Bouncing Ball

 I love the way the pump works when there is no sun. It looks like a bouncing ball !

Pebble Pool In Action

Pebble Pool Plus

Rain this morning so I did more cutting of the 1.22m wide weed membrane to bed lengths of 2.4m from the 50m roll, and then at midday I went to the allotment via the bakers. It was sunny and warm and it was nice to just sit and listen to the bird song, for a while and eat a Cornish pasty. I have a few robins in the nearby trees that were very active and vocal today.

I spent over four hours on the plot installing the pebble pool and cleaning the slate chippings. Once the risk of Frost is over I will install the solar fountain and the pebble pool will provide the birds and the bees with somewhere to come and source water.

The terracotta pot is in the hole just to prevent any wild life and dross from getting into the water chamber below. I watered the pebble pool to see what it will look like once full and the pump keeping the stones wet

My daughter Emma popped in to give me a hand for the last hour and a half of weeding and sorting out the next beds so they are ready for action stations after the last frost.

Working My Way Towards The Corner

Another 3 hours on the plot today with "Thing" lending a hand again, 9 degrees C and sunny it was really quite a nice visit for early March.

More soil processed in the rotary sieve and the boundary beds topped up again, paths formed and the pebble pool located up against the boundary beds.

Another section of paths weeded, membraned and woodchipped as I work my way into what will be the mesh covered greenhouse frame in the corner, for climbing vegetables and plants.

Above is a photo of "Thing" who has been giving me a hand to get these works done. He is sitting on the edge of the bottom liner to the Pebble Pool that will have a solar powered water pump in and will provide a water feature on the plot that will benefit the bees on the allotment, and will just look nice.

I picked up the two pebble pools off freecycle a couple of years ago and they have been sitting behind my greenhouse waiting for me to get to this point where I'm completing the end of plot 1 on the main path.

I will be cutting a square of weed membrane to go under the pools bottom liner that will extend over the timber frame and then I will take the pebbles out to the edges of the frame. I used the pots that are seen sitting in the liner to form the recess in the woodchips that I filled the box up with. At the moment they will just stop the liner filling with water when it rains.

I will finish the install of the pebble pool & solar water pump once the risk of frost is over.

View of the paths and Pebble Pool looking up the site towards the Potting Shed base. The potting shed is on order and I'm waiting to hear when I will be delivered, hopefully at the end of next week or the week after as I really want to get it erected as soon as possible and get cracking fitting it out and using it.

finding good quality woodchips on the pile that has been there way too long in the drop off and pick up area, has been really difficult, once you have skimmed off the dry surface layer that is dry what's left underneath is already going black and decaying and makes for a good mulch  .

I have two scaffold poles to install in the last Raspberry bed, but at the moment they are a little long so, they will have to wait until I bring the grinding wheel down to trim up the mesh panels that will be cladding the greenhouse frame. 

Finally all the stacked flower buckets of soil and stone in this corner are gone and now all that remains is to remove the tarps, dig and weed the area, find the bolts and assembly drawing for the greenhouse and get it erected. 

The water hosepipe seen coming out of the ground, needs to be taken into the plot and looking at this photo I may have a post and tap somewhere near the pebble pool that will connect to the watering system I have installed over plot 1 and 1A 

The balls on top of the scaffold tubes are spray foam that I squirted in a few days ago to stop the scaffold tubes filling with water and rusting from the inside out. 

Freebie - Pebble Pools

 

Good old Freecycle, the photo on the left is the one used to advertise the Pebble Pool Fountain Kits on Freecycle. The other photos are off the internet showing how they work. I was lucky enough to be the first person to request these and went to pick them up this afternoon.

I'm going to spoil my Toads, Frogs & Bees on the allotment by installing a pebble pool fountain for the bees on the plot. I already have one solar panel pump and I'm thinking about a solar floating pump for the other, but have already been warned the foxes have been known to play and take floating fountains, plus froglets can be sucked up the water inlet hole!