20th+

Friday, October 26, 2018

Cloches, Row Covers, Greenhouses

How to use cloches
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiWoPG5i7cY

Hoop House: How to Make a Row Cover Tunnel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc70X2Jn1gk

Crewe Tractor

Insight into the work involved in the recreation of a Crewe Tractor – based on some 130 vehicles adapted by the London & North Western Railway (LNWR) at Crewe Works in the 1916-1917 period.

It is said that the inspiration for the idea came from the daughter of the LNWR’s Chief Mechanical Engineer, CJ Bowen-Cooke, who had become aware of a lack of powered transport on the lightly laid trench tramways operated behind the trenches across France and Belgium. The design saw the adaptation of a standard Ford Model T (manufactured in Trafford Park) complete with a lightweight utility body and kit-form railway chassis. So it was that they could, within one hour, be adapted from road trim to a two-foot gauge locomotive with load space. Initial trials appear to have used the brass-radiator Model Ts then being manufactured, though the actual production run would seem to have entirely utilised the pressed radiator type of the Model T variant. They did not form part of the War Department Light Railway (WDLR) fleet, rather being part of the motor transport pool – and were marked and numbered as such.

The design would seem to have been of indifferent success, and it is recorded that all remained in railway guise once so converted, possibly due to convenience but also perhaps due to the poor state of the roads at that time.

The first vehicle through our workshops was a US imported Model T with left-hand drive and built in 1922. It had been brought to the UK at some point in the past and fitted with an English-style van body. At Beamish it worked as a general delivery vehicle until withdrawn for overhaul and conversion to the Crewe Tractor. The conversion work was carried out in the museum’s Regional Heritage Engineering Centre and was largely the work of volunteer John Hodder, with assistance from Mike Davidson. The work was completed at Christmas 2016 and the Crewe Tractor can now be seen in use around the Museum. The loadbed includes a toolbox as well as a storage container of suitable period style, in which I can pack the laptop and other work regalia – a First World War padlock completes the picture!

You can follow the story of the Model Ts, and other vehicles at Beamish, on the Transport Blog at www.beamishtransportonline.co.uk.

Succession planting

Succession planting

"Crop On with Charles Dowding, autumn harvests from summer plantings"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxRCd_gJ23w

"Polyculture and Succession - Farming with other species"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rACzpXUv778

Vertical, wall, arbour

Vertical Gardening - Simple Ideas for a Vertical Vegetable Garden
Pole or climbing beans; climbing peas; sweet potatoes; vining tomatoes; sprawling types of zucchini, cucumber, melon, squash; arbors - passionfruit; grapevine; climbing squashes, climbing beans; sweatpeas; fruit trees (apples, pears, cherries, etc); cane fruits (raspberries, blackberries)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HLho4vcJac

Vertical Gardening (USA)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdI2YrNIf5g
Space optimization
https://plus.google.com/103755316640704343614/posts/2jAytcoZFPk

Make the most of vertical spaces: RHS Greening Grey Britain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDhNCXWTUnI
RHS Greening Grey Britain
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXEVpDvKn91zZYTeUt1-prLXJh-B-WiVG

Making a Compost Heap > .

07:40 Fertilizer & Insecticides

Why Moderns Should Care About Victory Gardens - occ > .

Compost heap > .

50s House & Garden - Spark > .

>> Homefront WW2 >>>

Compost, soil, vermiculture - tb >> .
Dig for Victory, England WW2 - Γαῖα >> .

Farming & Food - tb >> .

Home Front - Elice >> .

The 1940s House - Elice >> .

The 40s House - IWM >> .

The Dig for Victory Show - ShoplandCollection >> .

The Growing Revolution (Dig for Victory) - LOVE IT >> .

Victory Garden - USA, WW3 - Γαῖα >> .

Wartime, Subsistence Cooking - Elice >> .

Wartime Farm - Absolute History >> .

Wartime Farm, Kitchen & Garden (full) - archanth >> .

Wartime Kitchen, Garden, Farm - Elice >> .

MAF - Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries ..
MoF - Ministry of Food ..

Dig for Victory leaflets (image, large) .

Dig for Victory Monthly Guides .

Dig for Victory

In Britain, "digging for victory" used much land such as waste ground, railway edges, ornamental gardens and lawns, while sports fields and golf courses were requisitioned for farming or vegetable growing.

Sometimes a sports field was left as it was but used for sheep-grazing instead of being mown (for example see Lawrence Sheriff School § Effects of the Second World War).

By 1943, the number of allotments had roughly doubled to 1,400,000, including rural, urban and suburban plots.

C. H. Middleton's radio programme In Your Garden reached millions of listeners keen for advice on growing potatoes, leeks and the like, and helped ensure a communal sense of contributing to the war effort (as well as a practical response to food rationing).

County Herb Committees were established to collect medicinal herbs when German blockades created shortages, for instance in Digitalis purpurea (Foxglove) which was used to regulate heartbeat.

Victory gardens were planted in backyards and on apartment-building rooftops, with the occasional vacant lot "commandeered for the war effort!" and put to use as a cornfield or a squash patch.

During World War II, sections of lawn were publicly plowed for plots in Hyde Park, London to promote the movement, while allotments growing onions in the shadow of the Albert Memorial also pointed to everybody, high and low, chipping in to the national struggle.

Both Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle had vegetable gardens planted at the instigation of King George VI to assist with food production.

Victory garden - Wikipedia