I don't know about you, but it's all about leaves in my garden at the moment. Every day there's another load to scrape out off paths, rake of lawns and fish out of the pond (I choose not to net the pond as I don't mind being forced to peer into it each day). (Look, a photo of me in action!) Most of my leaf burden comes from a line of Tree Preservation Ordered Sycamores. I find this is one of the worst trees for creating leaf mould in a compost bin - use whole leaves and you come back a year later and find them unchanged, all stuck together in airtight, slimy pads. My answer is to get out there with the mower. It's great fun, the mower basket removed, great spumes of leaf fragments shooting out the back, much to the mystification of neighbours.However, I do just leave whole leaves in situ in my 'Woodland Garden' (it's not quite as grand as it sounds!) where the actions of winter and worms on loose leaves work wonders, and there's always a moth caterpillar or two among it should I go rummaging through them.What's your experience with creating leaf mould? Got any tips or favourite leaves for creating leaf mould, or little wild discoveries you've made amongst them.
Having been involved in putting together the Homes for Wildlife project, I thought I’d update you with what I’ve been doing to turn my own home into a Home for Wildlife. Now if you've already read my Forum post from yesterday and are wanting to know just how many Actions and Gold stars I have then here's the moment you've all been waiting for!Those of you that have signed up, you may remember downloading a whole load of PDF’s with lots of advice and various actions. You may even have noticed that for some actions you get a gold star! Wow!! I never got many of them at school, they were usually black marks, and so I thought it’d be a good idea to see if I’ve improved with age.
When I signed myself up to HfW - I had to get the acronym in somewhere! I found I had set myself a total of 112 actions. Included in that are a possible 50 gold stars – I like round figures. It’s been two years since I signed up and earlier this year I decided to have a bit of a garden binge and create my long awaited pond.
I realised just recently I’d not updated my Actions on ‘My garden’ page. What a revelation that was, given I had also done a few other things that I forgot to tick off, I suddenly found I’d completed 79 of my 112 possible actions and earned myself 38 of my 50 gold stars. Now then, how would that look in my school report? ‘Promising but could do better’?
Looking to the future, I reckon when I get my hedge planted this winter I’ll be able to add a few more ticks. I think its probably impossible for anyone to complete all their actions – I know I certainly can’t, mainly because I live in rented accommodation and there’s only so much you can do in that situation.
Here’s a challenge for all of you signed up to HfW – can you beat that? If you’ve not downloaded any of the advice then log into HfW and return to your home pages to get the advice sheets and get ticking! If you’ve not signed up, then use the link above and see where it takes you.
Saturday was grim and grizzly, all misty drizzle and grey, but as the rain eased I couldn’t resist getting out to do some gardening. I’m so glad I did because I saw something I had NEVER seen before.I was doing a spot of weeding, after having raked up some of the trillion fallen leaves, when I was joined by a small stripy cranefly. At first I thought it must be injured because it was flailing all over the damp soil I had just turned, but then I realised it was doing something quite deliberate. Yes, it looked as uncoordinated as I do on a dancefloor, but I sensed a purpose there, a motive, as it bounced along on the end of its long abdomen as if it was pogo-ing. It – she – was determinedly egg laying. I was transfixed.Now normally I post photos I’ve taken that day, but unfortunately it was way too dark and the cranefly way too quick for my photography ‘skills’, so instead you get one of my photos from last year of one of the larger cranefly species. But I hope you can still share my amazement. Effectively my weeding had unintentionally opened up a Home for Wildlife, Mrs Cranefly had found it within minutes, and in my tiny back garden I had ‘discovered’ (yet again) something wholly new to me.
Fridays on this blog are going to be when I showcase RSPB nature reserve gardens around the country, have guest entries from RSPB staff gardeners such as Mark, and I’m very eager to start showcasing some of your gardens too.
But every now and then there’s a date in the RSPB calendar that demands attention, and Feed the Birds Day this weekend is jumping up and down and saying ‘cover me, cover me’.
John's last blog dealt with No.1 on the RSPB’s Feed the Birds Day 5-point Plan, so I thought I’d be perverse and do No.5, Create a Water Feature.
And this is where you get a little sneak preview of an experiment I’m doing: a sink pond. Yes, I know it’s been done before, but I haven’t. I’ve got this bit of a scientist in me that likes to try things first hand, so here it is, newly made, on top of a hollow hibernaculum made of bricks and logs. I got the sink for £50 from a scrapyard (if only I had haggling skills – I’m sure I could have got him down to £30!). And in it is the immaculate Hornwort (I love it as an oxygenator), pebbles, and a pot with Water Mint and Rough Horsetail (Equisetum hyemale) - I thought I'd try the minimalist approach first!
So far so good. The Great Pond Snails are doing fine and it has had a fine flush of Daphnia, but let’s see how it fares over its first winter and whether we get a flush of algae in the spring.
Have a good time Feeding the Birds, and we'll compare notes on Monday :-)
This weekend celebrates the seventh annual Feed the Birds Day. There will be over 100 events held across the country and there’s bound to be one somewhere near you. For those of you living near the Lodge, I’ll look forward to seeing you there this Saturday.
So, what is it all this about? Don’t we feed the bird’s everyday? Well yes, we do, but this reminds us of all the different things we can do, even beyond just putting up feeders and providing supplementary food.
We all get great pleasure and entertainment watching the variety of birds, attracted to our gardens by food we provide. Through this, the birds gain confidence and allow us to watch them at close quarters. But, have you ever stopped to wonder what we give in return for this great live show?
Like humans, birds and other wildlife need a variety of foods year-round in order to maintain a healthy diet and survive. Like us, they too also need somewhere safe to shelter and breed. We can help contribute to this by proving them with a well-managed wildlife friendly garden. This years Feed the Birds Day is asking people to help do just that and to undertake a long term 5 point plan to boost the natural food supply for birds visiting their gardens and to create homes for other wildlife too. At number one of our Top 5 things is plant any one or all of five different native plants. We recommend: hawthorn, grey willow, ivy, honeysuckle and birch, all are pictured below. If you don't have a garden you can plant them in large patio tubs, they may just need a little more management to contain them as they grow!
Like Adrian in his great blog on Monday (I’d put Ivy in my ‘top three’), I’ve been out in the countryside looking at the bountiful supply of fruits and leaf colours in the hedges. How great this would look in a shrub bed or hedge in the garden? They may mature slowly but the wait is worthwhile. What great a pleasure it must be that in 5 or 6 years time, that hawthorn you planted has a redwing, tired and hungry after crossing the North Sea, feeding on the berries. Or, that little twiggy Grey willow shrub you planted 18 months prior, has a bumblebee, just emerged after winter and desperate for some nectar, feeding from the catkins.
Of course, fruits in hedges have uses for us too, if you’re prepared to spend time picking them. What a pleasant way to spend a morning or afternoon. You can get some amazing close encounters with wildlife in the process, plus it gives you time to really appreciate the beauty of the plants and fruits as well as the tiny creatures living amongst them. I had a fantastic view of a bullfinch just recently whilst out picking sloes and some amazing views of common darters basking on the outer branches of bushes.
And here's some more fruits to delight , but not necessarily eat! Although rose hip syrup contains more vitamin C than oranges, you have to be very carefull as the fine hairs from the seed inside are a strong irritant. This has deterred me from having a go at making some.