We did skip a few bits of wood and if we’d planned this for more than 15 minutes could certainly have skipped all the wood. As it happened though we spent £6.90 on the wood.

Wood £6.90
Trays 7 x £1.75 = £12.25
Cable £1.80 (4 m)
Plug £0.64
Lamp holders 4 x £0.98 = £3.92
Switch £1.72
Bulbs £1.97 (4 x 60W)
Screws ~60 = 0.40

Also a little bit of wood glue and some foil and duct tape (say 50 pence).
The cardboard is of no cost and the fan (120 mm, 12 v) came from an old computer case (these can be bought for £3 from good computer shops).

Total cost = £29.90

Call it £30.50 or £34 once we’ve added the 8th and 9th racks there’s room for. The shop only had seven in stock.

The materials for the dehydrator.

The cats were very helpful...

The basic idea is a simple wooden frame, with lights at the bottom to provide the heat and a fan to provide the air flow. All the joints were drilled, counter sunk, glued and screwed to produce a pretty robust frame.

Drilling - no power tools used here!

Each corner post has little ledges for the racks to rest on.

The four 60 W bulbs are in two parallel sets, each with its own switch. This gives us two heat levels of 240 W and 120 W.

Four 60 W bulbs provide 240 W of heat (and a small amount of waste light).

The sides are covered with thick cardboard. The 120 mm fan is fitted into the middle of the cardboard base, separating the bulbs from the heating area. It’s a DC fan, running off an old transformer I had kicking around.

All assembled with the 120 mm fan in the base.

And here we are in action!

First run!

In its current configuration the drying area is seven trays of 0.094 m2 totalling 0.66 m2. The capacity is 9 trays so a total of 0.85 m2, over twice the capacity of the cheapest commercial version. At least £10 of the final cost of £34 could be easily avoided by getting the wood and cable from a skip. The switch, bulb fittings, and plug could also probably be skipped with a little more effort. The trays were the most expensive part, they do look nice but similar function could have been achieved far cheaper by using a square metre of fine wire mesh from a garden centre. The apples do seem to be sticking to the metal a bit, so maybe plastic trays would work better? Or maybe we need to use a little bit of oil/butter on them next time.

Here’s the result:

The first batch!

It took around eight hours, used close to 2 kWh which is around £0.25 of electricity. Next up the solar adapter for sunny days! Whilst some did stick to the trays, these were the thinner ones; they were too thin! The best results are from the thicker slices, 4 mm seems around right.

The temperature with all four bulbs on was a stable 35 C, which looking at commercial dehydrators seems on the cool side. Be interesting to know how much airflow they have though. Now to try some courgettes!

Everything is growing really fast this month. After a relatively cool and wet July in Bristol (16.9C compared to the 30 year average of 18.3C along with 18% more rain) August seems to be a little warmer. Here’s the crop from the 13th August:

These are the first of our carrots along with lots of squash, courgettes, blackberries and chard.

Of course we can’t hope to eat this much squash, though we’ve had a good go! Most of this load was given away at a BBQ last week. The variates here are Parador courgettes along with Sunburst, Sunshine and Turks Turban squash. We also have some Crown Prince, Harrier, Confection and Harlequin on the plot which should all keep fairly well, along with a prolific pumpkin. The carrots are Jaune Obtuse de Doubs’ Yellow Carrot, a non-hybrid from Real Seeds. These carrots were planted on 26th March. The squash plants are mostly growing in front of the sweetcorn:

Sweetcorn and Squash

Our monstrous sweetcorn! Dave’s a handy 6 foot rule so these 55 sweetcorn plants are around 9 foot. Looking at other allotment plots and commercial fields our corn is exceptionally tall, however, it seems to have fewer cobs forming than we’ve seen on other plants. The seed was another non-hybrid, called Golden Bantam Improved.

The leeks are continuing to bulk up

We're letting this one grow!

We sowed more carrots on 10th July. These should be ready by the end of October, thanks Amanda and Dave for weeding!

Yellow carrots planted 10th July

Here's our haul from 2nd August 2011

A few photos from earlier. This is the first half of the plot, as it looked on 17th July:

Chard, leeks, rhubarb and squash in front of the sweetcorn

We're eating the turnips much smaller than this... but it's fun to let one grow!

The kittens are curious and enthusiastic creatures, not often helpful though!

A round up of recent progress on the allotment.

These photos are from 9th of July:

These leeks had a slow start. The rabbits ate them almost down to the groud a couple of months ago. Amazingly they seem to have come back pretty well.

The squash are growing fast now, looks like we'll have a lot! These are called Sunburst and have a wonderful scalloped edge.

The kale's done really well. More than we can eat! And in the background the rapidlly growing sweetcorn.

A few days later, 23rd of July and we’ve got a good harvest:

The potatoes are the first earlies, Foremost. That's the crop from three plants. We've also lifted the second garlic patch, this was planted in January and seems pretty similar to the stuff that went in in November. Also a good crop of courgettes, turnips, chard, onions and blackberries.

Sweetcorn are looking lush now, lots of foliage but not much sign of corn yet!

The chard has been a great success. We have yellow, red and a more conventional leaf beat, very similar to spinach.

We've planted sweetpeas and sunflowers against the fence for a bit of colour.

The beans have been a nightmare, bad weather, rabbits and voles have had most of them. We have some dwarf runners that are finally doing what they're meant to do now.

After a record-breakingly dry spring, we’ve finally had some wet weather and the plants have really appreciated it. The rhubarb, which had been looking increasingly unhappy despite regular watering, is now thriving:

Rhubarb, these started as four small donations from our allotment neighbour.

The remaining onions (some were nibbled by hungry rabbits) are starting to swell:

Onions, this is our 2nd bed of onions. They went in after the super cold December and have done better than the first lot.

And the sweetcorn are looking great!

Sweetcorn, current count is 55 plants from the 60 kernels. Not bad!

Our squash have come from various sources. Some we grew ourself from seeds, some we got as little plants, others from friends and family:

Our largest squash, the donated pumpkin from Will & Kaz.

We have 23 various squash/pumpkin/courgette plants in total.

The beetroot and parsnips are coming along well. We may have underestimated the germination rate of the parsnips and overestimated our likely consumption of them…. Anyone out there who would like some parsnips in a couple of months’ time??

In the foreground, the eldest beetroot, behind them younger. In the background parsnips and potatoes.

After netting the chard to prevent the rabbits getting at it, it has grown up quickly. Tasting some directly from the plant, I can see why the rabbits liked it so much. The ordinary green ones taste best, but the yellow and red look exciting:

Rainbow (at least red, green and yellow anyway) chard.

The kale has been growing fast since it finally started raining a couple of weeks ago.

The garlic that we put in in autumn had completely died, so we were forced to harvest them all, although it’s a bit early. Maybe they were tricked by the dry spring into thinking that summer had been and gone. Turnips that we had almost given up on have also done remarkably well, so we thinned them out and ate some in white sauce with the chard.

First real harvest this year. Chard, turnip and garlic.

Time to stop buying vegetables!

Just a quick post today. All the photos below were taken on the evening of Tuesday 24th May.

Parsnips, three sowings with each separated by a few weeks (5th March, 20th March and the most recent mid-April).

Potatoes, really impressed with how vigorous they are. They were planted on 20th March so this is almost 9 weeks growth. Only a few more weeks until the first earlies should be ready!

Beetroot, planted 20th March - not as impressive as the potatoes!

18 Strawberries (9 Elan and 9 Roman) and 9 squash plants.

Kale

Chard

Sweetcorn, we have around 60 plants at ~1 foot spacing in a large bed.

Two reports, first from this weekend (1st May 2011) and below an update from 17th April.

1st May 2011
We are not alone! Not only did we have some very helpful friends digging, sowing and watering (thanks!), but we also discovered some interesting wildlife. Here’s the movie:

The main task for today was to plant out the sweetcorn. We had around 60 plants raised in a propagator over the last two weeks.

Sweetcorn, 1st May 2011

Over winter we’ve had some black plastic laid over a 5.5 x 2m area. It’s done a pretty good job of killing the grass so the soil just needed digging over with added manure.

Sweetcorn bed

Despite trying to block any rabbit sized gaps in the fence, they are still finding their way in. All we can do is net the tasty leaves.

Sweetcorn bed, with netting

We also planted more carrots and beetroot, around a month after the first sowing, and a couple of kindly donated pumpkin plants (thanks guys!). The potatoes continue to grow at a remarkable pace, they are now far larger than the two week old photo below.

17th April 2011

We had been away for two weeks before today, all we could be sure of was that it would be dry! March and April 2011 have turned out to be amongst of the drying ever in the England: Farmers Weekly

Potato, 17th April 2011

Garlic

Cabbages, 17th April 2011

As we’ve only had around 20% of the normal rainfall over the last two months everything is dry. We’re finding the two biggest challenges to be watering (we’re using a couple of hundred litres every two or three days) and the rabbits.

It’s been a while since the last update, with the improving weather a lot’s been going on at the allotment. On the 18th February we started chitting the potatoes. Four weeks later, there had been some progress:

Four weeks chitting, 18th Feb to 20th March

The ‘before’ image is here: 18th Feb.

Of our five variates, Foremost (1st Early), Roseval (2nd Early), Sarpo Shona (Early Maincrop) and Kerrs Pink (Late Maincrop) have chitted nicely, ready to plant. Pink Fir Apple (Late Maincrop), however, hasn’t done much. There are some shoots but not ready for planting yet. We’ll give it another couple of weeks.

Chitted potatoes, 20th March 2011

Here they are going in; the earlies are spaced 30 cm apart in rows around 40 cm apart and the rest spaced 40 cm apart.

Potatoes going in, 20th March 2011

Potatoes going in, 20th March 2011

We’ve also been improving the rabbit proofing, adding chicken wire to the gate, fixing a bit of fence, blocking up holes… it’s not obvious where they can get in now.

This weekend (26th March) we’ve been busy planting, and weeding. The thistles have the potential to be a problem. The meadow before we started digging was full of thistles and their remaining roots are spawning babies everywhere!

We added some more parsnips and cabbage, a few weeks after the first sowing. Sown the first time this year are: carrots, turnips, beetroot, bunching onions and leeks. We also dug a new bed along the fence and sowed a mixed pack of wild flower seeds.

Seed beds

This weekend we’ve dug another three beds… and started planting! Well, a few cabbage seeds went in on the 19th Feb and today we added a third of a bed of parsnips. The rest really need to wait until the risk of frost has passed.

Third of a bed of parsnips sown, 5th March 2011

Our allotment neighbour very kindly gave us a few rhubarb crowns today. Very much appreciated, they went straight into a well manured bed we had previously earmarked for courgettes.

Donated rhubarb crowns, planted 5th March 2011

We’ve also been collecting wood. Both from skips and Freecycle. Last weekend we got it down to the allotment to make edges for the beds. The earliest beds were dug last summer and gradually the grass has been reclaiming them, one was around six inches narrower! These edges should hold the grass at bay.

The end pieces are old beams, 6x3, with planks running along the sides.

A little neater now, the grass should be more manageable.

No more photos of muddy fields today! Last weekend we went to the Somerset Potato Day, in Pylle. It was an amazing event, around a hundred different varieties of potato, sold by the tuber. Rather like a muddy pick ‘n’ mix! It was also extremely busy. The choice was somewhat bewildering so we decided to limit ourselves to ten tubers of just five different varieties, making sure we got a spread from 1st early to late maincrop. Here’s what we ended up with:

Foremost 1st Early
Waxy flesh. When first added to the national list in 1954 it was Suttons Foremost and an instant hit with gardeners who liked its excellent flavour and resistance to disintegration when boiling. Good common scab resistance. Short to oval in shape with white skin and waxy white flesh.
Use: Salad, Bake, Boil, Roast.

Roseval 2nd Early
Salad, smooth, deep red skinned with yellow flesh salad variety, sometimes with a pink flush. The flesh is waxy with a truly suburb flavour. Excellent for salad use, hot or cold. A very pretty variety, good cooking quality. Popular in France, rare in UK.

Sarpo Shona Early Maincrop
Short growing, weed smothering, slightly oval shaped early maincrop with white skin, creamy flesh and shallow eyes, plus a great resistance to blight.

Pink Fir Apple Late Maincrop
Waxy flesh, good flavour. Just brush off under the tap and steam in its skin, don’t worry if bits break off them, cook them all. It does tend to wander so make sure to dig up all the tubers.
Recommend use: Boil, Salad.

Kerrs Pink Late Maincrop
Floury flesh. Raised in Scotland by James Henry, very vigorous foliage, the age shows in the deep eyes and good flavour. Recommend use: Chip, Mash, Roast.

Seed Potatoes, 18th Feb 2011

Before planning potatoes must be chitted. This is just allowing them to sprout before planting and what we started today. It’s recommended to allow around six weeks for chitting. Each potato has one end a little more rounded or blunt with a few ‘eyes’. We stand them, this blunt end uppermost, in egg boxes or similar, in a cool and light place. Our loft with its skylights seems ideal. Once the shoots are 0.5-1 inches long they are ready to plant. This should be around the last week of March.

1st earlies should be ready after around 10 weeks and the maincrop more like 20. Fingers crossed for mid June!

Seed Potatoes, 18th Feb 2011

Seed Potato Catalogue

More digging on the allotment. Gradually, it’s looking more like an allotment and less like the field we took on last year. The first image is from the front, looking back in a westerly direction. The green grass in the foreground is the stuff we cut throughout the summer.

Looking west, 5th Feb 2011.

The plastic sections in the middle are experimental. We’re wondering what impact four months under cover will have on the grass. The grass left uncut towards the back, is brown.

In total, from front to back we have the following beds:

• Six 2.5 x 1.25 m (one full of onions, one half garlic and half onions)
• Four 1 x 4 m
• Two 5.5 x 2 m
• Three 1.5 x 2 m (one full of onions, one half garlic)
• One 5.5 x 1 m
• Two 2.5 x 1.25 m
• One 5.5 x 1 m

From the other end, these are the more recent beds.

Looking east, 5th Feb 2011.

There’s still quite a bit of room, around 10 m undug. We should manage to finish all the beds over the next month or so. We’re adding manure as we go along, hardly making a dent in the heap!