Fly down and be counted

Hazel catkins and sunny skies

Big Garden Birdwatch weekend didn't start too well.  My first hour's count was a bit sparse (only seven species), so I tried again and did a little better.  I put it down to its being rather windy - the first windy weather we've had for some time - which might have discouraged some birds from visiting, so the next day, in brighter and calmer weather, I spent a third hour doing a count.  This time a wider range of birds (12 species) appeared, including chaffinches, goldfinches and a mistle thrush.  Among the no-shows were the wren, which had been around for my earlier counts and came by a few hours after my 'official' count; it appears most days, sometimes hopping along the sill outside the dining room window in search of bugs.  I had been hoping that the song thrush might turn up; it was singing lustily around the turn of the year, and occasionally foraging under the shrubs, but I hadn't seen it for a few weeks.

Snowy garden

Then, after a quiet and mild winter so far, the weather turned cold this past week; a couple of frosty days were followed by a significant snowfall on Thursday night and an icy Friday and Saturday morning.  It ought to turn mild again from Sunday.  The song thrush reappeared, looking for food on the patio, and four bullfinches (two males and two females) searched the plum tree for buds.  As the weather turned chilly, a little flock of red-legged partridges trotted into the garden to poke around the veg plot and took shelter under the buddleia, where some of them sat looking very miserable as it turned dark.  Meanwhile, in spite of the cold, the birds are still pairing up; the robins are still together, and two dunnocks seem to be hanging out as a pair.

Shallot bed in preparation

Before the cold weather drew in I managed a couple of jobs in the garden.  The pond has been raked out, removing a lot of weed and some grass that had rooted in there.  The shallot order arrived, so a bed in the veg plot was prepared for them with a layer of homemade compost covered with black polythene to keep some of the cold out and to allow the ground to warm up; I haven't been good in the past at trying to warm the soil before spring planting, so this is by way of turning over a new leaf.  One job still outstanding is to prune the big apple tree and the wisteria, but that is best left until the temperature is a little warmer.

Back on the plot

Today was the first day's serious gardening of the year.  It's not that the weather has been bad - it's been mild on the whole, and relatively dry, but I've been persuading myself that garden jobs weren't all that pressing, and apart from minor bits and pieces such as pulling up the odd weed I haven't been doing much outside.  But there is work to be done, so this afternoon it was on with the gardening gear and out to the greenhouse.  Very satisfying is was too, although none of the jobs were big ones.  Mostly it was the early seed-sowing: the aubergines, sweet peppers and chillies, all to be germinated indoors, and the spring sowing of sweet peas, which have been left in the greenhouse (the autumn-sown ones sprouted in early winter and were put out into the cold frame in December).  A few small lettuce plants which had been sitting in modules in the cold frame were planted into a trough in the relative warmth of the greenhouse (which is cooler than usual this year, having dropped a few times to 2.2C, which is on the cold side for some of my tender plants but nothing seems to be suffering too much so far).  Then there were a couple of other odd jobs to do, such as tying in the broad beans, most of which have reached the height where that is both helpful and desirable.

There is other work waiting for me, including pruning the apple tree and raking weed out of the pond.  It's also a good time of year for digging up perennial weeds, and goodness knows there are plenty of those to tackle.

One job which I did do earlier in January was to plant the last of the tulip bulbs, last year's 'World Friendship' bulbs which had proliferated remarkably well; this probably means that they are too small to flower successfully this year, but we'll see.  They were nice tulips and I'm reluctant to throw them out.  To create a home for them I emptied a big pot which had been housing a mix of small plants, mostly shrubby herbs grown from cuttings; they had been popped in there during the dry summer weather to give them a better depth of soil, and hence more water retention, than their individual small pots could provide.  They hadn't put on a great deal of top growth, but their roots had expanded enormously and I had to cut them apart - so I was surprised to find vine weevil grubs in there.  Goodness only knows what they had been living on as nothing seemed to be damaged.  I fished out as many grubs as I could find and left them out for the robin, who enjoyed the meal.

Actually we have two robins - they paired up before Christmas and have been feeding together quite happily.  We'll see if the friendship lasts when the really cold weather blows in!  There have been a few frosts but nothing to seriously worry the birds, and they haven't been particularly territorial so far.  There are quite a few finches around, mostly goldfinches - two of them were feeding on the phlomis seedheads this morning - but there are also a group of chaffinches, which were soaking up the sun the other day on the apple cordons against the wall, and a male greenfinch has also been around.  We've also had a few bullfinches enjoying eating the flowers on the winter honeysuckle, which has been in full bloom since early December.

Freesias and winter honeysuckle

The winter honeysuckle (Lonicera purpusii) has been a mainstay of posies of flowers for the house; it paired well with some white supermarket freesias, and also with early snowdrops and hazel catkins.  The winter aconites and the first of the hybrid hellebores are out (the big Helleborus argutifolius has been in flower since before Christmas), and I see that the Cyclamen coum that self-seeded at the edge of the path are also flowering.  Daffodil leaves are starting to sprout, although I know from experience that it will still be some time before we see any flowers; they seem to have an ability to sit in bud for a very long time without actually blooming!

Snowdrops and catkins

Cyclamen coum

Helleborus argutifolius

Helleborus x hybridus

Snowdrops and aconites

Things I learnt in 2018

A quick round-up of things I learnt in the past year.  Ok, so the weather last year wasn’t exactly typical, so some of the following may not apply in a ‘normal’ year.  But, in general, in 2018 I learnt:

1.  That it’s true that tomatoes and aubergines should be sown early.  I sowed them indoors, and kept them there until the temperatures warmed up enough to risk the greenhouse, and they did much better.  The tomatoes were much more successful in my bags (about 20 litres) of compost than in growbags.  I potted the aubergines on into larger pots than previously, and kept them on the staging in better light, and got much better results; however they really need even bigger pots (3 litres?).

2.  That it’s also true that late-summer annuals like zinnias and tithonias can be sown late (April/May); they don’t like hanging around waiting to be transplanted, and they catch up very well.  This might also be true of starting off dahlias, although in 2018 they took a long time to get going (the cold spring? Or too little water in summer?).  My ever-growing collection of dahlia tubers is in dry storage in the greenhouse, although I noticed the other day that two of them (‘Sam Hopkins’ and one of the ‘Café au lait’) already had buds on them, so they have been potted up already, and I might take cuttings from them if they do well.  I’ll see how they get on and perhaps pot the others up early, depending on how the spring shapes up weather-wise.

3.  That autumn-sown sweet peas will peter out early, so I need to sow some in spring as well for continuity.  But not too many as I don’t really have many good places to grow them!  And also that the turquoise-flowered varieties aren’t worth bothering with; as I discovered in previous years trying to grow ‘Tutankhamun’, the ‘Turquoise Lagoon’ seeds were slow to germinate, made weedy growth and never did anything.  A gardener’s life (and garden space) is too short.

4.  And, on the subject of annuals: I discovered that French beans are annuals and need to be repeat-sown for continuity (unlike runners, which are perennials).

5.  Sticking with beans for the moment: last autumn I reverted to starting my broad beans off in modules and transplanting, and the plants are doing well.  So I’ve learnt that that’s the best way for me, whatever the gardening experts may say.

6.  That daffodils, other than the small ones like ‘Tete-a-tete’, don’t do well in pots (they didn’t for me, anyway).

7.  That covering newly-planted shallots with fleece keeps the birds from disturbing them.

8.  That hedychiums thrive on moisture as well as heat; I put them, in their pots, outdoors for the summer thinking that the warm weather would be good for them, but they didn’t flower until too late.  I assume they found it too dry; they’re tropical plants, after all, and probably like a steamy atmosphere.

9.  That Francoa sonchifolia is on the tender side – supposedly!  My plants didn’t look great after the cold March weather, but they survived, despite being exposed to the east winds, so I was surprised to discover that I ought to be protecting them in winter!  On the subject of winter protection, I’m experimenting with some mesembryanthemums (Livingstone daisies) that had been in the window box; when I cleared out the box for winter planting, a few of them were still in flower and I plonked them in a pot.  They’ve survived the few light frosts that we’ve had, to my surprise, so I’ve taken them into the greenhouse to see if they will keep going.  I don’t know if they’re annuals in their natural habitat or not.  It turns out that I accidentally transplanted some ‘Tete-a-tete’ narcissus along with them, so at least there will be some interest in that pot in spring if the mesembryanthemums don't last the winter.

9.  That I’m still not good at labelling pots!

10.  What ash dieback looks like :(

11.  That creeping buttercup and the creeping potentilla, two of the nastier weeds in the lawn, flower on the end of runners, so by spotting the flowers you can find the runners and pull them up; it doesn’t kill the plant, obviously, but it does discourage them from spreading.  And I also discovered that it is actually possible to uproot the potentilla, provided you fork down far enough (it’s a tough-rooted little weed).

12.  Not to trust bulb suppliers to send out what I asked for .... 

Much more to learn in 2019!

Blooming wrong

Most of the tulips have now been planted; but it was a rather unsatisfying day's gardening.  On the one hand, it was good to get most of the half-hardies under cover, and the tulips planted in the pots in their place, and the last of the autumn leaves were cleared from the lawn (still lots on the veg beds, though!).  The autumn tulip orders, on the other hand, have left something to be desired.  In the past couple of years I've had tulips bursting into flower and sometimes revealing themselves to be the wrong variety; this year the problem has arisen even before they were planted.  The orders came in while we were away, and the parcels were put in the greenhouse as I had requested; I must admit I delayed unpacking and examining them (too much else to do after our travels), but when I opened the first package there was a definite problem.  I had ordered, from the usually reliable Bloms, one bag each of two tulip varieties and one variety of crocus; instead, the package contained two tulip varieties I'd never heard of, and no crocuses.  The company apologised and sent the correct tulips immediately, but still no crocuses (I settled for a credit note; it was rather too late to be planting crocuses anyway).  The other package, from Sarah Raven's bulb supplier (where I've had problems with wrong varieties in the past), seemed ok from a quick inspection, but when I went to plant some of them the other day I noticed that there was a mistake there too: a colour-coordinated pack of three different tulips was actually one pack of one tulip and two of a second (and no third variety).  It was rather too late to go back to the company and complain; I substituted another variety of a similar colour to the missing one, though the shape will be different and I suspect it will flower too early to blend with the others.  The doubled-up tulip is the lovely 'Havran', a favourite of mine with two or more blackcurrant-black flowers on a bluish-green stem, an elegant plant, but I wasn't looking for quite so much black in my plantings (I've also got 'Black Parrot' this year).  Ah well; maybe time to check out some other bulb suppliers who might have better-organised packing sheds.

That wasn't the end of the day's woes.  I then went to plant some variegated London Pride (Saxifraga x urbium) on the top of the bulb pots - partly to provide some interest over winter and partly to discourage the birds from poking around in the pots and disturbing the compost.  The London Pride was in the top of another pot and I'd already used a little of it; but when I lifted some more, it came up without roots.  Uh oh, I've been here before ..... the sure sign of vine weevil grubs in the compost.  I found some of the little nuisances earlier in the autumn when I went to repot some Geranium renardii; the pot had been invaded by a viola and some miniature sisyrinchium, and both of those were flourishing, but the geranium had been attacked (not fatally, fortunately).  The grubs are obviously picky eaters.  I also know that there will be vine weevil in the big pot on the patio, which is currently occupied by some heuchera (a favourite target of vine weevil) which is not looking in good shape (I've salvaged some bits of that and potted them on, so the plant isn't completely lost).  I wasn't expecting the little blighters in the saxifrage pot, however.  The compost was rather wet (I must remember to raise up the base of winter pots by putting 'pot feet' under them - there was little space for excess moisture to run away), so I put it temporarily in an old compost sack to keep the grubs from contaminating anything else.  Since then on dry days I've been putting a little of the compost, well spread out, under the fat ball feeder, where the local robin has been gratefully disposing of the grubs and any other minilife that he finds in there; it's a win-win situation for both of us.

A quick sighting of a male blackcap, taking a bath in the pond, the other day.  It's late in the year for a blackcap round here; they usually migrate south for the winter, but it's a bit late for this one to be heading off, so maybe he'll hang around.

Time, flies

It has been a good (if that’s the right word) year for flying insects.  The fly-catching birds – house martins and the like – seem to have had good pickings over the fields, and others besides us have noted that there have been a lot of wasps in late summer and, as autumn drew on, harlequin ladybirds trying to get into houses.  Since October we’ve had large numbers of houseflies appearing daily at the dining room windows (indoors) and we can’t work out where they’re coming from.  We usually have a good number coming into the upstairs rooms from the loft, but if anything there seem to be fewer upstairs this year; it’s definitely a downstairs problem.  They’re coming in for warmth and then trying to get outside into the light.  We did see a cloud of flies one day around one of the chimney stacks, so they might be getting in that way, but I haven’t seen them coming into the dining room from that direction.  Another definite possibility is that they’re squeezing in round the edges of the windows, which don’t fit all that well in places, but again I haven’t seen much sign of that.  They just seem to appear as if from nowhere, by the dozen.  Perhaps they’re creeping in round the skirting boards and making a dash for the windows when they see I’m not looking?  I’ve given up opening the windows and trying to shoo them out; it’s time for more drastic action.  I’ve been picking them up with the hand-held vacuum and emptying it outside, preferably as far away from the house as possible to discourage them from finding their way back.  It probably gives them a headache, but I’m not in a mood to be too particular.

The weather has been up and down over the past few weeks, with some frosty nights, some heavy rain, strong winds in the last few days, and occasional mild spells.  A couple of weeks ago we had a dusting of snow, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t forecast; it started to lie lightly but disappeared within a couple of hours.  Fortunately I had just bubblewrapped the greenhouse and dusted down the heater, which has been set low, just to keep the temperature above freezing.

Not forecast!

After a few more days away, there’s still a lot to be done around the garden.  I still haven’t managed to sweep up all the fallen leaves, and not all the tulips are planted yet.  There are still some dahlias and other half-hardies in the pots, and they need to be dug out before the tulips can go in.  Today I pulled up the borage, which I had left because I’d seen a couple of late bumblebees checking out the remains of the flowers for sustenance; the flowers are well past now and the bees ought to be tucked up until the warmer weather.  The phlox stems have been cut down to half-height, leaving some cover for overwintering insects but removing the unsightly dead tops which were spoiling the look of the Viburnum davidii right alongside; it’s a pleasantly shapely shrub, particularly at this time of year when shape and texture in the garden are all-important, and the phlox stems were doing nothing for its appearance.

Winter jasmine

The leaves have now fallen, except for the buddleia and Lonicera purpusii which are always slow to drop, but there are still some berries around.  A pair of mistle thrushes are enjoying the berries on the Sorbus ‘Joseph Rock’ and defending them noisily against all incomers (ie the fieldfares); the redwings have made considerable inroads into the holly berries (but some stems have been cut for Christmas and are in a bucket of water in the summerhouse).  There are still several big apples on the cooking-apple tree, looking like outsize Christmas decorations, and the birds are enjoying them; a green woodpecker was there the other day.  The winter-flowering shrubs are getting into their stride, and the winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum) provided a good vaseful which has lasted for over two weeks now; it was originally paired with some stems of autumn leaves which have now fallen, but the flowers make a good display by themselves.

The catch-up

Autumn colours

After a few weeks away, there's a lot to catch up on in the garden.  We returned to a garden full of fallen leaves; the weather had been fairly normal for October/early November, but there had been some wind and some frost which had taken their toll of the remaining deciduous foliage.  The leafmould bins are full and there are still a lot of leaves to sweep up, and still some to fall; the ash trees have shed everything, but some of the shrubs are still showing good colour.  The frost had blackened the dahlia foliage, a precondition for digging them up.  Most of them have now been lifted and are drying off in the greenhouse but there are still a few in the pots outdoors; they were planted up with other half-hardies such as argyranthemums and osteospermums, which will need to be potted on.  The dahlias mostly seem to have made good-sized tubers, and they look quite healthy too (for the moment; we'll see how they survive the winter!).  Two of the hedychiums had been moved back into the greenhouse before we left, in the hope that their flower buds would open; they seem to have started to open but then the plants apparently thought better of it and stopped (probably too cold - the max-min thermometer showed that the temperature had dropped to 2C at one point).  The third hedychium, which shared a pot with a couple of (tender, and now dead) tithonias and an osteospermum, has now been brought into the greenhouse; it's looking a bit sorry for itself, but I know from experience that this year's stems won't do anything next year in any case, so they can be cut off and I expect the one little new shoot, which seems healthy, will keep the plant going over winter.

The pond, which nearly dried out in the summer, is full again - there has been plenty of rain, with some sunny days too.  And we had a quite spectacular hailstorm one day.

The tulip bulbs are still to be planted, but there's still time for that; the half-hardies have to be cleared out of the pots first.  The sweet pea seeds were sown today, only half of what I normally sow; I always have more than I have (sunny) room for, and it would make more sense to sow some now and some in early spring, to spread the flowering period.  More broad bean seeds have been sown, to plug a few gaps in the bed, and I'll sow some pots of herbs and salad leaves for the greenhouse.  I ought to take some cuttings of the half-hardies too; and at some point I need to bubble-wrap the greenhouse.

I haven't finished trimming the long hedge, either, but this week is going to be a bit on the chilly side for that.  Plenty to get on with!

Nerines and panicum

Predictably there isn't much to cut for the house, but some winter jasmine has provided one vase, and nerines with the last of the Panicum 'Frosted Explosion' another.  The nerines have done better this year; I fed them in the summer and cut back the wisteria to give them more light, and that seems to have done the trick, generating eleven flowerheads (last year there were only four or five).  The Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn' is in flower, too, so that can also be pressed into service when the nerines fade.


Another change in the garden is the return of the birds.  Before we left, they were mostly showing not much more than polite interest in the food put out for them, and were turning up in very small numbers, but in the last week or so we've had 20-odd species in and around the garden, and all offerings are being gratefully received.  The redwings and fieldfares are here (time to cut some holly for Christmas, before the redwings eat all the berries), along with several blackbirds which may well be migrants; we've had various tits, pheasants, partridges, chaff- and goldfinches and a female bullfinch showed up one day.  And of course the robins are being very territorial - though it's only a few weeks before they will start pairing up again!

Ins and outs

A lovely autumn day, a little mist over the fields in the morning, then sunny and warm enough for lunch outside on the bench.  Not for very long, though, because there's too much to do; it's time for old plants, and leafmould and compost, to come out and new ones to go in.

It started yesterday, with the first big sweep-up of fallen leaves.  This meant that last year's leafmould had to come out of the wire containers so that the new stuff could go in - which is always very satisfying.  Some of the old leafmould went down as mulch around the leeks, and over the garlic that was planted a couple of days ago in the patch where the runner beans had been taken out.  In theory the beans should have fixed some nitrogen in the soil, but I think I read somewhere that actually not much nitrogen remains available to the next crop, so plenty of old compost went in around the garlic, especially the elephant garlic (I'm still in competition with a neighbour on that).  That particular bed has a patch of poor soil in it; it's one of the old 'L' shaped beds that I'd been meaning to square off, and I finally managed this, but the newly created corner has a lot of grit from the old path in it.  I've tried to compensate with some of the soil originally dug out when creating the Hill, and I'm hoping that the added compost and leafmould mulch will do the trick.

Today's job was digging out the compost bins.  The bin that had been cooking over the summer had done really well; usually there's a lot of twiggy stuff, leathery avocado skins, egg shells and other things that take longer to break down in there, but the summer heat had obviously kept the temperature high and there wasn't anything like as much as usual to transfer to the new pile.  That meant that I was able to use some of the new compost to prepare the broad bean bed.  The broad bean crop has been erratic over the past couple of years, with both poor germination (despite using fresh seed) and poor growth, so I've gone back to my old practice of sowing the overwintering beans in the cold frame (in toilet roll half-tubes) in readiness for planting out once they've germinated.  About half have done so already, and they will go into the ground in a couple of days once the soil has settled after my digging.

So there's plenty of space in the compost bins for the other plants that have been taken out: the courgettes (which still had a few tiny fruits on them but mildew was taking over and the plants wouldn't have lasted much longer - anyway I have as many courgettes as I can use!), aubergines and tomatoes.  I've picked all the remaining green tomatoes and am hoping that some will ripen indoors.

A visit to the garden centre last week had me rummaging in the end-of-season 50p seed packet box; treasures found there included a packet of phacelia seed, which I've sown in this summer's garlic bed as a winter green manure.  Pleased to see the first signs of germination today; I hope the sunshine will encourage it!

All the dahlia flowers were picked for the Harvest Supper tables, but a few more are coming through, especially those of the Bishop's Children (they've been slow to do much, but they're starting to produce bright, cheerful flowers).  The nerines, which I've tried to give more light to this year (keeping the wisteria leaves off them), have produced a few flowers which are just starting to open, and Penstemon 'Garnet' (syn 'Andenken an Friedrich Hahn') is making a good showing.  Elsewhere the Sedum 'Autumn Joy' (which isn't called Sedum any more, but I can't remember its new name) is doing well, if floppily, and the Choisya ternata is also in flower.  With the first autumn tints and the bright red apples, the garden is looking a little brighter than it does most autumns!

First nerines

Penstemon 'Garnet'

Borage and dahlias 'Bishop's Children' series