Harvesting Grey water...

If you want to collect waste water please do some research into it first, there are things to consider in terms of storing and preventing bacteria buildup, filtration and numerous other things, we've installed a simple system that will only be used in the summer and any water will only be stored temporarily, so no longer than 24 hours

For a while now we've talked about trying to save more water, we have 5 waterbutts for collecting rain water, but we felt we could collect the water from showers and baths.

So to that end we've installed a very simple system to divert the water from the bathroom waste to a temporary storage tank (waterbutt) for use in the summer months for watering the ornamental plants.

It's a really simple install, it does involve some basic plumbing however, I've used solvent welds for this as I prefer that to push fit.

The valve we're installing is made by a company called Watertwo and it costs about 30 pounds, and here's a link to their website - https://watertwo.co.uk/the-watertwo-device/

Here's the rough installation guide -

Thanks for visiting.

Homemade propagation station...

A lot of plants can easily be propagated using water, we usually just use jars of various sizes, but I thought I'd make a proper propagation station, you can buy ready made ones in all sorts of different styles and shapes, and with different types of glass, but I wanted to recycle some old spice jars and some old pallet wood so these cost nothing to make, I'm surprised at how well they turned out, and they look quite good as well.

Here's how I made them -

Rooting cuttings in water works for many different plants, and these are a good way to see the progress of roots growing, and they cost nothing but a little time to make.

Thanks for visiting.

Homemade wire string holder...

How to easily make a string holder from garden wire (other wire could be used) this has come in quite handy because you can hang it up in the shed or greenhouse, or on a fence or even from a tree branch which is what I did the other day when I was tying our tomato plants to their canes.

I'm pleased with it and it has become quite useful, and it's such an easy thing to make, hopefully the video is easy enough to follow, and you don't need any special tools, just a pair of pliers will do the job.

Have a look -

Thanks for visiting.

How to make a simple trellis for a plant pot...

A quick how to for making simple trellis for plant pots, this can easily be adapted for smaller or larger pots, and is great for climbing plants or just as a plant support, all you need is some garden canes and some bamboo skewers (plus a few tools)

Doesn't really get much easier to be honest, it would be easy enough to scale up for larger trellis panels and for bigger pots, you could also change the design for something more artistic.

Here's the video -

Thanks for visiting.

Homemade garden sieve...

A quick guide on how to make a garden sieve, perfect for covering seeds in seed trays, cheap and quick to make, I had the bit of wood and an off cut of steel mesh already, but you could use a piece of pallet wood, and then all you'd need is some mesh, which you can pick up for around six pounds from various diy type shops.

This one is a good size for covering seeds once you've sown them in seed trays, and as you can see from the video it's easy to make, you don't need any special tools or materials.

The how to -

Thanks for visiting.

How make a gate (a rough guide) ... ...

I figured it's about time I wrote another post seeing as it's bee a while since the last one.
Things have been a little hectic of late, finally got approval to build a small poly-tunnel on our allotment plot, so got that to do, spent 3 hours weeding the plot in the rain the other day, not ideal, but had to be done weeds grow very quickly.

Anyway I thought I'd give people a rough idea on how to build a simple gate, it's really not that hard even if you don't have much practical experience it's a good starter project, and it's easy enough that the kids can help as well.

I had to build a gate for our allotment plot, well I didn't have to it was the easiest option for the small issue of no fencing on the front of the plot, and as it's half a plot, fencing off the front was cheaper than fencing our section and putting some kind of divider down the middle, not that it cost that much as I recycled some wood from various places.

Here's the gate in place -

The fencing was recycled from our pond cover.

It's not a perfect gate, but it does the job, I got the wood for it from a couple of saw horses I made to hold our desktop whilst I worked on it. Ideally the diagonal piece should go from corner to corner, but it wasn't long enough :-)

Making a gate is easy, and you can approach the job in different ways I've made a few gates through the years, big ones, small ones and all sorts of other types.

You can make your gate as simple or as complicated as you want, it depends on what you want it for, the gate for the allotment just need to serve as an entrance into the plot, so I was too bothered about aesthetics, just as long as it could be locked and opened easy I was happy.

Here's a closer look at the allotment gate - 

It's upside down in this picture, but you can see how it's built.

It's basically a square frame with some extra bits for strength, I chopped the wood out on the uprights and the diagonal piece so that the diagonal sat inside the main frame, but you could just fix it across without chopping it in, although for a nice neat job it's probably better to chop it in.

This is a picture of our front garden gate, I built it 4 years ago and it's still as strong now as it was then :-) it's a slightly more complex build, but don't worry I drew some diagrams (all be it dodgy ones) to give you an idea of how it's made.

Front garden gate -

Could do with a coat of paint now :-)

This one is made to be a lot sturdier than the first one, it's a good idea to think about where the gate is, how much it's going to be used and things like where will hinges fix to it and any locks, the allotment gate only has a few small hinges and a small slide bolt, the gate itself weighs very little compared to this one.

If you click on the picture you should get a larger view, which will give you a closer look at how it's made (don't forget to click back in your browser ;-)

Here's a picture of the other side of the gate -

I used some large t hinges on this, and it's self closing, by way of the spring.

I made a diagram to show how it fits together, but again if you click on the picture you can get a closer look, the main frame of this gate is fixed in a different way to the allotment gate, this one uses wooden dowels to secure the main frame, I didn't want to see any fixings when looking down on the gate, I just used screws on the allotment gate.

Dodgy diagram time ;-) 

This is how I built the front garden gate.

Feel free to copy the pictures, they might prove useful, this gate was perhaps a little more complicated than it needed to be, I guess I was experimenting a little with it, but it works so I'm pleased (not all my experiments work) I've made another diagram which might help explain a little more what's going on with this particular gate.

Another diagram -

Perhaps not the clearest of descriptions.

If you compare the above diagram to the pictures you should get a clearer idea of how this gate is built, however if you don't want to get this complicated you can build a gate easily, in about an hour (maybe less) and for as little as £15 if you buy new wood, if you can recycle some wood from some where then it'll be even cheaper.

Here's the last diagram (I promise ;-)

Doesn't get much easier.

As it says in the diagram this gate uses 9 pieces of wood, depending on how many uprights you use, obviously more uprights the wider the gate, so it's a good idea to measure the hole where you intend to put the gate, this will give you an idea of how much wood you'll need, you can also work out how far apart to put each upright and how high to make it. 

You can see that the upright pieces are fixed to 3 other pieces (the 2 horizontal and the 1 diagonal) this isn't going to stop a charging bull, but it'll do to keep things out of certain areas of your garden (things like the kids or the dog, or both) and as the diagram says you don't need the diagonal piece, but I would use it as it will make the gate much stronger.

Thanks for reading.

I think I'm becoming a Womble ... ...

Yes I really do think I'm becoming a Womble, what's a Womble ? well for those who don't know these are Wombles (opens in new window) basically they made use of stuff people had thrown out, a blast from the past ? I used to watch the tv program when I was a kid, maybe this is responsible for my recent evolution into Wombledom ?

It's interesting, least I think it is, that back then there were tv programs about what is essentially re-cycling, and up-cycling, seems these days it's all about reduce, re-use and re-cycle, which to be honest I see nothing wrong with, maybe the Wombles knew something we didn't ?

I'm not going to get all environmental, but I think it's a good idea to reduce waste, and re-cycle what we can, for a start it's cheaper to re-use stuff than buy new, saving money is always good in my book. I also think a little less rubbish about won't be a bad thing either, and not because it'll save the planet, would you want to live next to a land fill site ? I know I wouldn't.

Anyway it seems that just lately I have been viewing things with a slightly different way of thinking, on my travels I often see things that people have thrown out and think what could I use that for ?

Seems a lot think that if you dump a load of stuff on the side of the road the council will eventually pick it up, truth is they don't (least not round our way) they'll leave it. If you have rubbish that needs moving then the council will charge for it, there are however people who go about in vans picking this stuff up to either sell on, or make use of in some way, modern day rag n bone men, and a lot will have adverts in the local paper, or come round door to do and take your unwanted stuff away for nothing, all it costs is a phone call.

On my weekly shopping run I go past a number of houses that seem to just dump stuff on the side of the road, one house in particular stands out, and a few weeks ago I noticed they had an old glass door outside, at the time I looked but thought as it was in good shape it wouldn't be there for long (I had an idea of what I could use it for)
I was wrong, the door sat in the same place for about three weeks, so the other day I thought right, I'm having it, I did knock on the door of the house to see if it was okay, they said yes, so I stuck it in my cycle trailer (which had the weekly shop in it already) and off I went.

This is what I made out of it - 

Yes another cold frame, made from old door and pallets.

I had already decided the door would make a great lid for a cold frame, and seeing as I had some wood left from my recent pallet experiments I figured it was a good idea :-)

It's easy to make something like this, and if you use the materials I have then it'll cost hardly anything, just a little time and effort. A wooden cold frame the same size as this (about a 100cm x 75cm) could be as much as twenty or thirty quid, mine cost about 2 hours in all :-)

To make something like this, is pretty easy, even for the less experienced diy types, it's basically a box with a lid, this one took a little more work as it's made from planks rather than sheets of wood, I used the same method for building this as I did for the re-cycled planter I made not so long ago.

The wood for the box - 

As you can see it's in strips, roughly 3 inches wide

The main disadvantage of doing things this way is that you have to stick each strip together to build up the box sides, it takes a little longer than just using a sheet of ply.

To connect the strips I just used another piece of pallet on each end, this also served as a fixing for the other sides.

This piece keeps the strips together.

You can use nails to fix it all together, but I tend to use screws for this type of thing, just to make sure it doesn't fall apart. For fixing the screws (I used 1inch screws for this) I have a handy little gadget, it's called a flip driver and if you use a cordless drill for wood working I'd suggest getting one, they are very handy and save time and the battery of your cordless drill.

My flip driver -

Saves time, and battery power.

The pictures aren't the best, but you can see that it has two parts, the holder that locks into the drills chuck and the bit holder and drill part, this is the part you flip round, depending on what you're doing.

The bit holder and drill -

One end for drilling and the other for driving.

What's really good about this little tool is that you can adjust how long to have the drill bit, depending on the depth you want for your pilot hole, and it also has a built in counter sink, so you can drill and counter sink at the same time, then all you do is flip it round and drive your screw in, no removing drill bits from chucks to put the driver in, you can pick them up pretty cheaply and you usually get three bit / drill bit holders, each take a different size drill bit, and each will have a slightly different sized counter sink.

Not very clear, but you can make out where it's counter sunk.

Another money saving tip, if you are going to use screws for your next wood working project, my advice is look to see where your nearest builders yard is, the reason being is that a box of 200 (1inch) screws cost me about two quid at my local builders yard, that includes VAT, the same box of screws at a diy store (you know the places I mean, B&Q, Homebase) will cost about five quid, sometimes more, so save some money, look for your local builders yard (Build center is a good place) and what's more if you need loads of screws you can usually get a discount as well (Screwfix.com is another good place for fixings)

Not much to say, it's a box of screws - 

Cheaper than diy stores, just as good.

If you do use pallets to make this sort of thing, you can use this method to make planters as well, then I'd recommend a clamp or two for the simple reason that pallet wood isn't always the straightest stuff, so using a clamp is a good way to make sure it's all nice and snugly together before fixing, as the next picture shows.

Using a clamp to hold things in place - 

Obviously the clamp size depends on the size of the project.

Once you have the two main sections built (the main section being the longest sides) you can then start to add the end, this is just a case of fixing each end to the ones you've already made.

The two longest sides completed -

Next step is to fix the shorter sides in place.

The cold frame I've made is a rectangle because I've made the sides to fit the door I found, but you can make it any size you want, especially if you intend to make your own lid. Once the sides are all fixed you should have a box shape.

Fixing the shorter sides - 

Just add each strip as you go.

After you have added all the side strips (if you used pallets) you should have something like the picture below, which is basically a box.

The finished frame - 

It's vaguely box shape :-)

And there you have it, if you use this method you should end up with a nice rustic looking planter, you can leave the wood as it is, or give it a sand and paint it with a colour of your choosing, you may also want to include a few strips across the bottom so that your plants don't fall out of the planter is moved. 

If you have kids like mine the prospect of a box may be too much for them to resist :-)  

What is it with kids and boxes ?

Now as I was making a cold frame I still had a little to do, mainly fit the door to the box. I could have just stuck the lid on and fixed it in place, but I decided to ad a little slope so that the lid sits at an angle to get a little more light into the box.

As it turns out the lid on this new cold frame is sitting at the same angle as the other one I built a while ago.

I guess there are a few ways you could add an angle to a box, but I just cut some more wood at the angle I wanted.

The angle marked out on wood - 

I made two like this.

You could also use a plane to shave the wood down to the angle you want, after I'd cut the wood all I did was fix it to the edge of the box using some longer screws, I could have added an extra piece of wood to fix to, but decided against it. Instead I drilled a pilot hole with a counter sink in the edge of the wood, I just about got away with it, had the wood been any thinner and I would have, had to use an extra piece of wood to fix to.

The wood used to create the angle, and fixing - 

Just enough room :-)

 And that's about it really, it's just a box with a lid and as I mentioned you can use the same method for building a wooden planter, or even raised planting beds.

For your viewing pleasure - 

So remember you're a Womble (and if you're not, maybe you should have a go)

Thanks for reading.

Updating the veg beds, what we've been up to lately ... ...

Well it's all go in the garden department, the weather has perked up (thankfully) and we have been full steam ahead, planting things, getting other things started off in the green house (and in the house) and weeding, which I guess is a downside of the weather perking up, it's not just the useful stuff that wants to run rampant, although as we get more experience we've learnt to make use of anything and everything that we find in the garden, for example dandelions (which I quite like to photograph for some odd reason)

We get loads of dandelions, all over the lawn (good job we don't use it for bowls) but instead of weeding them out we now tend to eat them, in fact my wife does a nice dandelion pancake :-) and then there's stinging nettles, these as it turns out can be very handy things to have about, for one they attract bees and butterflies, which is good for pollination of other plants, and you can also eat them (yes you can eat nettles, quite tasty as it goes) not to mention the wine you can make out of them, which is rather interesting.
Nettles also make a good fertilizer, just pick some and leave them in a bucket of rain water for a week or so, it'll stink, but if you lay the mixture around plants (like a mulch) they'll thank you for it, you can also use them as a natural pesticide, again leave them in water, but only for a day or two, then spray the water on your plants, it'll help deter some pests.

This year we have ramped up production to much higher than anything we've tried before, every bit of space will be used, the idea is basically get as much from the garden as is possible, which is quite a task. I have already added extra growing room in the front garden in the form of three raised beds, and in my pursuit of extending the growing seasons I have updated one of the beds (with the view to doing all three eventually) with what I'd call a mini polytunnel, I got the idea from reading a blog that my wife follows (I know follow it as well) and I've tweaked it as an experiment.

Here's the blog I got the idea from (it's well worth reading)
- Sylvan Spirit (opens in new window)

If you read through the post I linked to, you'll see some pictures of raised beds that have yellow pipe bent over them so that you can cover them in plastic of netting, a great idea (wish I'd thought of it)

As I said I've tweaked the idea a little to fit with the raised beds we have -

Voilà one mini polytunnel :-)

Mine only uses two bits of plastic pipe, I didn't have enough to do it the other way round, and I've added some garden cane for extra strength. The idea is to see if it's possible to cover it in bubble wrap and some polythene sheet earlier in the year, my thinking is that the two layers should help warm the soil earlier, whilst insulating against frosts a little, which in turn should mean we can start things off earlier, least that's the theory :-)

Here's another picture, just in case you missed the first ;-)

Full of peas, we had to plant some more as some didn't germinate.

I'm looking forward to seeing if it will make a difference to production, if it doesn't it's still handy to have because you can cover them in netting which keeps birds of them, we have a lot of doves visit our garden, they love to pick the flowers off the peas.

This is one of the great things I've discovered about blogging, there are endless places to find inspiration for anything and everything, had I not read the blog I linked to I would never had tried this, and it cost nothing but a little time, but it might yield better results, which has to be good.

Make sure to drop and and have a look round the blog I linked to, it's good ;-)

Thanks for reading.

Handmade row markers ... ...

To go with our new veg beds, we decided to make some bespoke ;-) wooden row markers, after all you need to know what you planted and where, with a memory like mine I need all the help I can get :-)

Here they are (the ones we've done so far, there will be more)

Ta da ! 

Okay they are simple enough to make, these are made from scraps of wood, the one in the background was made from a scrap of wood left over from the pallets we used to make the raised beds.

Nothing special, built more for function than form I guess. The lettering was done using a pyrography tool which if I'm honest has been sitting around for more than a year, this is the first time I've used it (pyrography is basically burning designs into wood) as you can see it's not perfect, probably requires a steadier hand than mine, I used a letter stamp set as a template, stamping the letters on in ink first, then burning them into the wood.

The other three markers were made out of a couple of bits of tongue and groove, I marked a basic stake sort of shape out on the wood and then cut them out on my scroll saw, you could use a coping saw or a hack saw, then I gave them a quick sand, I haven't coated them in anything yet, I'm still wondering about what to coat them in, I'll probably use a varnish of some sort.

Some more pictures -

I should have drawn a line on them to get the letters level :-)

And another - 

Handy if vampires invade the garden ;-)

I got to thinking that this would make a nice project for older kids to do, I say older kids because of the tools involved, but there's no reason younger kids can't do it, you could do the cutting out and such like for them, then they can decorate them, they don't even have to be wood, you could make them out of clay, although it would need a varnish or some other coating, it might make a nice project for kids to do as well, why not set them the task of designing their own row markers ? they could research designs,materials and it doesn't matter if you don't grow veg or have a garden they could be presents for relatives who do.

This is the one I made from a piece of scrap left over from the veg beds - 

A slightly more decorative one.

They don't have to be plain stake like markers, which is why I thought about making it into a project, or why not just for fun ? you can find scrap bits of wood in the off cuts bin in most diy type shops, you could make them from branches that have fallen off trees, or as I mentioned clay, or some other material.

The stake like ones in the veg beds - 

Beans.

Peas.

And there you have it, it didn't take long to make them, I've since made a few more for the various other things we've planted, and I'll make more as we go along. Okay so we didn't need to bother, but why not add a little bit of a personal touch to the garden ? no harm in it, and as I've said it might keep the kids busy for a little while.

Thanks for reading.

 

Re-cycling pallets to make planters ... ...

This week we have decided to extend the growing space we have, for the last couple of years we've grown a pretty good amount of stuff, but this year we are going all out.

I have already made extra space by moving various things about, and stealing little bits of lawn here and there ;-) we did grow some extra things in the front garden last year, which worked quite well, so with that in mind we decided that because we don't use the front lawn for anything in particular we would turn it into a new veg bed, well not all of it, so we made three raised beds that measure 3 feet by 4 feet, and to keep the cost down we got some pallets for free.

Here's one of the finished articles -

One of the new veg beds.

It's nothing special, this type of thing isn't hard to build, and if you use pallets you will only have to do a little wood cutting to get things to the size you want, as it turned out the wood I got was the right size for the job.

I can't really say enough about using pallets for this kind of thing, firstly there's the price, which is nothing, most places will let you have one or two pallets for free, and if they have broken ones they may let you take more, after all it saves them the job of getting rid of them.

The wood that pallets are made from isn't the best in terms of finish, but it's good sturdy stuff, I've used pallets before to build a storage cupboard for the garden tools and such like, and I have plans to make small pieces of furniture out of them, book shelves and some other things, I will have slightly more work to do in terms of finishing, but a quick buzz over with a belt sander will sort most of it out.

To make a planter / raised bed is pretty simple really, all you need is a hammer and some nails, a saw (and a tape measure) and a pencil, or if you have some screws and a cordless drill you can use that.

Basically you want to make a rectangle / square shape, with a thin piece of wood in each corner that you can use to peg it down with (a one inch square peg will do)

Here's a picture of the wood work - 

You can see the pegs in each corner, these also help hold it together.

You don't have to add the pegs, but I find it helps keep it in place and to hold it together, they don't have to be very long, just a few inches.

If your putting yours on a piece of lawn keep the turf, it might come in handy, some of our lawns in the back garden are a little patchy, so I kept the turf to fill them in.

It's easy to mark out the turf, just lay the frame on the ground and cut round it with a half moon cutter (edging iron) or you can use a spade.

Using the frame as a template - 

That's me, cutting out the section of lawn to be removed.

Once you've cut round the frame you can move it out of the way and then using the cutter cut the turf into more manageable sections, then use your spade to lift it up, you might want to have a place ready to store the turf, or if you plan to use it have that area ready, then you can get both jobs done quickly.

After that all you need to do is place the frame on the new patch of earth and bang each corner in using a hammer, it won't take much and that's about it.

You should end up with something like this - 

Ready for production.

I had two little helpers when I made our new beds, they seemed to enjoy it, although I suspect it was the chance to investigate under the grass rather than helping me, it's worth getting the kids involved they can learn a lot, for example we found loads of little centipede and beetle larvae under the turf, I guess they were hibernating there over winter there were loads of worms as well so the kids get a chance to learn about nature and bugs (kids love bugs, if you have bugs you're onto a winner) and you may find other things as well, we found a ten pence piece under the grass, which prompted a mass excavation for treasure :-)

Digging for gold - 

We didn't find any more money.

They seemed to love digging in the mud so much, they carried on - 

There must be more in here some where :-)

And there you have it, we now have three beds at about twelve square feet each, and all it took is a little wood work and some digging, and it cost nothing and on top of that we spent an hour or two having fun as a family in the garden, can't be bad.

So get out into the garden, if it's a little chilly put an extra jumper on, the fresh air will do you good, and it won't hurt the kids if they get a little muddy, you and the kids can learn so much, and in an age where it seems adults and children especially are loosing touch with nature it has to be a good thing ?

Thanks for reading, and happy growing :-)

And so it begins ... ... gardening that is

Well it's more or less the end of January, so it's time to get ready for the years gardening and other garden related jobs.
I find this time of year a sort of limbo, there's loads to do, but the weather isn't yet right for a lot of things, mainly planting related.
Although it's been sunny here for the last few days it's by no means spring like, I'm willing to be that if I plant a load of things outside then the frost will come, and no doubt snow and everything in between.

The garden looks a bit sad at the moment -

poor garden looking a little sorry for itself.

So there it is, our back garden, well some of it anyway, I had the macro lens on the camera and didn't get most of the garden in, but you can see that it all looks a little sad, all our trees and fruit bushes are bare, the flower beds and vegetable beds are bare, I have been feeding the soil and digging it over in preparation for spring, or at least warmer weather and then I can get the cloches out and start planting.

There are still plenty of jobs to be done, pruning of things, tidying up of leaves, we end up with loads of sycamore leaves all over the place, you can't see the tree, but it's just behind the shed, and about 50 feet high, the leave make a nice feed for the soil, if you don't mind black bags of leaves hanging around while you wait for them to rot down, any branches and twigs we can't use for making things get shredded and used as mulch.

I do have a green house and a cold frame, but it's still a little cold to be risking plants outside, so I've decided to start some things off in the house, the back room (utility room) to be precise it's not very warm in there, but it's warmer than outside.

I've been putting my pot maker to good use - 

This is the second tray of seeds.

I've started potting up various seeds, things like herbs which we don't have due to loosing some plants, and other stuff like tomatoes, yes I know it's early for tomatoes but I think I'll get away with it. Having the pot maker is quite handy as it happens, it's easy enough to make the pots, and it recycles some of the news papers we have, I've managed to get about 24 pots to a tray, which is good, and all I need to do once they are ready for planting into the ground is dig a small hole and put them in, no need to disturb roots and such like, and no piles of small empty pots all over the place.

I even made a pot filling device, less messy than trying to fill the pots with a trowel or by hand, I give you the " Pot filler 500 " by techno-mole industries.

Okay so it's a milk carton with a hole in it ;-)

It's much easier using this, and less messy it works well with our home made compost, yes even our compost will be our own this year, no shop bought stuff, and by the looks of the compost bins we will have more next year, so I can really give the soil a good feed, not that it's bad, we seem to have pretty good soil here.

I will have to update you on the progress of the seeds, hopefully by the time they get their second leaves the weather will allow me to use the cold frame, we shall see.

Not much else going on as yet, most of it's planning on what's going to go where as we have moved the beds about.

 There are still some jobs to be done, the biggest of which is the pond, you can't really see it in the picture, but it's there, and it's about 6 feet square and 4 feet deep at the deepest point, we intend to get rid of our fish (no we aren't going to eat them, what does koi taste like anyway ?) once we have re-homed the fish the pond will be made smaller, with no fish so some of the wildlife has a better chance, our fish really love eating frog spawn, once we have done that we will hopefully be investing in some chickens, not many, but enough to get a good supply of eggs from (providing we do well looking after them) the kids are looking forward to having chickens, and it's an opportunity for them to learn as well, can't be bad.

Thanks for reading.

I've got a lovely bunch of... bird feeders ?

It's the time of year when our feathered friends may be having a little trouble finding a good meal, so why not help them out a bit ?

Just lately our youngest has developed a taste for coconuts, or rather coconut milk, it started when I got a couple from the supermarket so I could use the shells, it's amusing to watch her sitting on the sofa with a straw sticking out of a coconut with out a care in the world, it's what's great about having kids.

So onwards, I got the coconuts to use the shells for making bird feeders, not original I know, but as it gets colder we like to help the birds out a little, we don't feed them everyday but we do try and make sure they can at least get a meal every few days.

I built a bird table a few years ago and up until this year it was pretty much all we used, we would just make up some food and lay it out on the table, with a bag of peanuts hanging on one side and a seed feeder on the other, so as to give a mixture of things to eat, and we have had some interesting visitors, we regularly get magpies and jays in the autumn and winter, we get robins,wrens,finches and on occasion we even get a greater spotted woodpecker, we also get great tits,blue tits and a whole load of other birds.

This year though we decided to try and get some more into the garden, so we used the coconut shells as feeders as well and we've hung them in trees to offer a little cover and some near to the front room window as well, mainly because we dabble in photography and we figured we might get some good pictures.

Here's the coconut feeders -

Bird feeders ready to go.

All you need to do is drill a hole for some string to go through so you can hang them on something, it helps if you manage to crack the coconuts more or less in half, then you can pack them with food.

The food is easy enough to make, we have tried different things but settled on doing things the same way now, it works, and it gets a lot of interest from the kids, they love to watch the birds in the morning and evening feeding and flying about the garden, they get to learn about birds and how they behave, so we kind of use it as an educational tool as well, our son is especially interested in them.

We hang the feeders near to trees in order to provide a little cover for the birds, it seems to work, all the feeders get emptied pretty quickly.

Here's one in one of our twisted willow trees - 

The smaller birds like this one a lot.

And I've also made one from scratch similar to the ones you can buy, this was to see if it was easy for my son to have a go at, but to be honest the coconut method is probably the easiest you can get.

Here's the one a made a while ago - 

Complete with bird :-)

This one is hanging about two metres from the front room window, and it does get a lot of attention from a variety of birds, mainly the smaller ones and this young starling, the picture was taken last year.

Right here's what we tend to use for our bird food. We buy the 1kg bags of seeds you can get from places like poundland, the Bill Oddy ones, they have a good mix of things that different birds like, and they are cheap, we've also bought packets of meal worms when they have them.

We basically get out the blender and chuck in some seeds, a little bread, about a slice (we make our own bread, so we usually have a slice spare) then we use either a fat ball or a small bit of lard (27p per block from Tesco) or some other type of fat, the bacon juices from the grill go down well and it helps to stick everything together.

You can add bits of apple, the blackbirds like this a lot, we have even used small bits of cheese, and other fruits, pears etc you can also chuck in a little cooked bacon rind, some of the larger birds like this, like magpies, and peanuts (not salted) Just mix it all in a lump, you can use a large bowel and then pack it into your coconuts the birds will love it, you can of course just buy them, but it's more fun for the kids this way (if you use a blender don't mix it for too long, you don't want to break the seeds down too much)

It's okay just to lay the mixture out on a bird table as well, but we wanted to encourage the birds to come a little closer to the house so the kids could see them better and so we could photograph them.

As we grow a variety of sunflowers we usually take the seeds we need for next year and lay the heads about the garden for the birds, this requires a little more work on their part but they seem to like them, so if you grow a sunflower in a pot lay the head some where for the birds, the sunflower hearts are very good for them at this time of year, it'll help them fatten up a bit.

Sunflower heads - 

Ready for the birdys.

Before I go I thought I would include some photographs taken by us of some of the birds we get in the garden, some were taken last year, they aren't the best but you'll get the idea.

Thanks for reading (pictures below)

Robin on our bird table (taken in the winter) - 

We get robins every year.

A magpie, we have had regular visits from these for the last few years, they are quite nervy birds, they don't stay long on the table, they take what they want and fly up to the large sycamore tree at the bottom of the garden to eat what ever they got, still nice to watch them.

Remember to salute them if you see them, bad luck if you don't ;-)

Next up, a great tit looking through sunflower seeds from our sunflowers, the smaller birds will almost always go for the sunflowers if they are about, then go for the food if there's no sunflowers.

Seems to know what it's looking for.

And then we have the jay's they have only been coming for a bout a year or so, they prefer the peanuts, but will go on the table for other stuff if there's no nuts, we have a pair that visit in the winter months on an almost daily basis, maybe you could make a project out of your bird watching, you could write down what birds ate what food, how they ate it, did they take it to a tree to eat, or just stay on the table ?

The jays - 

They don't seem to have any trouble getting the nuts.

Another jay in a tree - 

Don't know what it's looking at.

Cold frame from free cycled windows ... ...

Here's yet another thing I've made using recycled things, this time four square windows I got from free cycling.
As it happens they are actually quite nice windows, wooden framed with hand made glass in them, the glass has a slight blue tint to it, I also got a couple of replacement glass panels with them, which is handy in case any of the panels get broken.

It wasn't a difficult thing to build, it's basically a 2x2 frame covered with 10mm tongue and grove, the windows sit on top, and open upwards, I made the 2x2 from some sections of wood I had lying around, I used a table saw to rip the lengths of wood down to size, a handy tool to have, you can pick a half decent one up for about £100

Here it is -

This was taken when I'd just finished building it.

I have fixed the whole thing to the wall of the house, but it's only held with 4 screws, so it can be moved pretty easily. I fixed the windows at a slight downwards angle, to help any water that collects on the glass flow away, and it also increases the amount of sun light that gets into it.

Finally it was given a coat of black paint, again there was method in my madness, if it's black it will absorb more heat, meaning (fingers crossed) I will be able to start things off a little earlier come spring.

All in all it was a bargain cost wise, only cost about 10 quid for a cold frame 6 feet long and 2 feet wide, it didn't take long to construct, and it will hold a good few seed trays, and some pots, and probably (again finger crossed) it will out last any cold frame I could have bought.

Here's another picture -

It seems to be weathering quite well.

It currently has a very large cucumber plant in it, with a couple of good sized cucumbers on it, I don't think it'll be too long before the temperature inside the cold frame is too low for the plant, but it seems to be doing okay at the moment.

I finally managed to get the patio slabs laid properly (after 2 years, long story) and the whole section of the garden looks pretty good, even if I do say so myself, by the way the pots in the picture above were also free cycled, they are actually from an old flue, we got 5, foot long sections, which as you can see we've used for pots, there are a few the other side of the cold frame, the band round the top of each pot is copper, it helps stop slugs and such like.

Free cycling is a good way to get things for your projects for free, and you also get the benefit of helping some one out as well, it's a good way to do things, helps stop so much stuff going to land fill to.

Thanks for reading.