It’s a cold day today

The first frost of the year has hit the garden. We will see how the various plants will do.  I have a herb garden developing nicely, I look forward to the plants being more mature. The veg I am most worried about at this point is the small crop of lettuce which are still in the ground.  The Cabbage and Broccoli should be okay as well as the broad beans that are coming up. But the sun is shinning now and the heat is returning to the ground.  Lovely day really.

The herbs have arrived

The border herbs for the vegi patch are now going into the ground. Thyme, Rosemary, Oregano are in the ground. A Bay tree is new arrival.  Still to go in, Sage, Chives, Lemongrass and some comfrey. This should help in some ways to hold back the grass, but in many ways is there to help quality of the food coming out of the kitchen.  (Aside from the comfrey which is there for the garden, and not the eating, definitely not the eating).  Time to get some annuals in to the patch when I work out the veg rotation.

We have rain

Finally, for the first day since Xmas eve we appear to have some real rain. There was one day of a sudden downpour about two weeks ago, but it was short and the water soon evaporated off.  However the dry run has enabled me to fix 90% of the guttering around the house.  Which in turn will enable me to set up a number of tanks for some rain water harvesting.  Spotted a number of problems on the guttering in the rain which I will be fixing when the dry weather returns.

The vegi patch work continues getting the beds in to shape and sorting out the environment. Taking my time to try and get things right (although I suspect there is no real right, and I will be changing my mind from season to season again). Removing the grass and the creeping vines, which have taken over large section of the area which I am trying to clear, is the main task at the moment.

Chainsaw action

The three trees are now down.  Chainsaw at the ready resulted in the trees being taken down and chopped up.  The larger parts for firewood (for a future pizza oven to be built) and the result has been mulched up and put in to a large compost pile that has been building up over a few weeks. I just need to get the stump grinder to come and remove the final remains of the trees and the area for the vegi patch has been sorted out. Now working on removing the grass and other creeper type weeds that appear to have invaded the area.

Summer is here and it arrived hard. Most days temps are over 25 degrees C and it has only rained a little bit since the Xmas eve, so the ground is now hard and dry, The grass is brown and the farm stock around is being moved to different pastures or herd sizes are being reduced.

Green Waste

I have always believed that green waste is not waste, but a source of good for the garden. I have never seen the point of putting green waste out to be collected by some one else. They in turn, make it in to compost and then I buy the compost. I might as well make the compost first.

So I have a number of trees that need to come down. Both are unproductive trees in the wrong place, but they will not go to waste. The larger parts of the tree will become logs for the planned pizza oven, the small parts are going through the shredder and going to the compost pile.

Now to see how well they compost. One is a wild plum tree that is not producing fruit and is taking over a corner of the garden, the other is a pine of some sort. The plum is mulching up well. I need to start the pine but a thunderstorm has caused a slight break in the work schedule

Permaculture

So the garden is ready for the complete overhaul. I am looking to take a permaculture approach to the garden. It is not a large expensive space to work in but, if I get this correct it should produce the veg that the family needs most of the time. The idea is that that the garden will be producing supplies all year around. This will take some experimentation as the guidelines that I have are for an Australian climate and the Wairarapa in New Zealand has a different climate compared to the location in which the book is set. Updates will of course be put up on the blog.

Been a long time

It has been a long time since I commented on this blog, but it is time to start again. I will be covering a large number of subjects. Including the garden as well as the technology that I am I deploying around the house. VOIP, Wifi, permaculture and anything else that I can think of.

Temperature and the delights of melting plastic

On my 3D printer the only molten plastic produced should be from  the extruder to build the models. The printer is not working currently due to  a combination of hot spring temperatures and some warm stepper motors. This has resulted in a number of the plastic elements being deformed and some gears melted.

Some I am back to the drawing board. I am going to use the information that I have learned from my first build of the mendel and start construction of an Aluminium based model. I have been looking on ebay, and ball screws produced by the chinese have come down in price so I am moving toward these as part of the design. Drawings and notes are all around at the moment as I tray and sort out what my ideas for the building of the printer. (And the resources that I have available to me from various suppliers).

It is an interesting new start and I hope to be able to have something together over the next few weeks. (Well at least the Y Platform 😉

Once I have more information together it will be documented here (as a complete summary on the reprap wiki).

Reprap Update

Well development work on the printer has gone a little slow and it is not because of the printer. The electronics are in place and appear to be working. I have some tuning to do on the physical printer to ensure that all the belts and chains that run the board are working smoothly.  And then the firmware needs to be configured in order to ensure that all is working well.

The delays are due to real life getting in the way more than anything else. We will be moving house shortly where I will have a proper workshop and from there be able to work on the printer in a dedicated work environment. This is good thing as it means that the kitchen workspace where I have been developing the printer will be returned to its true purpose.  It also means that when the printer is running fumes and smells will not be in the house.

The house move is planned to happen over the next few weeks (within 6 weeks). So it is unlikely that there will be many updates until that has all been resolved.

Out with the old, in with the new

In the building of the Mendel, the electronics from a company called Techzone came with a cable kit which required the cables to be made up for the electronics to work. This was not a problem and I soon had the electronics working. The issue was that the connectors and cable are cheap and they failed to a point where a connection could not be made from one end of the cable to the other. The situation has now been rectified, new cables and connectors have been purchased and some far better and stronger connectors have been built and I have a blinking red led back on the the powerless motherboard.  The board is happy and responding to the connection and all seems well.

The next stage is to build cable assemblies for all the other parts of the electronics to replace the cheap connectors. and thus remove this one single point of failure from the design.  Following that the final elements of the design build need to be completed and the printer to be put through a dry run test.