How do you know you’ve got the best wife ever? Well, when you come home, eat dinner and then announce “I need to go into the garden and make mud bricks!” rather than putting your son to bed. She calmly accepts this and even let’s you bake them gently in the oven.
I’ve made a 100% clay brick, 50%, 45%, 42.5%, 40%, 35%, 30% & 25%. Mixed it thoroughly. Read more for the calculations
Last night I’m glad I added the lines. It had already settled further, currently reducing the sand to clay ratio to about 1:2.5. Good! Less sand. We’ll see how much less by Friday.
You may remember this post about my friends birthday oven fail: http://www.waark.com/2013/05/cob-pizza-oven/ when I added too much water to the mix and our hard work flopped. Well, the next Day Kris reused the cob and made another! This one was much more of a success and only took 2hrs as the cob was ready to load up. He used straw in the thermal mass and said he believes it adds strength and prevents cracking. Most people don’t recommend this, so it’s a good experiment. I have a horrible feeling the temperature will destroy the straw in the thermal mass creating cavities when the strands shrink to ash. This will make it weak and it’ll crumble. We’ll see! Good luck Kris! ( lots more pics on the read more)
Determining your clay content is fairly simple, all you need is a pickle jar or similar, some clay and some water!
Another good weekend out in the garden. Helen harvested the last spring cabbage & I pottered around
All good things come to an end, and with a bank holiday coming up I fancied rebuilding the oven with better insulation etc.
Read the rest of this entry »
As you can see the spring cabbages are coming along great!
The main reason I’ve avoided the front garden for so long was the three tree stumps left after I hacked down several bushes. Today however
Bottle of wine, my latest welding creation (pig stove!), bottle of Rioja, Ipod & kindle, sorted.
I'm Tim, a 29yr old ex-Allotmenteer. My wife and I used to have a small 5 rod plot in South Essex where we grew all manner of veg. I'm also involved in brewing the odd keg of beer.
Recently we bought a house with a 65ftx30ft garden, which we're converting into a mini orchard and veg beds. The entire transformation is happening at the moment and being chronicled by a timelapse camera.
The hope is to introduce chickens next year into the orchard to allow them free range.
If you want to contact me, you can do so here
