Today saw me start the fixing of the outdoor pizza oven. I built it about 4 years ago but made a mistake on the finish. The structure is sound but I tried using lime cement to cover it. I’d thought that it would work well with the heat changes from firing and cooling the oven. Not so. Within months the lime cement was crumbling. Plus it does not seem to have weathered well over the winters. A fix is needed.
I’ve got rockwool for more insultation (should allow the oven to get hotter, quicker), chicken wire to cover that insulation and hold it in place. And refractory cement to cover it all. Plus a calculation of the surface area of half a sphere.
Today was simply placing screws in all around and over the outside of the oven to hold the chicken wire and insulation in place. My hand is now numb from over use of the hammer drill.
Slug hunting, having a lot of trouble this year with the wet weather.
I absolutely love Erigeron
Pulled up all of the dying hyacinth leaves and put them in the compost bin, haven’t had time for anything else.
Sage bushes, foxgloves and alliums flowering well and attracting plenty of bees.
I have planted radishes, but mostly just sat in it for the most part…
The mini-meadow is no more. After 5 weeks of letting the ‘lawn’ grow wild, I’ve cut it down. Some of the grass stems had grown to about 18" high. Also trimmed back the hedge that borders it.
The broken looking pizza oven is no more - the re-cementing of the outside is done. This past week meant intricate fixing of small, bespoke cut sections of insulation, fixing chicken wire all over the oven and finally working out how to stop the wet cement just slipping off.
Done, and cementing done. I think it is reasonable to say that I am knackered and my back is broken. Just need to wait a few days for it all to set … and for the weather to get better. Then garlic bread fest.
Replaced the ends that had gone rotten on a couple of our sheds…
Planted out the pot marigolds along the path, they grow to about 8in, they’re behind the polyanthus.
Tidied up the polytunnel and planted the tomato plants into their pots. Quite a good crop of strawberries this year. These do much better in the tunnel growing in pots than if grown in beds outside.
Pricked out 62 polyanthus seedlings into cell trays and put them outside and did a bit of watering.
Being Green Fingered.
Sowed [Chucked] 1 Kg of Wild Flower seeds 3 months ago.
Villagers not laffin now. Up for. The Wildest Gardner on the block.
One complaint from Jethro." I just got stung by a wasp Me ole cocker"
sat innit
I’ve just picked some Coscia pears, I had to hurry and leave lots on the trees as they were being invaded by those terrible giant wasps, that we call calabroni. I think they’re called European giant wasps or hornets, in English? I wouldn’t want one of their stings!
Really lovely looking pears. Are you able to harvest ripe, soft pears? Mine go from rock hard to rotten and plagued by hornets (frelon in French) without that perfect stage.
Thanks @Lincolnshire, some of the pears are already ripe and need to be eaten quickly, within a few days or they’ll go bad. They are genuine, untreated fruits so once they ripen they don’t last long but in the fridge, quite a bit longer. The not so ripe ones will ripen indoors, I’ll probably bake a cake to use up some before they rot!
I have another pear tree, different type of pear, they ripen in Autumn,and I have the same problem as you. They’re rock hard and if I leave them to ripen, they just rot. Or they end up rotting on the tree, still hard. I think it’s the usual reason, that they haven’t been chemically treated like the ones we buy.
The spaces shown were deep in ivy. I’ve finished clearing it. There’s more to go but that will be for another time. I don’t mind a bit of ivy but it had grown too much. I’ve vowed to keep it down when it starts growing again…
The pile…
All I have to do now is get rid of the cuttings.