Growing Potatoes in Tyres, Bags, Barrels

Growing potatoes in bags seemed to be a popular thing this year. Our sack of eaters we had from our farmer were already ready to sprout when he gave them to us -we could always palnt them, he suggested.

We haven't grown much veg the last couple of years, for one reason or another, and we never did grow spuds; all those blight susceptible things just seemed too problematical. However, when there seemed to be a lot of talk about potato bags, I thought I'd try it. We always overbuy on compost, so we had plenty of that about, and the aforesaid sprouty potatoes, and then there are these woven plastic sacks which the Royal Mail in the UK sometimes generously and unnecessarily supply us with, usually with an already perfectly adequately wrapped small parcel containing a book inside. They've always looked like they ought to be reusable, but we hadn't yet thought what for.

So all the components were already in our possession. I put some straw in the bottom ( another thing we still have in abundance from our long-past days of keeping hens), a layer of compost, five or six of the most promising sprouty spuds, and then more compost. I watered them well and stood them on the terrace.

After a bit some green plants came up. You let them grow and then earth them up with some more compost, unrolling the bag top as you go. This bit always reminds me of a family anecdote about an old Norfolk man who saw someone somewhere whom my parents knew earthing up his potatoes and asked ' Are ye moulderin arn her up?'

Here they are at a fairly early stage of their growth.

I repeated this maybe four times, then left them to grow. When the plant, it's called a haulm, goes manky yellow and dies back, after two or three months, you can harvest them. Which we did today.

Large quantities of compost were shaken out into the wheelbarrow, with nary a sign of a tater, but then towards the bottom they started to show themselves. In all there were just on two kilos, four and a bit pounds, which wasn't much for all the volume of compost, but they were clean and look good.

See the full article here: http://box-elder.blogspot.com/

HAARPing On About Haiti

Some folks on the conspiracy theory circuit are attributing the Haiti earthquake to the HAARP project.

Although I keep an open mind, I haven't really see any credible evidence for HAARP being the fifth horseman of the apocalypse: http://bit.ly/6XfC7A . If the putative western capitalist running dog conspiracists had made such a technique 'weaponisable', surely they would have used it on Moscow, Kabul, or Beijing.

Sovereign states are sovereign states: Haiti could have chosen to ally itself with the US, with Cuba, or with other stable administrations. Their history is desperately sad, but like us all, they have the opton of choosing their destiny. The fact that they have had a completely useless government for generations is not the fault of the west, although arguably we could have done more to stabilise such an utterly disabled government.

It is pretty sickening to see the opportunist mis-speaker Hilary Clinton making political mileage out of the situation - but how would the Haitians feel if no politicians turned up to publicise their plight?

As to the implementation of martial law, I can see it from the Haitians point of view: why didn't those first helicopters bring in medical supplies rather than armed troops? However, had they done so, in all likelihood the supplies would have been raided in a New York minute, and been used for the benefit, not of the most needy, but of the most violent. Such is the nature of humanity in extremis. I too, in such a situation, would do pretty much anything to obtain water and food for my children: my British 'all for one, one for all' philosophy would go out of the window, and I'd even jump the queue for the Number 19 bus to Pimlico.

It's great to sit in a comfortable apartment and criticise what is being done: but what would you do? What could you do? Admit it: you'd do pretty much the same - face with a million people faced with starvation, disease and death, prepared to do anything to get hold of whatever supplies you can bring in, you'd have to set up a secure fortress from which to distribute aid, and keep people at a distance until you'd set up a line of supply.

TrackBackk on Blogger

Then i wanted to use TrackBack on Blogger, so I went looking for HaloScan. Then I got confused.

Pesky white space at the top of CSS websites

I had a whole bucket of code that I really didn't want to rip apart trying to find what caused the white space at www.europe.cpdinfo.com - so I g'd around a bit and this person really helped me out with a neat trick: http://bytes.com/topic/html-css/answers/764391-css-center-page-no-top-space .

More Than Tomato Canes

I've been experimenting with small-scale bamboo construction recently - the stuff's fantastic - like a cross between steel, GRP, and carbon fibre. Anyone want to play?

clipped from www.ecofriend.org Self-sufficient, eco-friendly bamboo tree house Nishi Roy | Nov 28 2007 Sponsored Links Imagine a bamboo tree house which is not only completely self sufficient, but also manages to produce more power than it needs. Fanciful thinking? No way! Solar hooch- a backyard “Tower of Power” can actually do it. How? Well, high in the air, the hooch rises above the shadows cast upon the ground-from trees and buildings. With an unobstructed southern exposure, the solar hooch catches and stores solar heat through an abundance of south facing windows. The sun shines through upon a unique array of water filled aluminum cans that span the loft. With a days worth of solar thermal energy stored in the water, the bamboo mesh futon can be lowered over the storage for a night of warmth and comfort.

Black Rock by Amanda Smyth

A review from the Independent, Friday March 27 2009:

It is 1950s Tobago, and the protagonist of this coming-of-age novel, Celia, spends her days with her younger cousins, her Aunt Tassi and Aunt Tassi's second husband, the sinister Roman. It is the things that Celia is told that form the basis of her understanding; that her mother died the moment she was born, and that her father lives in Southampton. Celia flees after Roman abuses her, and the novel chronicles her adventures. But her journey away will lead her paradoxically back to a past that has been shrouded in secrecy and lies. Black Rock explores the extent to which one can – and ought – to wriggle free from family ties.

The eponymous rock is given to Celia by a clairvoyant, Mrs Jeremiah, who assures her it "will keep bad luck at bay and save you from the hard life you will make for yourself". These hardships seem to abate when Celia finds herself rescued by an English family in Trinidad and employed in the home of Dr Rodriquez, his wife Helen, and their children. Celia cannot bring herself to love the "ugly" boy William, who is besotted with her, and instead embarks on an affair with the doctor.

Amanda Smyth does not allow her protagonist an easy ride for more than six months. "I escaped one monster to meet a different kind of monster", Celia realises. The imagery of hard, inanimate rock is juxtaposed with the possibilities for tenderness. Smyth is a skilful ventriloquist; the local patois is energetically conjured, and the narrative pace is gripping.

In painterly images, Smyth evocatively shows more than she tells. Not only people but place exerts a powerful force. Helen Rodriguez cannot feel at home in Trinidad, to her a "hell on earth". The knowledge of her husband's infidelity unhinges Helen, who vacillates between seeming a "proper English rose" and a "wandering ghost".

There are echoes of the archetypal "mad woman", if not in an attic then in a marital room in the Caribbean, with scenes reminiscent of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea. Smyth ties up her loose ends rather too neatly, but this is a vivid and compelling story, exploring the extent of our control over our destinies. Celia attempts to challenge the assertion of her father: "I believe you follow your life... You don't lead your life".

Maglev Goes Ballistic

Well, forget about the monorail - but at least Professor Laithwaite's invention has found a home: chasing those pesky Russkies.

clipped from prairiepundit.blogspot.com Navy tests most powerful rail gun to date An EM railgun is powered by electricity rather than gunpowder. A shell is launched at Mach 7 through the electromagnetic rails into the atmosphere for about one minute, flies out of the atmosphere for four minutes, and then descends to Earth toward its target at Mach 5 in approximately one minute. The projectile is guided using the Global Positioning System.