Category: Garden

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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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.

Fox, Sparrow, Wood Pigeon

Thanks to Browning, I’m back in business with a replacement Strike Force Pro XD trail cam, so I’ve been catching up with the soap opera that is the wild side of our back garden.

As you can see, a male house sparrow has laid claim to the sparrow terrace nestbox, ousting the blue tits, who nested in hole 1 on the left last year. I love the puzzled expression on the blue tit’s face.

A persistent pigeon is waddling past the daffodils in pursuit of – he hopes – a mate.

Night visitors have included a cat and a vixen. I wonder if I’ll succeed in catching the cubs on camera this year?

Pulmonaria

trug

2 p.m., 20℃, 69℉ in the sun – cloudless: I cleared a square metre of what will be a wild flower and plants for pollinators bed, discarding the creeping buttercup and chicory but keeping the knapweed, dog daisy and teasel.

Woodpecker drumming, wood pigeon cooing. Coma and peacock butterflies basking.

pulmonaria

The pulmonaria was self-sown. It did so well under the hedge that it started to encroach on the path, so we moved it to the pollinators’ bed.

bees

A small, 1.5 cm approx., dark bumblebee with no obvious stripes visits the pulmonaria flowers, shadowed by a smaller, 1 cm, light brown bee, watching, hovering a few inches away, in fact acting like a drone in the modern sense, It then briefly pounces on the larger bee but is rebuffed after just a second.

The larger bee checks out another pulmonaria flower and the smaller bee pauses at a nearby flower, but doesn’t continue shadowing the larger bee.

I’m guessing this is a male, a drone, following a female.

Snake’s head fritillary, planted in sunken pots for its own protection against rampant chicory.

Pulmonaria sketchbook page

Crow and Newt

In the formal pond at Harlow Carr a carrion crow picks a newt from amongst water plants.

Hellebores on the Winter Walk and in the woodland.

Posturing Pigeon

wood pigeon sketches

A wood pigeon perches on the shed roof then swoops down to the lawn to chase off another pigeon that has just landed, chasing it around beneath the bird feeders with a menacing waddle punctuated with short jumps. The second pigeon soon realises that it isn’t going to get any peace and flies off.

I like drawing pigeons and that’s just as well because when they fly up from the wood the flock fills our field of vision as they wheel around, well over a hundred of them, probably 200. But we are going to have to net any seedling we plant in the veg beds.

February Flowers

February garden flowers

Some of the flowers already showing in the garden this weekend. As Storm Eunice has just gone through and Storm Franklin is about to arrive, these were from photographs taken yesterday morning.

drawing a rough outline

With the periwinkle and hellebore, I found that I started in the top left of the drawing intending to keep things fairly small but as I added detail the scale changed so when I started on the lungwort I sketched the outlines roughly in pencil, allowing enough space to add detail.

inking the flower sketch

I think this speeded up the whole process because I was just able to get on with the pen, knowing that I wouldn’t have to start fiddling to fit it all in.

I didn’t pencil in the crocus and the snowdrop. They consist mainly of isolated verticals, so they can be drawn individually. The branching pattern of the first three plants that I’d drawn meant that the relationship of one part to another needed a bit more care. I look for negative shapes between the leaves and when starting a new flower or leaf I look for the angle to points on the plant that I’ve already drawn.

Tennis Ball Fox Cache

Even without the trail cam, I can tell that the foxes are back. I found these two tennis balls cached at the edge of my wild flower bed down by the compost bins this morning.

Maris Peer

Maris Peer

We’re going for Maris Peer second earlies again this year but also trying some ‘ultra early’ Maris Bards. You have to buy them at this time of year as the popular varieties soon get picked over but we won’t be planting them until March or April, depending on the weather, so until then we’ll be chitting them: letting their shoots develop in a cool, light place (the back bedroom window sill).