Mulch Ado about Nothing

I admit it.  Sometimes I write a blog post just because I've thought of a funny title for it.  In this case, however, the subject matter did exist before I nailed the name, as we spent the first day of British Summer Time digging out the last of the rotted compost and trugging it round to the front garden to mulch the top flower bed.  To quote Master Yoda: "Adventure! Excitement! A Jedi craves not these things..."

Exciting or not, it was a necessary task.  The top bed hasn't had anything put on it by way of soil improver for years and had been starting to get a bit thin and the compost heap hadn't been dug or turned for over a year.  I did make a start on digging the compost out last autumn, only to get a nasty shock - I unearthed a rat's nest and (not nice to recall) inadvertently impaled a couple of baby ones with my fork.  Unsurprisingly, I got a decidedly rueful look from mother rat when she returned to the nest site, which I squeamishly abandoned.  As a precaution, we had the Council's exterminators in and, by the time they had finished their treatments, it was too late in the year to disturb the remainder of the heap, which has been a toad hibernation site in previous years.  Anyway, the job is done now thanks to a team effort - Jon dug out the compost and filled plastic trugs, which I carried through to the front garden, dressing around the tulips and (hopefully) smothering the annual weeds.  The perennials, some of which got covered over, will soon find their way through.

The first early taters went in too.  This year I'm trying a variety called Epicure, in one of the plots in the back garden mulched with more of the well-rotted compost, so it'll be interesting to see how well they do.  I've got Kestrel second earlies to go in on the allotment soon, along with the other old favourites Pink Fir Apple and Highland Burgundy Red, although I'm also trying out Golden Wonder which are supposedly also fairly slug-resistant.

The first batch of broad beans (Bunyard's Exhibition) are almost ready to go out too.  They've been hardening off in the cold-frame to get them acclimatised to outdoor conditions and I'll hopefully get them out on the allotment soon,  I'll use one of the lower beds which didn't have green manure on through the winter.  While the phycelia grew well again, there was not a trace of the red clover so I won't bother with that in future.  I have plans to grow many more peas and beans this year than last and already have a second sowing of broad beans and some peas (Misty) coming on in the greenhouse.  Later this month I plan to get some runner and French beans underway, so the beds that missed out in green manure can have nitrogen-fixing crops instead.

As usual, I'm experimenting with out-of-date seeds (things I've bought and also cast-offs from my green-fingered manager) and have ended up with more than fifty tomato plants from packets of 'sow by 2014' seed - plum-type San Marzano and Gardener's Delight.  As well as spares to swap and sell, I may have enough to try an outdoor crop, although in previous years my attempts have ended in a slimy, blighty failure.  Perhaps It's time to think about getting a polytunnel for the allotment?

The Little Garden Bird Watch

I blogged a couple of years ago about the uncanny nack the feathered visitors to my garden have of dispersing elsewhere over the last weekend of January, when I dutifully try to log their numbers for the RSPB's "Big Garden Bird Watch".  Since this snapshot of avian activity is so persistently unreliable, I've taken to keeping a daily record instead, not so strictly timed but still noting the largest number of a given species seen at any one time during the day as well as recording which birds we see.

We hit 'peak goldfinch' yesterday with seven of the pretty little twitterers scrapping over five potential feeding stations - three for niger seed and two for sunflower hearts.  They've become our most regular visitor all year and are rarely outnumbered except when the blue tits breed successfully and the garden is suddenly full of little fluffy balls of turquoise.  Sparrows and starlings, the garden birds which flocked to the bread-crumbed bird-table in the garden I recall from my childhood, are less frequent visitors and not at all numerous.

Great tits and coal tits - never more than a pair at a time - are also regular visitors, although shyer than the blue's.  We're occasionally treated to the sight and sound of a flock of long-tailed tits, fluttering through the garden to feed on fat-balls or peanuts, although we don't see them regularly, even during the winter when you might think they would appreciate a regular source of food.

Although the waxwings sighted across the country have never seen fit to check out the heavily-laden cotoneasters in the front garden - at least not when anyone has been looking - we have seen a fieldfare in the garden twice during very cold weather, eating both berries and the tiny crab apples on our ornamental tree. 

Another rare visitor - too quick and tiny for my camera - is the goldcrest, although that little creature did make a fleeting appearance on BGBW day, so clearly hasn't yet learned the rules from the rest of the garden birds about keeping a low profile.  That trick was perfected by the pair of siskins who dropped by the day after BGBW a couple of years after we moved in - and have never been seen here again, although we did see a flock at Trentham Gardens in February.

An unusual visitor seen this spring is blackbird with a difference - he's not all black!  Rather shy and inclined to hang about at the bottom end of the garden away from the feeders and my camera, he's leucistic with a ring of white feathers around his neck and some odd white splashed elsewhere too.  He's been arguing over territory with a couple of other blackbirds for the past few weeks and can regularly be seen running about between the cabbages.  At one point, he was being chased by a female, though that may be a bad rather than a good thing for him.  He might also wish he was a little less conspicuous of the sparrowhawk pays a visit!

Recycling.

Having resolved to update the garden blog more often, it's good to have a busy day outdoors to report.  It's been mild, if mostly cloudy, up in North Staffs today; perfect conditions for the first serious gardening day of the year and exactly right for spending too long digging, lifting and bending so that all sorts of atrophied muscles are now aching furiously.  I really must learn to pace myself at the start of the season!

As usual, seed sowing involves seeing how long it is possible to keep seed past its official use-by date and still have something viable poke through the compost.  I'm fortunate to have a keen and creative gardener for a manager, who tends to pass packets of left-overs to me when she tidies out her seed box.  Consequently, the propagator on the living room window sill - cunningly crafted from some yogurt display trays recycled from Sainsburys - is home to two pots of tomato seeds (gardeners delight and an orange plum), aubergine, sweet pepper and two squash varieties. 

Broad bean propagation - mushroom box and six loo-roll middles

A couple of small plastic mushroom boxes (my favourite mini seed trays) sown with mixed salad leaves keep them company.  These have more clear plastic recycled packaging for covers - small meat trays, which are sadly getting hard to source as more supermarkets seem to opt for vacuum-sealed packaging instead.  It may seem eco-friendly to them but, from my perspective, rather than being a handy mini-propagator, the plastic used for this is simply waste with no re-use potential at all.  Similarly, shrinking the circumference of loo-roll tubes may eco-sense for companies and consumers but makes them unsuitable as plantable pea and bean starter pots!

It's not the only change that's upset my Womble-like activity.  One of my most successful recycling initiatives in past years has been painting empty chocolate and biscuit tins in 'Roses and Castles' style and selling them - with other goods - at craft fairs and other venues, including a lovely local pub.  This little enterprise - which turns something waste into something pretty and re-usable - is under threat because so many companies now insist on embossing their brand name on the lid of the tin - 'Fox's' or 'M&S' - which makes it impossible to make an attractive job of repainting them, thus making the tin mere scrap metal.

At least I can still recycle my plant waste into compost.  I had to abandoning the autumn dig-out of the big heap last year as a family of rats had moved in!  However, four visits from the Council's exterminators later, we seem to be rat free and there is a nicely-rotted stack of stuff ready for topping up the veg beds and mulching round as the perennials start to come through.  It was even good enough to use for potting up some hydrangea cuttings I hope to sell later this year.

But that's all for now - it's time for an early bath!

Is it really almost a year...?

...since I last posted to this blog?

It looks very much like it.  Rest assured, both the garden and I are okay.  I've been concentrating my somewhat intermittent blogging efforts on the other one I write in an attempt to promote my 4mph thrillers and welfare rights lit novels and, as a result, neglected this blog.  When I've thought about updating it, I've struggled to find anything desperately important to share.  I still don't have anything that important to share but that's not really the point.  It's better to share something than nothing at all, so why not start with the first flowers of spring? 

Around here, that tends to mean snowdrops and hellebores, both of which seem to tolerate the rather wet winter conditions.  I split and moved many of the hellebore plants in autumn 2015 and wondered how well they would recover but they have put on a fantastic amount of new growth since and some may take a bit of chopping up again later this year. 

The snowdrops have been excellent this year, blooming for over a month already and with maybe another week or so in them before they finally go over.  Similarly, the snowdrops get regular lifting, splitting and replanting, the plan being to transfer more to the herb garden area 'in the green' in a couple of weeks.

Even when flowers are few and far between, there is always something to see in the garden thanks to the birds who drop by to use the feeders and bird bath.  The main visitors are blue tits and goldfinches, although we regularly see ten or more different species in a day, including a pair of robins, chaffinches, sparrows, wrens and - on a couple of occasions - a goldcrest.  Despite having a couple cotoneaster bushes in the front garden absolutely loaded with berries, we have so far been snubbed by the waxwings sighted in the area; there is still time!

Anyway, that will do for today's catch up not-very-exciting blog. 

More soon.

Promise!