Flynn's blog

Caught a grand total of 18 slugs over one 24 hour period in my slug pub in the veggie patch yesterday! We also went out at the weekend and got a cage structure and netting because of the devastation with cabbage white caterpillars last year. Hopefully we'll get to eat some of the vegetables we grow this year instead of just feeding the local wildlife. The bluetits are back to ripping the hanging basket liners apart for their nests as well - bunch of freeloaders in my garden . . .

Finally got around to building the greenhouse I got for my birthday at the weekend. Some engineering project, no wonder I went off meccano as a kid. Anyhow, there it is, all four foot six square of it round the back of the house. One piece of glass was too big so have made a couple of trips to Exeter Glass on Sowton Industrial Estate to get a bit shaved off, great company, they didn't even charge me. So this weekend I'm all ready to get my seed planted, got tumbling cherry tomatoes (which will go in three hanging baskets in the end, alicante tomatoes, italian plum tomatoes (will try bottling those), chilllis, Chris from work has offered pepper plants (in addition to the 12 broad bean plants he's already given me) and there's cauliflowers too. I read somewhere that it was a good idea if you don't have much veg garden space to concentrate on things you eat all the time so have salad leaves and rocket (I must spend 6 or 7 quid a week on those at the moment) to go in and cut at all summer (free seeds from the Daily Mirror collected from Somerfield - bit disorganised - the branch in town didn't have any seeds at all and the one near home never knew what they were supposed to be handing out, so I ended up with two sets of vegetable and herb seeds which is what I wanted anyway so no problem there). And I've got one of those turned wood paper potters where you can make planting pots out of newspaper instead of buying peat pots or using those throwaway plastic seed trays.

Finally I have achieved a solar powered phone! I bought a solar Freeloader in November which charged my ipod and nintendo ds but the listed connector for my Nokia phone was wrong. After some research, and (finally) sending off the hands free kit as an example I got hold of a Unified Micro USB connector. The advantage of a Freeloader is that it stores the power from the sun so you can leave it charging during the day and plug the phone into it at night. Some years back I took a solar charger on Woodcraft camp to keep my phone going, but it didn't store any power - your could only charge when the panel was in the sun, which was during the day, which made the mobile phone - well immobile. So definitely worth going for a Freeloader over cheaper solar panels. (If you need to take an extra schlock of power with you when travelling you can also still charge a freeloader from the mains with a USB adaptor which was what it was originally designed for). And, since they have been a good company to deal with I will also tell you I got the Freeloader from a company in Tewksbury called Solar Technologies. www.solartechnology.co.uk