Category: Garden

Cutting Back

gardening gloves

Time for the autumn cut-back in the garden, starting at the top end trimming back bay and oregano, hawthorn hedge and the long grass around the pond.

It’s tough on my thumb joints but also on the Fiskar’s hedge shears that I’m using. They have a gear mechanism but – especially when I’m cutting thicker stems – it springs out of gear, with the result that one of the blades flaps about uselessly.

It doesn’t taken long to loosen the bolts amd put it back togetheer but I’m evidently not there yet with judging how much I should tighten the three bolts: too much and the shears are too stiff to use, too slack and they pop out of gear again.

shears

The long-handled shears, without any gearing, are proving most reliable.

Black Kale

black kale

For me black Tuscany kale, Cavolo Nero, is about as drawing-friendly as I could wish for. Every line has a built-in wobble to match my default rather shaky pen. It’s got clear structure so I don’t have any problems simplifying a complex mass of foliage.

I think of the colour of black kale as being tinted with purple but I find that a cool green with just a spot of crimson is a reasonable match, with regular yellowish green where the light shines through it. The stems are cream or ivory: a very pale coolish yellow with a hint of green.

Raised Bed no.3

Raised bed no. 3: carrot, kale, lettuce and foxgloves (in the top right corner), outnumbered by spurge (petty spurge, I think). But we’ll soon weed that out . . .

A month ago in raised bed no. 3, we put in lettuce, carrots and black kale, plants from the garden centre.

Some of the lettuces are starting to bolt but the carrots haven’t done much. Carrots aren’t always successful when replanted because of the risk of damage to those delicate tap roots.

pigeon

The Cavolo Nero was beginning to outgrow the mesh tunnel cloche we’d covered it with to protect it from egg-laying cabbage whites and our ever-hungry wood pigeons.

In my opinion, our pitifully small carrots tasted more wholesome than the shop-bought variety. The freshly-picked leaves of Cavolo Nero were excellent: ‘rich, mellow and autumnal’ would be my attempt to describe the flavour.

Beetroot and Marigolds

sketches of beetroot and marigold

Immediately I start drawing, a hoverfly zooms in and settle on the lime green top of my pen. As I work there’s a continuous chiff chaff and a v. loud blackbird, with house martins chittering overhead.

Despite several overnight frost setbacks our veg is making progress.

Raised Bed

The blackbird is singing from the crab apple, the chiff-chaff more or less continuous from the blackthorn at the edge of the wood. There’s an occasional wood pigeon calling softly in the background and raucous sparrows erupting every now and then in the holly and hawthorn hedge.

It’s sunny with a bit of a breeze; an male orange tip is the only butterfly I spot as I draw.

Spanish bluebell behind the pond has now gone to seed. The lungwort has gone to seed and is wilting in the sun.

Borlotti Beans

borlotti bean plants

These borlotti beans are ready to go in growing around a couple of wigwams of bamboo canes. The broad beans, sown in the ground a month ago are now emerging.

borlotti bean seedling

It might be best to pot on our rather alien-looking courgette seedlings and grow them on in the greenhouse before planting them out in the raised bed.

courgette

Leeks

Our leeks are smaller than usual as we were late planting them out as we waited for our new raised beds to be constructed.

It’s rather late to be harvesting them but they’re fine. It’s encouraging to have such a good crop from the revamped veg beds.

They worked well in our leek, courgette and Boursin cheese tart.

Pigeons at Dawn

Latest trail cam shots from our back garden: pheasants, blackbird, a pair of robins and – what are you doing there?! – Butch (yes, he really is called Butch), next door’s Labrador but my favourite shot is the wood pigeon at dawn, looking hopefully up at the feeders.

End of Winter Check List

garden hedge

With the end of meteorological winter is less than a couple of weeks away this is my last chance to complete some of the seasonal tasks in the garden. There’s no shortage of tidying up jobs such as weeding veg beds and clearing paths but they can wait. More urgently, I need to trim this corner of the hawthorn/holly hedge to more manageable proportions before the birds start nesting.

pond

It won’t be long before the frogs gather to spawn in the pond again, so I’d like to clear out some of the duckweed, overgrown plants and fallen leaves before they return.

raspberry canes

To give our autumn-fruiting raspberries the best chance I want to dig them up before growth gets started again, raise the level of the raised bed with riddled compost, replant them and finally cut them down to ground level.

shed

There’s more cutting back needed behind the shed too before birds, such as our resident dunnocks, start nesting.

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RSPB Great Garden Birdwatch

pheasant
Pheasant: 2
Great tit: 2
Robin: 3
Goldfinch: 4
House sparrow: 6
Dunnock: 3
Wren: 1
chaffinch
Chaffinch: 2
Blue tit: 2
blackbird
Blackbird: 1
Starling: 1
Wood pigeon: 1

Robins outnumbered any other bird at the start of our garden birdwatch this morning. A pair of robins were working their way around the border by the hedge, just a couple of yards away from a single robin on the patio. Robins defend winter territories so I’m surprised that they were tolerating each other. One great tit was on the sunflower feeders with two female pheasants foraging below.

Later two great tits were coming to the sunflower seed feeders, one with a kipper tie of a black breast-streak – the male – the other with a modest pencil tie – the female.

The Average Bird Garden

Our total bird count of 28 was close to the national average (27) and our number one bird was the house sparrow with 6 individuals but that was probably an underestimate as they were constantly to and fro from feeders to hawthorn hedge.

sparrows on a wall

Two female sparrows were pecking at the mortar of next door’s conservatory wall. No structural damage evident so far.

storm damage

By the way, during yesterday’s amber alert for Storm Éowyn, our strongest storm for 10 years, one of our roof tiles was dislodged. We got off lightly compared with Ireland, parts of Wales and Scotland where red ‘danger to life’ warnings were issued.