Preparing for the frost

Still good autumn colour - against a dark and rainy sky

After a few days of mist, sun, and a little showery rain, with a chilly wind from the north, the forecast is for a couple of frosty nights at the end of this week – down to minus 3C here, the first real cold of the winter.  So some preparatory work in the greenhouse today.

The tomato plants were cut down and composted a couple of weeks ago, although the improvised grow-bags with the roots in are still sitting there; one bagful was used to mulch around the ‘Winter Jewel’ cabbages (which are still covered by their plastic-bottle cloches) in the veg plot, to help protect them from the frost.  The lettuces will be protected with fleece tomorrow.

The tomato bags will need to be moved aside soon, as the frost will blacken the dahlias, which will have to be brought into the greenhouse to be dried off, and I’ll need the tomatoes-space for that.  As it is, doubtfully-hardy plants that have been re-homed in the greenhouse are starting to cluster around them on the floor: the bay, tarragon, blue felicia, echeveria and the gladiolus (which hasn’t flowered for some years, but I live in hope – I really ought to pot it up more satisfactorily).  The penstemons in pots on the patio will be moved under the old table outside the dining room window, which will give them some protection; today, rather belatedly, I also took cuttings of the penstemons, both as insurance against the outdoor plants dying and to create (I hope) more floriferous young plants.   It’s a little late in the year, but fingers crossed that they strike roots.

Erysimum 'Bowles' Mauve'

Having potted up the penstemon cuttings, I checked on the pots of cuttings taken earlier this autumn.  The Erysimum ‘Bowles’ Mauve’ ones had all rooted – despite being the most recently taken – and have been potted on.  This is a really good value plant in the garden; it flowers for months (the parent plant in my garden still has some blooms), mixing well with other flowers, and is both very hardy and undemanding, but it’s short-lived and needs propagating every few years.  I need to remember to pinch the new plants out, as they will tend to become leggy otherwise.  Of the other cuttings in the greenhouse, the Aucuba japonica ones have all rooted well and have also been potted up – although what am I going to do with four aucuba plants?  I took them for fear that my plant in the front garden was dying, but, as reported in a previous post, in fact there is at least one other plant, an accidental layering, behind it which looks healthy.  I’ll ask around in the village if anyone wants one!  Of the other cutting pots – Photinia ‘Red Robin’, winter savory and lavender – there are no signs yet of roots poking out of the bottom, so I’ll leave well alone.  I know from experience that cuttings can look healthy on top but have no roots!

I also have some late-sown seedlings just germinating: calendula, Knautia ‘Red Cherries’ (from home-saved seed), sweet peas and some herbs.  They are also safely in the greenhouse, protected from slugs and snails where necessary.

With frost looming, I also dug my tender scented-leaf pelargoniums out of the outdoor pots where they had spent the summer, providing some interest at the base of the sweet peas, and potted them up so that I could bring them indoors.  I think they are Pelargonium ‘Lady Plymouth’ – variegated cream, with small pale pink flowers.  My original plant had become extremely leggy – again, my failure to pinch it out was to blame – and I struck these cuttings earlier in the year to replace it, before consigning it to the compost bin.  The new plants obviously enjoyed the hot summer and have put on considerable growth; they are now on the kitchen windowsill for the winter, and I just need to remember to pinch them out to keep them bushy!

Pelargoniums in their winter home

Now that colder weather is on the way, I’ve started putting fatballs out again for the birds.  They have already been discovered by blue tits and long-tailed tits.  Birds have been showing more interest in the garden’s food offerings in recent days, with regular visits by redwings (to the holly berries) and fieldfares (to the apples).  Magpies and crows have also been at the apple tree; I don’t remember seeing them feeding there so much in the past.  Blackbirds too are appearing more often, and one of our robins was very interested in the compost mulch around the cabbages this afternoon; and a female blackcap came to the patio for a bath.  Overhead, two red kites were seen having a talons-locked fight – presumably over territory.

Autumn gold

 

Golden leaves

As the weather cools (chilly wind from the north these past few days), foliage is steadily turning to autumnal colours, at least on those trees that haven’t already dropped their leaves.  Nothing too showy in our garden, but even here the autumn gold is visible, if less spectacular than elsewhere.  There is gold in a few flowers, though, such as the rudbeckia and the Mahonia ‘Winter Sun’.

Mahonia 'Winter Sun'

It will soon be time to rake up some autumn leaves and stuff them into an old compost sack, to make another sort of autumn gold – leaf mould, free soil conditioner.  Last year’s bags are sitting down in the dump just waiting for me to spread their contents on the veg plot.

The true gold of autumn, however, are the crops harvested at this time of year.  The tomatoes have all been picked and the plants cut down (leaves and stems chopped up and composted); there are still tomatoes stored in a box in the summerhouse.  All the eating apples have also been gathered, except for a few ‘Fiesta’ that are too small or damaged to bother about.  That cordon produced up to four fruits in a cluster and I never got round to thinning them, so the produce is small-sized but delicious.  While I was working in the veg plot, weeding the summer beans bed in preparation for the autumn mulching, I spotted movement in the ‘Fiesta’ cordon; there were three rats, bold as brass (I wasn’t very far away), clambering through the tree and nibbling at some of the apples.  I threw a damaged apple that was conveniently to hand at them, and they scarpered, probably into the hole under the wall which I’ve known about for some time but which is difficult to reach.  I haven’t seen them since, but in any case it prompted me to pick everything that was undamaged – a huge boxful.

Oh rats - a nibbled apple

Another annoyance is that the leeks are starting to look as though the dreaded allium leaf miner fly has infested at least some of them.  I may have to harvest them and see if I can save any for freezing.

The garden’s birdlife is returning gradually.  Visitors to the drinking bowls on the patio this week have included a female greenfinch, a pied wagtail and a coal tit; I don’t think I’ve seen a coal tit for a year or so, and it’s nice to know they’re still around.  And there have been several owls calling in the village, making a suitably Halloween-ish noise!

A stormy weekend

A stormy weekend here: wet and windy, though not as damaging as in some parts of the country.  But enough unfavourable weather to keep me inside. 

A dry day last week allowed me to get some gardening jobs done; garlic bulbs planted out, sweet pea, broad bean and pea seeds sown and put under cover in the greenhouse. 

Rosa dupontii, photographed in a previous year

I also managed to dispose of a pile of rose stems left from before we went away on holiday.  This was the result of some last-minute work before our departure, on Rosa dupontii.  I’ve been in two minds about R. dupontii for quite some time now.  I planted it, in the shrub bed along the side of the house, many years ago, having been taken by the catalogue photo of its flowers (single, pink and white with yellow stamens, delicate and pretty).  Unfortunately the reality of the plant (as opposed to its flowers) has been anything but delicate and pretty.  It throws up thick stems over 6ft (2m) tall, with the desirable flowers poised on the tips; like most wild or semi-wild roses it only flowers the once, in early summer, and after that doesn’t have much of interest to offer (it does produce hips, but they’re not really anything remarkable).  Its only other redeeming feature is that it doesn’t have many thorns, which at least makes the autumn cutting back relatively painless.  As its position makes it a little ‘out of sight and out of mind’, it often doesn’t get cut back until late (if at all!), but at the end of September this year the immediate necessity was to get it down to size; we had a decorator coming to paint the outside woodwork of the house, from a very tall ladder, and I could see that he was going to need to position said ladder in the shrub bed right where R. dupontii was growing.

So I got to work with secateurs and lopper.  And started reflecting on the foolishness of acquiring anything on the basis of its flowers alone, without regard for what it was like as a plant overall.  And the more I thought about it, the less inclined I felt to persevere with a rose that I probably shouldn’t have bought in the first place.  So, R. dupontii – or at least all of its top growth – was reduced to a pile of long stems on the ground; the roots had to be left to be tackled another day, when time permitted.  A lesson learnt, even if it has taken a long time for me to take it to heart.

Remains of Rosa dupontii

There is a lot of other plantlife in that border that needs attention – including cutting back and some digging out! – but that’s also something for another time, probably over a long period.  And I need to do some hard thinking about what that bed ought to look like when it’s finished.

The largest plant in that area is the big holly tree, which has a good crop of berries this year; but the Scandi-avians (fieldfares and redwings) have now arrived, so the berries may not last long!

Gathering in and planting out

Home after a couple of weeks away.  It’s time to gather in the results of this year’s growing, and plant out for next year. 

A box of tomatoes

The tomatoes have cropped prolifically this year, partly because two of the seven plants in the greenhouse had thrown up a sideshoot that I failed to spot in time, resulting in even more flowering and fruiting stems.  Most of the trusses have now been cut and moved to the summerhouse for temporary storage (and in a few cases, late ripening).  There are already several pots of tomato sauce in the freezer, and today a pot of tomato soup from the fruits that had been left in the fridge while we were away.

Lots of apples too, both for eating and cooking; interestingly, as some growers are reporting a poor crop.  The birds don’t seem to have caused too much damage so far, so there’s no big hurry to get them all in just yet.

The last little 'Neckargold' beans

The last of the summer beans are still waiting to be cut down, though a couple of tiny pods of yellow ‘Neckargold’ went into a stir-fry last night.  There are still a very few flowers on the plants, but no chance of them coming to anything, so all can be cleared from that bed, frame and all, once the weather permits.  After a warm few days late last week, it has turned chilly and wet, and not such as to encourage outdoor work.

Not everything is going to plan.  On our return, I noticed that all was not well with the row of chives by the path; close inspection showed that blackfly had thickly infested the lot of them.  It’s time for them to die back anyway, and I hope that the bulbs themselves won’t have been affected and that all will be fine next year (fingers crossed).  There have also been clouds of whiteflies about the garden for several weeks, although I haven’t noticed any impact on the plants.

Sickly chives!

In a flurry of last-minute jobs before we left, I managed to plant out a few tiny seedlings in the veg plot – kales and cabbages – under plastic bottle cloches, to protect them from pigeons and pheasants, rather than against the weather.  So far they seem to be mostly putting on growth and doing well.  Garlic will be next to go in once the weather brightens up.

Partridges on the freshly-cut lawn

We managed a last cut of the lawn last week; the autumn rains had made the grass grow lush, but not quite as thick as we first thought.  The birds appreciated the effort; the robins were down checking for grubs, and four partridges stood in the middle of the lawn, preening for a while.

Cosmos 'Dazzler' and 'Xanthos'

There is some colour in the garden: the cosmos is still looking good, there are nerines for the vase in the porch, and a posy of mixed antirrhinums from the rather wild ‘cutting garden’ bed for the table. 

A vase of antirrhinums

From inside

 

Dahlia pots

We’re into autumn – some warmish sunshine, a little rain and wind, cool nights.  After the hot summer, the garden is coming back to life, with the dahlias finally flowering satisfactorily (except ‘Sam Hopkins’ which is still looking rather peaky) and the lawn mown on a dry afternoon the other day.

A pheasant hen party

A lot of my photographs recently seem to have been taken looking out through windows for one reason or another.  It’s shooting season, and the nearby estate brings in birds for sport, some of which come into the garden for safety.  They’re best viewed from indoors so as not to disturb them and send them flying back towards the guns.  We’ve had up to a dozen pheasants on the lawn, large numbers of partridges wandering through the garden and even a few ducks (a recent innovation hereabouts) that strolled past the greenhouse one day when I was working inside; they seem partial to a fallen apple or two.

Ducks seen from the greenhouse

Also seen from inside the greenhouse was a juvenile woodpigeon, quite unconcernedly poking around in the grass.

Young woodpigeon

After my recent comment that we had no blackbirds or starlings for weeks, a few have reappeared.  The blackbirds don't seem to have finished moulting yet; they will presumably come back in due course.  Some starlings have also been in the trees opposite the house, and one ventured into our loft and had to be let out.  But they seem to be leaving our apples alone (which is a good thing but probably won't last).

A different sort of wildlife: a spider has set up home outside the kitchen window, with a most impressive web that sparkles with raindrops in the wet.  I’m becoming quite fond of her (it’s female spiders that spin these webs).  She has an alternative base in the top corner of the window embrasure, where she takes larger prey (a hoverfly, the other day) to digest at her leisure.  (Despite my best endeavours I can’t get a sharper image of her.)

A couple of sky photos, also seen through windows: a morning cloudscape and a vivid sunset, the latter seen from inside the village hall.

Fireblight

 

Aucuba japonica - in a bad way

The first plant I put into this garden (relatively bare when we arrived) was an Aucuba japonica, a Japanese spotted laurel.  No particular reason, other than that it was going cheap and, being a large, colourful and easy-going shrub, was a good fit for a shaded spot where I wanted some shelter from the prevailing winds.  It’s now very large, but useful on the rare occasion when I want some variegated foliage for a flower arrangement (and it still provides shelter from those winds).  Over the summer, I noticed that it was looking very poorly, with brown and dying leaves; I gave it some water, assuming that the drought was affecting it, but it continued to look bad.

Brown bits on the Cotoneaster horizontalis

I also noticed that the Cotoneaster horizontalis by the cellar steps, an old plant that was here when we moved in, had brown tips to some of the stems.  This happened last year also; I cut the brown bits off and thought no more about it, but with a recurrence this year there was obviously a bigger problem.  Pondering the issue from the kitchen window, my eye travelled across the drive to where a hawthorn bush has self-seeded – and I realised that this wasn’t an isolated occurrence.  I had been uncertain what to do about the (now fairly large) hawthorn; with the neighbouring ash tree gone, having another tree nearby as a replacement was a good thing, although it was going to cast shade on the neighbours’ garden as it grew (this didn’t seem to bother the neighbours when I asked them, so I left the matter as something to deal with later).  But part of the hawthorn has also been turning brown and dead, and on closer examination even the bits that I thought were healthy are starting to show signs of disease.

So I sent a photo to the Royal Horticultural Society, and in due course the answer came back.  It’s fireblight, caused by a bacterium that attacks shrubs including cotoneaster and hawthorn (and apple trees, although I haven’t seen any signs of it on ours, fortunately).  And, looking around more widely, I can see traces of the same problem on the big cotoneaster by the drive entrance, and there’s a cotoneaster in a garden across the road that looks completely dead.  The remedy, such as it is, is to cut affected stems out and dispose of them carefully, sterilising tools as you go, although I think it may be too late to do anything for the hawthorn, which I will need to take out (somehow).  I wouldn’t be too sorry to lose the cotoneasters; they support a lot of wildlife (bees like the flowers and birds the berries) but they seed themselves too freely and there are some seedlings that I would be glad to be rid of!  However they’re useful plants for difficult places and not easily replaced with something else, so I’ll do what I can for them.

Fireblight also affects other plants that I have around the drive, photinia and firethorn (pyracantha).  They're not showing any signs of the disease, so fingers crossed.  However I recall that, some years back, the main part of the firethorn on the house wall died off, with symptoms that were very similar to what I've got now on the cotoneasters.  I managed to remove the dead part and grew on a healthy shoot in its place, and that is now a well-grown plant showing no sign of distress - but maybe that too was fireblight.

But is that the problem with the aucuba?  It’s in a different plant family, and not apparently likely to be attacked by fireblight.  They're pretty bomb-proof plants.  Now that the temperatures have started to cool (although the weather this week is set to be just above 20C, with sun) and we’ve had a few showery days, the plant is looking a little better; it may be enough just to cut out the really bad bits.  Perhaps it was the lack of water, or too much heat (they like cool, shady places); it can get scorched by hot sun.  Sunburn?!  I had taken some cuttings just in case – they are now in the greenhouse – and in the process discovered that the plant had layered itself on the shady side, and the layering looked healthy, so perhaps, if necessary, the original old plant could be taken out and the new one left in its place.

Cyclamen hederifolium

While I was investigating the aucuba to find healthy material for cuttings, I noticed that the cyclamen (Cyclamen hederifolium) in a weedy corner under the holly tree are in flower – a welcome autumn flower.

Battling the wildlife

Now that we have rain (intermittently) and some more temperate warmth, autumn vegetable growing is resuming, in fits and starts.  Partly the fits and starts are the result of having other things to do, but partly also because wildlife gets in the way.  My late August sowing of brassica seeds had to be repeated when the seedlings were grazed off by a snail or slug in the cold frame (I can’t find the culprit to remove it!); the new sowing is in the greenhouse on the staging, where the seedlings will be relatively safe.  The slug/snail didn't seem to have a taste for the radicchio seedlings which were also in the cold frame, but just in case I've planted them out in one of the veg beds, under plastic bottle cloches, where they seem to be at least surviving.  

Down in the veg plot, the spring/early summer-sown brassicas had just started to shrug off the damage caused by the ravages of the flea beetles and to put out fairly undamaged leaves, but it looks as though the pigeons or the partridges have been grazing on the new growth, taking almost all of it off.  Only the taller of the two sprouting broccoli plants seems to have been spared (too high for the birds to reach?).  Some old fleece and net bags have been deployed to keep them off!  It’s not pretty but if it works …

When I mentioned in the last post that the wildlife was returning, I omitted to say that, unusually, we don’t seem to have a squirrel visiting, even though the hazels are dropping their nuts.  Normally there’s a grey furry visitor burying hazelnuts all over the lawn, but not this year.  It can’t last; presumably the vacancy will be filled in due course by another squirrel!

The cooking apple tree is also dropping its fruit, but – again, unusually – there don’t seem to be any birds pecking at the apples.  No blackbirds or thrushes at all; and where are the starlings?  About a month ago I did find a dead male blackbird in an improbable position under the old Belfast sink that acts as an alpine trough (I buried him next to the ‘Comte de Chambord’ rose on the edge of the veg plot), but I haven’t seen any blackbird, dead or alive, since then.  There was talk some months back of a disease affecting blackbirds; I hope that’s not the reason.  And even the green woodpecker, which was around a couple of times in the summer, seems to be absent, despite his love of apples.  Still, it won't be long before the Scandi-avians (redwings and fieldfares) will blow in for the winter.

On a more positive note, a little group of warblers - possibly a family party - was fly-catching round the big cotoneaster at the entrance to the drive the other day, and one or two have come to the patio for a drink, as has a greenfinch – so not all the birds are staying away!