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

So my wife (the very scientific one) has given me the ratios

100 clay is 2:1 Clay:Sand

50% Clay is 1:2 Clay:Sand (the ideal amount if calculations are correct!)
45% Clay is 3:10
42.5% Clay is 17:43
40% Clay is 4:11
35% Clay is 7:23
30% Clay is 2:9
25% Clay is 1:5

The reason behind this is to work out the correct ratios for making the thermal mass for my oven. 1 part clay to 2 parts sand is supposed to be the correct mass. It can vary with the type of clay so we’ll see!

So fingers crossed 1:2 is good because if its not, I’ll need to experiment more and I don’t think she’ll be so gracious to let me do it again before the weekend. I think the oven is at about 50′C

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!

Make sure you agitate well until all the clay has dissolved. The sand will settle immediately. It’s best to make a mark so you can see exactly where the line is for later when you’re working out the ratios.

As you can see, we have a lot of clay in our soil. It’s almost 1:5. This means for each bucket of clay, I’ll need about 2 buckets of sand.

Another good weekend out in the garden. Helen harvested the last spring cabbage & I pottered around

The beans and mangetout are in, we only had “the last” frost of the year last week. I’m betting we’ll be ok going forward now. The broadbeans are now starting to show signs of shooting up. My unorganic strategy of spraying them with a deadly chemical mix seems to have put pay to the blackfly the ants were farming. I’ve never had a broadbean crop due to the black crawling mass my broad beans become. This year I’ll discover if I even like them.

I’ve also been harvesting comfrey (not pictured) like its going out of fashion – really seems to be going for it this year and the smelly fertiliser bin is beginning to really stink. We’re down to one IBC now, I’m wondering when it’s going to significantly rain again… They’re already talking about hosepipe bans again!

All good things come to an end, and with a bank holiday coming up I fancied rebuilding the oven with better insulation etc.

I was surprised at how crumbly the dome was. The majority had turned brick red due to the London clay. I wondered if I could use it again, but I think the baking process makes it too big grained. I was surprised to find a couple of areas where the thermal layer was still clay and definitely damp. I don’t think the tarp was doing the best job…

All cleaned up, I’m going to relay the blocks again.

I’ve decided to go for a cob mix for the insulating layer. The thermal layer will still be 1 part clay to two parts sand & the insulating layer will have pretty much this entire bale of straw in it. You can’t use hay – it’ll likely rot in it. I found I had mushrooms growing on the damper area of my insulation last year…

Floss, being curious.

Candy sitting on anything she doesn’t understand.

The broad beans are shooting up & we’ve planted some of the trailing squashes

The mangetout is out and funding its feet!

My cacti (cutting taken from some i grew when I was about 6/7years old) is putting out lots of new buds

My chillies are potted up into the auto waterer & feeder

And strawberry alley has now been joined by two black currant plants. You can see my old allotment grape is also surviving! 6 years old from poundland I think!

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

I decided to have a go at them. It took about 45 minutes to get the main stump out, the rest seem to have rotted (hurrah brushwood killer!). I’m not using the front of the house for food plants mainly because of the sheer amount of roofing asbestos that seems to have been dug into the ground.

After about 2-3hrs it was fully dug and ready for some colour!

Some cheap pansies and a few comet flowers and it looks much better than before, we’re intending to plant it up with sun flowers in a few weeks!

Just a point to say salad is definitely in season!

Bottle of wine, my latest welding creation (pig stove!), bottle of Rioja, Ipod & kindle, sorted.