Autumn's on its way...

I know you know this. The erratic plummets in temperature. The 48 hour rain. Having to put the heating on. The clues are there...

Our deciduous plants are on the turn, & most of them do it in a very drab, British way, with muted yellows & depressing browns. Truly the end of the Summer... I can feel the SAD kicking in as I type...

But the blueberries do that American Autumn scarlet thing. I love that they flag the change of the season so vigorously, so joyfully - "It's Autumn! Woohoo! Awesome! Awe-tumn!!"

What's your fave Awe-tumn plant?

Hedge scalping 1: Know thine enemy

We meet again, my old adversary...

An 8m long wall of privet & cherry laurel runs along the South West wall of the garden. It's great for privacy, for both us & the nesting birds who love it so much. But left to its own devices it would blot out the sun.

Like this, only so thick you can't see through it... (pic from www.springreachnursery.co.uk)

The hedge was big when we moved in & as it's on the bit of land the Council mow, we thought they'd clip it. We thunk wrong, & it grew & it grew & it grew... until it reached the gutters. It was time to take drastic action.

My hubby is a little phobic of the snips, convinced that pruning = killing. & with good reason - we've had a few disasters & near misses is the past ("oh, that rose is meant to be that tall...") But I was pretty confident the privet & laurel would bounce back after a haircut. I mean, I've seen some pretty brutal hatchet jobs inflicted on privet, but I've never seen a dead one.

As ever, my pruning schedule is entirely driven by when I can be arsed. That said, the hedge gets special considerations cos of its residents:

1. Have all the birds flown?
   Some of 'em raise two broods each year so it pays to let it slide a bit.
2. Is it too waspy?
   This isn't for their safety but for mine: atop a step ladder, with shears, feyly, frantically, wafting at jaspers...? yeah, I don't want to become just another ROSPA stat.

Cherry Laurel in flower (pic from www.sciencephoto.com)

I try to get the hedge done before the laurel's berries have ripened. I've wussed out a couple of years in the past & my punishment is laurel seedlings in other parts of the garden. Great. More invasive brutes. Just what I need.

In previous years I've done the big hedge hack completely by hand, with shears, loppers & saw. This too is why the job is mammoth: it takes two days of exhausting chopping, followed by several more to gather, dismember & dispose of the offcuts. I thought gardening was meant to be about genteel pottering; this is more akin to the ethnic cleansing of Rhododendrons off the face of Snowdon.

So the hedge stands there, glowering. If I do any other garden job when its trim is overdue, I get a nagging, guilty feeling... cos I should be cutting the hedge.

It mocks me.

Time, I think, for a new strategy...

(to be continued...)

Wasp rot?

Had a little potter yesterday:

• Mowed the lawn;
• Finished a bit path edging.

At the start of the Summer, the new paths were 95% finished; just the very last bits of edging to do. But.... I didn't actually get on & do it til just now... & I only did it just now cos I just blasted over the edging strip with the mower & shredded the soggy end.... oops. & it would appear that hubby has been carefully mowing around my unfinished edging all Summer... double oops :/

So, overdue jobs done & I'm packing up. I pick up my drink to find it has gained a swimmer: it's a wasp & this fella is not in good shape. Whilst his stroke is a standard vigorous 6 legged crawl, I can't help but notice he's a bit, erm, mouldy. He looks like he's got mildew on his back & thorax.

Everything in its right place

Now I'm not the biggest fan of wasps but, as Chris Packham pointed out in Saturday's Guardian Magazine, they have a job to do: they're insect predators & are part of the team that keep the aphids & grubs at bay around the garden.

A healthy Common Wasp (pic from Wiki)

But this year has been veeeery quiet on the waspy front. Normally we're regularly evicting them from the living room by now, but I can count on one hand how many I've seen this year. Very odd...

So what's going on? I wondered if the bonkers weather has been a factor: sooo much rain, & so little sun that two of my mates have been diagnosed with Vitamin D deficiency :/

But could this mould be indicative of another problem? & is it related to the much discussed crash in the bee population?

Bio-hazards

A few Google searches dredge up nothing recent about wasp numbers - it's all about pest control & removing them from your roof... yep, guilty as charged: we had to do this last year cos we could hear them chewing away in the bathroom ceiling, & the last thing you need when you're busting is to open the door to a loo full of wasps...

Digging further, I did find a little something on diseases affecting wasps: a 2002 paper from Lincoln University in New Zealand talking about potential fungal controls on the influx of Common & German wasps that are causing problems in the ecosystems down there. They don't belong & they're getting out of hand.

I just wanna get along

They do belong here tho' - they have their place in the order: they predate stuff, stuff predates them, the balance is kept. However, given the public's anti-waspism, is it possible these fungal controls being used here in the UK? or had my swimmer just picked up one of these diseases in the natural course of going about it's waspy business? Just a normal part of what the Common wasp has to deal with here in the UK?

Dunno, but if the jaspers are struggling in the UK, along with the bees, maybe it's time to reassess our relationship with the little stripy guys.

Dig for Victory!

Watched The Wartime Farm last night & they mentioned the Dig For Victory leaflet. I knew about the poster, but not the pamphlet. Issued by the Ministry Of Agriculture, it provided a year round planting guide for British households during World War II.

Cool!

So could I get my hands on a copy? You bet your dibbler I could, thanks to the lovely folks at Quest For The Good Life. Plus they've taken the time to transcribe the info into calendar form - yay!

Int the Internet maaaaarvelous?! :D

Readers' issues: Gooseberry carnage

Well I didn't expect this... Whilst doing my 1st teensy weensy bit of pimping of this blog, I got a question! I feel like I'm on Radio4!

Good evening caller, you're on the air:

"Do you have any tips on how to stop the little b***8rd caterpillars eating my gooseberry bush? I’m thinking a can or petrol and a match might do the job, but have consequences..."

Oh! Oh! I think I know this one!

We had the exact same problem a few years ago & I remember Carol Klein covering this on Gardeners World. I think she said they were sawfly larvae &, this might sound weird, they don’t like a breeze.

The answer is to prune the bush into an open ‘bowl’ shape by removing the stems in the middle. As well as helping the air get in, this has other advantages:

• It gets plenty of light into the middle of the bush, so hopefully more/better fruit.


• It reduces the number of prickly branches that are crossing each other & so stops them chewing each other to bits. This means healthier stems which means a healthier plant, so again, hopefully more/better fruit.

A bit of Internet digging shows Gardeners World covered this again, June this year, in Jobs for the weekend, so here it is from the horse's mouth:

"Sawfly can strip redcurrants, whitecurrants and gooseberries of all their leaves in a matter of days. And a good way to deter them is to keep the centre of the bush clear of new shoots. This discourages the adults from laying their eggs, and the green, caterpillar-like larvae from hatching out and munching their way through the plant."

Anyhoo, I hope this option is as successful for you as it has been for us. Let me know how you get on.

Happy pruning :D

1st blueberries of the year

I get to keep a good eye on the blueberries as they're in a couple of pots in the yard, below the kitchen window. Do the washing up; check how the blueberries are doing.... Doing good this year, as it happens :)

1st harvest was last week.

Yum yum yum, on my muesli* :)

* No spiders were harmed in the making of my breakfast.

Wrangling raspberries

Monty was tidying his raspberry canes on this week's Gardeners World. Timely, I thought, I've been avoiding doing that job for at least 3 weeks...

Out with the old, in with the new

This year's berries are long gone, as we're usually picking around Wimbledon time, & those fruiting stems are properly dying back now. By contrast, this year's new stems are tall, vigorous & bright bright green. Deffo time to sort them out.

Despite their prickly exterior, raspberry plants are surprising brittle - they snap as soon as you look at them & they don't repair themselves. To survive the blusters of Winter & make it through safely to provide lots of fruit next year, they need our support now.

But 1st things 1st: the old brown stems won't fruit again next year so they are all snipped out at the base. So I don't damage the new stems, I remove these offcuts very carefully, often snipping along the length of the old stem & removing in shorter sections - it's a bit safer.

A bit of structure

Cos they're tall & our garden is small, the raspberries are planted against a wall. This is great for a few reasons:

• All the fruit is easy to reach by only trampling on 1 set of under-planting.
• My flimsy bamboo supports can be tied to something much more sturdy.

It's worked so far, but I do rebuild it every year, & have only needed to do the occasional mid-Winter repair after a particularly stormy night.

So last years bamboo comes down - dangerous time as the new stems are well over 6 foot tall & catch the lightest breeze. Thankfully it was a calm day... unlike today which is bloody blustery & from here on the sofa I can see the rasps getting blown all over the shop. Fingers xed it all holds...

New uprights in 1st, then 3 rows - bottom, middle, top, in front of the rasps, so I've trapped the stems between the frame & the wall.

A bit of bondage

Normally I don't bother to tie the stems in any further than that - the wall/frame sandwich being sufficient. Monty was a bit more forceful & recommended tying each stem into the support, to stop them flapping about. To be fair, I have noticed a fair bit of stem damage where their spines have been rubbing up against each other, so hopefully this'll stop that.

A little off the top?

Something else mentioned on Gardeners World: chopping the very tops of the tallest stems. Normally that's exactly what I'd do too (woohoo! go me!). But earlier this year on a trip to Alnwick Garden, I spotted a different approach.

As you can hopefully see in the pic, the Alnwick Gardeners loop over the long raspberry stems & tie them back into the frame. Genius. Extra fruit! My guess this is done now, when the stems are green, cos they will bend a bit if you're careful. So I've tied in the tops of all the stems that are long enough. Some aren't quite there yet, so I'll do those a little later. I'm a bit worried they're a bit skinny tho...

All done

A mulch of homemade compost around their feet & that's the rasps done for another year. Hurrah!