Vorsprung durch Technik!
This week: Vorsprung durch Technik!; Everything in the propagator is lovely; One man and his dog went to mow a meadow;
The are more than 70km away
Over coffee with friends this morning I was saying that it doesn’t feel like a Saturday. But then that is the effect that two holiday’s in the same week have!
The start of the week was very wet and very cold. Ideal weather to bank up the fire with logs and continue all the inside jobs. So I did.
Usually Christmas here is bright and sunny, if a little cool. However a storm and strong Bura has made it feel unseasonably cool.
On Christmas Day I was with friends in Stari Grad.
Christmas celebrations and traditions differ by country. There are several different types of “real tree” which are used as “Christmas Trees”, and across Europe the Norwegian Spruce, with its pyramid shape is the most common.
They don’t grow in the Mediterranean, so people go out into the nearby forest and get a local species. Black Pine is popular.
A nativity scene can be found in every home, with handfuls of fresh moss and lichen forming the baseboard of the tableau.
Moss and lichen are especially abundant this year, because of wet and relatively mild weather we have had.
I finished the latest Police history magazine and it was published on Friday. Rather like this Blog, the magazine comes around with unfailing and what seems like increasing frequency.
2024 has been the Golden Jubilee of the formation of the five current Yorkshire police forces. So it was an appropriate time for me to launch a virtual police museum.
I chose Boxing Day deliberately. I mean what better time is there to be hunting around the internet for something interesting, when you have just done “cold turkey” and it’s too early to cut the Christmas cake !
I’ve had a delve into my box of seeds, to pick some early starters for the next growing season. I seem to have a lot of seeds which are awaiting planting.
A job for next week is to prepare the vegetable plot. Only one job for Next Week?
No. There are several, but it is New Year and another holiday on Wednesday.
Vorsprung durch Technik!
Just before Christmas I was surprised by the Postman, who was at my gate shortly after 8am with a parcel. Usually it is lunch time before Hrvatska pošta deliver to the village. Nothing is ever urgent or quick here…
My first thought was that I couldn’t recall ordering anything (which hadn’t already arrived), my second thought was it was quite a large box.
As soon as I saw the sender’s address, I realised it was from friends in Baden-Württemberg.
Packed with Christmas gifts for me and the felines, the parcel was a very nice surprise. NOTHING in my home ever goes to waste…
Writing this, I’m munching on a biscuit and I have two felines on the desk asking for some of their treats too. The overarching principle of their life is, “If you are eating, then we should be too….”
I’m not sure what the maker put into “Dreamies”, but it is equivalent to McDonald’s for cats!
One really striking and useful gift was a “Seed calendar”.
How typical of German ingenuity, to come up with something so easy and useful. In fact is its “Vorsprung durch Technik!”
Each monthly page throughout the year has a packet of herb, vegetable or flower seeds, appropriate for planting that month.
The page has instructions on what to do and of course you can write the date you planted the seeds on the calendar too.
I was always told that it is considered “unlucky” to open calendar pages ahead of the month, so I am not sure what joys I will have to discover throughout 2025. However I am sure there will be some nice surprises ahead.
Everything in the propagator is lovely
I have had my propagator turned on since November, with a minimum temperature set at 14°C.
There is a “soil warming” cable buried in the sand together with a thermostat and switch, so it is a “turn on and forget” system.
The propagator sits on the staging in my small south facing greenhouse, and I use it to try and germinate some of the more difficult and demanding seeds.
At the moment I have some tiny Rhubarb roots I dug up by accident, which seem to be growing. Then there are several Caper plants.
Capers, Capparis spinosa, is a Mediterranean perennial which you see growing out of crevices in walls all around my home.
The plant has beautiful flowers, and it is the tiny flower buds which are harvested and then pickled for us to eat as Capers as an accompaniment or sauce with food, especially fish and salads.
In the autumn, I happened to be in my local Tommy supermarket, the largest on the island, when I saw they had a box of Papaya, Carica papaya, for sale.
These are not a regular fruit to be found in the green grocery section, so I bought a couple to have in a fruit salad.
Researching the tree, it grows in southern Florida and other tropical climates.
The climate in Dol is a Kopen CSA , or a USDA Zone 9B or 10, so borderline tropical. Papaya is grown in Italy, Spain and Greece, so I am willing to give it a go.
But depending which orchard I am in, my microclimates vary considerably. Anyway, I decided to plant some Papaya seeds to see what happened.
Three months later, all 12 seeds I planted have germinated. I’m going to keep them going, with a view to trying to get plants big enough to move into an orchard.
It would be nice to be able to go into an orchard to harvest Papaya. I know the summer’s here are warm enough, it is just this period around Christmas and New Year which might be a problem.
Meanwhile, I think I need to put some seed compost into the propagator to warm, ready for planting tomato and other seeds in about 10 days time.
One man and his dog went to mow a meadow
Remember the children’s “counting song” Ten men went to mow, went to mow a meadow?
Well I felt like the “one man” this week as I attacked weeds in the east orchard.
The wet and relatively mild autumn and winter has favoured the growth of weeds and my creeping buttercup was getting on for a half metre tall.
There are a number of weeds which are perennial, deep rooted and virtually impossible to eliminate without using a poison of some sort.
I don’t use any herbicides, like those of the Glyphosate family, because their residue remains behind after the plants have been killed.
So I brought the strimmer out, with a cutting blade and tried to start the two stroke engine. It did not want to fire. But then it has been standing unused for probably seven or eight months.
I did some maintenance, sharpened the blades and tried again. It spluttered into life, just…
Nursing the throttle and balancing the choke, I got the engine warmed up and then set too.
I use a blade rather than a cord strimmer because of the stones in the orchard and the blades will go through even the toughest, woody stems.
It wasn’t more than a couple of hours work to get the worst of the weed growth cut down to size. I’m leaving the cut vegetative matter on the ground, so it will rot and improve the soil.
In a couple of months this orchard will be a carpet of pink and blue Hyacinth flowers, so this is probably the last weed cut until after Easter.
While I was in that area, I had a look at my Broad Beans. They continue to grow nicely and it is about time I harvested some fresh bean shoots to have in a salad or stir fry.
As we come to the end of another year, I wish everyone, everywhere reading this, a very Happy, Healthy and Prosperous 2025. And thank you all for your support in 2024. NCG
New Year’s remind me of a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, especially this year…
