilth.
The weather wasn’t wonderful, the odd light shower kept coming on and the rain was stingingly cold, turning to hail a couple of times. Got a fair patch done before a really dark cloud appeared overhead, threatening a downpour. It started just as I was putting the key into the door at home. Phew!
As I write this, Sunday morning, there’s bright sunshine shining of a couple of inches of fluffy snow. Think I’ll stay in the warm today.
£22.00 sounds a bargain compared to my £58.75 and we have no electric, water, the council don’t leave manure, leaves or clear away any of it’s own rubbish.
Write to your councilors, better still write to the prospective ones in opposition. Make it an issue. You have to fight or they’ll take paradise and put up a parking lot.
Yes i have done John many times. We even wrote to our local MP who sits in parliament.
Not a thing gets done. The politicians of today just think they can walk all over people and in many cases they generally do.
Thanks for the tip about writing to the opposition i’ll set about that straight away.
Just found your site..Fab..Rent.. ours has gone up to £7.00 per year..but we are not aloud a shed/greenhouse or any chickens but its great just to have some land to grow your own..Big push this year to make us tescos free….
Hi John
Well done on your book, I’ve been dipping into it almost daily since it arrived.
With regard to stamps – I run a mail order business and either print stamps myself using Smartstamp or use a PPI account that I have with Royal Mail, which means I stamp packages myself and deliver them to the sorting office. Your 78p would be 69p on a PPI account.
Thanks for the tip on the postage – I’ve been taken by surprise with the sales off the site. I ordered a hundred thinking that would last a month or six. Over 300 gone out now and sales are holding around 6 a day.
The publisher seems surprised as well – I think we’re 50% through the first print run already. Repeat sales coming in from the bookshops as well.
At this rate I’ll be getting a new rotovator!