Vintage Horticultural and Garden Machinery Club

The club was only three years old back then. My recollections of Bingham were very hard baked ground, blistering hot sunshine with no shade and lots of beer on the Saturday night.

Happy days!

I think SCH at Ipswich had the manufacturing rights until quite recently.

I ridged up the spuds a couple of days ago whilst waiting for the horses’ water buckets to fill. I think I may have overdone it a little because I don’t think I’ll need to do it again! The ground was rock hard so I went up and down with the Earthquake to loosen it, then pulled it up with a large hoe that was my grandad’s. I covered nearly every…[Read more]

Quite right, Charlie. Contrary to many people’s beliefs, beer isn’t the answer to every question, just some of them!

It is a very good point though. Because I’m not able to use any of my workshop equipment I’m having to do things in the way a newcomer to the hobby would have to do it, by inventing ways to overcome tricky problems. It does show…[Read more]

It’s raining today so no work on the farm to do that can’t be put off until tomorrow. I also received the latest edition of The Cultivator today (well done, Alan; a good read despite the absence of any shows to report on) and re-read my piece in the front, telling everyone that I had re-started the rebuild of the rare Trusty. As you can probably…[Read more]

I do know that Binks was a carburettor manufacturer. No doubt the pre-war motorbike enthusiasts will tell you that.

Otherwise could the name refer to Auto-Mower Ltd who made winches based on Fordson tractors?

Try again…..

With this warm weather I have been watering at both ends of the day- it coincides with filling the horses’ water buckets and so it is no hardship to spend another five minutes soaking the spuds. The first row is completely up now (they were Jean’s seed potatoes) and the second and third rows are just coming through in places (these were Mrs.…[Read more]

Most of the mainstream gang mowers would have cylinders that would disengage and were all painted green in one shade or other.

As you say, Ransomes, Lloyds, Shanks and Greens were the common makes and they may have painted them yellow to match the rest of the local authority fleet. We used to have to spray Ransomes 213D’s yellow for Coventry…[Read more]

…….or you can break another machine for the parts you need. Those are the only two options available normally.

That is the standard way of multiplying the crop but you need to do it at the tuber stage before it starts to shoot (or chit). You can then leave them to heal the cut faces for a few weeks before planting.

The problem in my case was the tubers had started to sprout, and sprout from just one or two eyes. I had thought about splitting them but when…[Read more]

We now have three rows of spuds planted and they are being watered twice a day to try to kick some life into them and the bone-dry soil. Both Jean and Mrs. Geoff have raided all corners of cupboards and pantries to find any forgotten potatoes that we can salvage. The only trouble is that we don’t know what varieties we’re planting and so it’s…[Read more]

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I have been busy doing what I said that I was doing!

Firstly the engine went back together with no problems and fitted back onto the Earthquake. It fired first time (honestly!) but stopped after a couple of turns. Second time it started and ran sweetly, so I pumped up the one tyre and went off to do some…[Read more]

I know that can be the case if the horses are using bedding based on wood shavings and you have to wait for the wood part of the porridge to rot down otherwise it takes all of the nitrogen out of the soil.

Our horses are bedded on a hemp-based bedding which seems to rot down a lot quicker. Certainly when the wild rabbits have a dig on the muck…[Read more]

A very nice job that you’ve made of it as well. I particularly like the early version of this for the cast iron wheels with the name cast into them.

Nice to see that you have used the Planet Junior tines in triple hoe plates as well- it certainly makes for something out of the ordinary.

Cambridge Rolls will be a doddle after getting the…[Read more]

The engine is now in pieces in my garage. I decided to do a full rebuild on it rather than mess about doing bits and pieces. I can now get a brilliant spark just by turning the flywheel by hand, so that should help! One thing that I did find that was causing the trouble was the exhaust valve was coked up quite badly and not seating, so the valves…[Read more]

I’ve been struggling to get the Earthquake to run today. Outside in the bright sun from 9 o’clock this morning until 1 o’clock I’m now very brown, covered in oil and stinky! By 1 o’clock I’d had enough so I’ve left it to carry on with tomorrow.

The Earthquake isn’t the easiest of machines to work on. To remove the cowling off the Villiers 25 you…[Read more]

Those were my thoughts exactly. I think these are going to be late-lates!

Top of the list of things to do is going to be servicing the Trusty Earthquake so that I can chop up some of the fibre in the soil, then I’ll dump a Trailer load of horse muck on it and turn that in. That should give the potatoes something to get their teeth into!

Please accept my apologies for the lack of pictures- I think I must be at the end of the line and everyone was online last night so the pictures wouldn’t load.

Here goes, try again!

Please accept my apologies for the lack of pictures- I think I must be at the end of the line and everyone was online last night so the pictures wouldn’t load.

Here goes, try again!