Category: Garden

Every Flower Counts

In this year’s ‘Every Flower Counts’ survey at the end of ‘No Mow May’ I’ve got double the amount of germander speedwell flowers that I counted last year.

During the time it took to count the 167 speedwell flowers, I saw one pollinator, a common summer migrant hoverfly, Eupeodes corollae. This is looks like the male.

Plant Life informs me:

Your nectar sugar could support…

14 honeybee workers for a day
4 hour-long foraging flight for an adult bumblebee
1 adult bumblebees to fly for a day

Plant Life

Brown-lipped Snail

brown-lipped snail

6th May: I picked up a dried up sycamore leaf from a shady corner of John’s garden and found this brown-lipped snail, Cepaea nemoralis, hidden beneath attached to the leaf. We had a dry April so the snail might have settled down to a period of inactivity known a aestivation.

Spiderlings

spiderlings
Olympus E-M10 II DSLR with 60 mm 1:2.8 digital ED macro lens

Two little clusters of spiderlings, hanging low down by our front door.

spiderlings
Olympus Tough TG-4 fitted with an LED diffusing ring for macro photography.

When I went in close with my Olympus Tough, I must have caught some of the surrounding strands of silk because the spiderlings started to disperse. They soon clustered together again.

Howgate Wonder

We’re almost at the end of the apple blossom and the embryo fruits are beginning to form. I’ll need to thin out the fruits to two per cluster and I think most growers would then recommend just keeping the best of those as they develop. If I leave five in each cluster the tree will shed several as they start to grow.

Opium Poppy

Himalayan poppy

This opium (not Himalayan) poppy had seeded itself on one of the veg beds, so I’ve transferred it to my plants for pollinators bed and it seems to be settling in.

foxglove

This foxglove rosette will be relocated too, when we put in the runner beans and dwarf French.

chard
Chard

Beetroot

Alongside the chard I drew the other day there’s a row of beetroot, although I suspect by now they’ll be far too woody to use.

Chard

chard

What’s left of the chard will be coming out soon when we start with the runner beans and dwarf French beans in this bed. This morning I put in 50 Setton onion sets, which we covered with netting, not just to prevent blackbirds and pigeons pulling them out but also to prevent foxes rolling about and digging on the veg bed as they did last year.

I forked a sprinkling of fish, blood and bone before planting the onion sets and it’s probably the smell of it that attracts the foxes. I’ve set up the trail cam to check on whether they turn up as expected.

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Categorized as Garden Tagged

Maris Bard

Maris Peer potatoes

Maris Bard are first earlies, so in six weeks time, by the beginning of June, we should have a crop ready to use.

Maris Bard potatoes
Maris Peer second earlies ready to plant

We bought the potatoes back in January or February but we’ve been waiting until now, when there’s less risk of a heavy frost.

Bunyard’s Exhibition

sowing beans

We’ve gone for a traditional variety, Bunyard’s Exhibition, for our broad beans which I sowed this morning.

leeks

Last summer a fox family flattened our leeks. I harvested the last of them today but didn’t get much off them as they were starting to produce tough flowering shoots. We planted a second crop so I used a couple of rows of those instead.

leek soup

They were smaller but perfect for leek and potato (and celery and pea) soup. Barbara found a leek and cheese muffin recipe on the internet.