Autumn approaching

First week of September gone already. There is definitely a feel of Autumn in the air - cool wind, even when the sun shines, and earlier evenings of course. Lots of trees are showing yellowy or brown tinges and Autumn colour in the garden comes from the lords and ladies, pink autumn-flowering cyclamen, rose-hips and rose flowers. The big pink sedum, which the bees and butterflies love, is beginning to open.

View from the greenhouse across the veg plots & rhubarb

Sedum beginning to flower, rose-hips and a carpet of pink autumn-flowering cyclamen

Lords & ladies glowing proudly

That was 2016

Christmas is over, the turkey carcass in the pot for stew and a new year starts tomorrow.
The last week has been cold and frosty with blue skies and sunshine during the day and clear, starry skies at night. At last a bit of proper winter weather. Until now it's been just grey, wet and very warm for December. We had a couple of days of frost which is supposed to be good for brussel sprouts and raspberries. It does clear off some pests and bugs too.

In general this year has been warm with some periods of really heavy rain and then some - shorter - periods of sunshine. 2016 is supposed to be the warmest year on record for the whole world, so global warming maybe starting to kick in. Definiely been some crazy weather which is what the scientists predict.

Round up of the year in our garden:

 

Vegetables

The big success this year was Brussel Sprouts. We've carefully nurtured them, with a big cage with fine mesh to keep out the butterflies and the pigeons and pheasants. Very little problem with slugs despite the wet weather. We had a good feed off the sprout tops and pleanty for Christmas dinner. They should keep us in green veg for another few weeks.
Chard was good and is still giving a few leaves, but the second sowing just didn't take.
Runner Beans and Broad Beans did well, but the French Beans were a complete disaster.
Onions and Leeks also did fairly well and better than expected as this was our first try after a break of a few years because of the Allium Leaf Miner. I just did a few Leeks and the ones we picked early were great, but those we left in to grow bigger got the dreaded bugs again.
The Sweetcorn experiment was a flop. We had a couple of rather misshapen cobs with just half of the kernels swelled up. Tastysnack but not a meal.
Marrows, Courgettes and Squashes were excellent, especially the Butternut Squashes. They were very late getting going, with slugs giving them a hard time for a while, but eventually produced lots of medium-sized fruit with good flavour.
This year I just did Tomatoes (Alicante) in the greenhouse, unlike previous years when we have also grown beef tomatoes in the small conservatory. 9 plants produced a massive harvest. We still have a handful of small tomatoes in the fridge and a good batch of tomato chutney.
Potatoes: Not a good year. It started with drowning spuds and didn't improve much. Spuds were of modest size and some had holes in the middle, rendering them pretty useless. The best potatoes have ben from the big pots. Got 3 pots in the greenhouse at the moment and one is just beginning to sprout.

Fruit

The soft fruits - currants, raspberries and loganberries were very productive. The only thing we do to them is a bit of basic pruning and put a bit of compost around the roots each year, so they are gold-dust really.  We did put nets over the currants because the blackbirds and pigeons can strip the redcurrants and iin the last couple of years have been moving on to the blackcurrants.

The Cooking Apples, especially the Bramley, have been amazing and the red eater. We have apples stored in trays in the conservatory (not heated) and boxes of cooked apples in the freezer. This is the first year we have just left fallen apples on the grass to rot - or be eaten by birds, squirrels or mice. But the Russet and the small eating apple didn't do so well.

The Damson produced bucket-loads. Plenty for jam, mostly damson & apple, pies and damson vodka which is lovely and makes great Christmas presents in small 125ml bottles.

The small plum tree (similar but not quite the same as a Victoria) was good, but we had nothing from the the purple plum and the big plum despite lots of blossom.

Flowers & trees

The warm, wet weather meant shrubs and trees grew like crazy so lots to trim back in the autumn and massive quantity of leaves to sweep up and compost.

Wildlife

Each spring I have a bit of a panic about the bees and this year they seemed to start a bit slowly. We had a warm month and then it went cold again. But eventually plenty of bees came into the garden to forage. Obviously its difficult to assess absolutely but I have the impression that honey bees (from hives) were in short number, but bumble bees of various sorts were doing OK. The press report wasps having a bad year. I think there were fewer, especially in the autumn, but I managed to get stung stepping on a wasps nest on the rockery and there was a sizeable nest by the rhubarb.

A lot fewer butterflies than usual.  Spotted a caterpillar of the elephant hawk-moth which apparantly like fuschias.

There was a little frogspawn in the spring although I didn't hear any croaking males. During the summer we saw several small frogs and large toads around the garden and a couple of newts. A friend asked me to write a report on the changes to frogs and toads in the 10 years we've been here, so I did this blog post in October >>

In the pink

This week we had the hottest September days for 100 years but this morning was misty and cold. The leaves and flowers were bejewelled with dew-drops and the spiders webs bright with fine mist. It felt very Autumnal.

But there's a way to go yet with the Summer. Garden flowers are having a final fiesta before the dark days come along and the trees take the glory with their reds and golds.

I went walk-about with the camera and found the garden was painted pink!

Bright pink roses - irridescent

Tiny cyclamen under the mallus tree

Pinky-red hydrangeas having a final fling

Pink Japanese anenomes are everywhere. They seed prolifically but cheer up the garden
after the sumer bedding has mostly gone over.

These pink roses have been flowering all summer and still have plenty of buds.

Pink sedum is a late-summer feast for the bees and other insects.

Leaves & Ixias

The leaves are hanging on  and coming down slowly and persistently. Here's a photo of the leaves on the grass on Saturday morning. We spent most of the day sweeping, hoovering and collecting via the lawn mower and filling two black compost "Daleks" with damp leaves which in a year or so will be lovely leaf mould.

Fallen leaves - mostly cherry, silver birch and maple and some from the big ash in the field.

The days have been a bit grey with thick fog in the morning and evening. But there are some bright spots. These lovely Ixias make a colourful show.  In the photo, the centre of the Ixia flower glows - it's not like that in real life - just picked up by the camera. Presumably this glow attracts bees and insects to pollinate. We have some lovely red tulips that keep the same glow for the bees and the camera. Ixias grow from small bulbs and they spread easily However, last year I saved the seeds from some of the Ixia flowers and they have germinated nicely. Hopefully some will be big enough to plant out to brighten up another spot in the garden next year.

Beautiful Ixias (Kaffir lilies?) brighten up the grey autumn.

The centre of the Ixia flower glows - shows up in a photo .

These tulips show their glow on camera - like the Ixias.

Summer days

Not sure what happened to July and here we are at the end of August! At this time of year there's lots going on in the garden and we've had several friends visiting. They love to spend a few days in the country ("it's so quiet!") and enjoying our home-made food. So not much time for blogging.

The soft fruits - currants, loganberries and gooseberries and the first flush of raspberries have all gone - the birds took all the redcurrants before we could net them and quite a lot of the blackcurrants. The raspberries and loganberries were pretty good with enough to make raspberry jam and put some in the freezer. The second flowers, on this year's new raspberry canes, are just opening and are buzzing with bees. At least they were for the last few days. Today it's raining heavily and the forecasters warn there will be two weeks rain falling today.

The weather has been pretty mixed with some very hot spells interspersed with grey, drizzly and rainy days. There's been a few days of heavy downpours. But overall I have the impression that the season has been fairly dry. The green pipe has not been running and when digging potatoes the soil has been quite dry.

Potatoes have ben a bit of a disappointment. The Kestrels and the Pentland Javelins were very good quality, hardly any worm holes, but mostly small. Keen gardeners will refer to to my previous post about the poppies and nod knowingly about how I should have done more weeding.  But some "feral" Desirees left from last year and growing under the runner beans are enormous - also with no infestation or damage. I have yet to dig up the official Desiree patch. I did manage to weed that a bit and being a later variety they kept the leaf for longer than the whites. I'm hoping!

Marrows and squashes have done well. Struggling to keep up with picking the courgettes to avoid them turning into marrows. The larger courgettes become soup or souffle and the marrows into chutney and "poor man's ratatouille" which is a kind of stew with marrow, onions, tomatoes and loads of garlic and herbs. It's good to freeze and bring out in the winter with chops or sausages.

All this activity to a backdrop of gorgeous flowers, pretty butterflies and dragonflies and accompanied by birdsong and aerial displays of the swallows. Wonderland!

Poppies in the potatoes

I'm a dreadful gardener - look at the potatoes that I planted back in March! I didn't get around to hoeing this patch and then when the self-sown poppies started coming up I thought I'd wait and see the flowers. Well here they are. I dug a row of Pentland Javelins last week and they were fine so maybe the poppies haven't done too much harm. But today I went to dig some Kestrels for tea and there were so many bees buzzing in the poppies I had to go and dig up some "feral" potatoes growing by the broad-beans. These are ones which have come up from tubers overlooked last year and usually provide some extras to the official planted potato crop.

Poppies - lots of them - growing between the potatoes.

Beautiful big red poppy.

 

I should have weeded - but they are lovely - and the bees enjoy them.

Ground elder and bees nest

We have a horrible invasion of Ground Elder. This is creeping in from the adjacent field and despite much pulling and hacking in previous years, and indeed complete digging over of one bed and putting down a plastic membrane, the stuff keeps coming.The roots are worse, if it's possible, than couch grass and bindweed, and it's already going up to flower.

So at the weekend Paul got stuck in again. After half an hour's digging Paul reported a lot of buzzing, angry bees. He'd dug up some herbaceous plants, aquilegias and cornflowers so at first we thought that the bees were cross that their food source had been moved, But they kept coming, hovering just above the soil. Eventually we discovered that we'd disturbed their underground nest. Another small dig with a trowel and there were bees flying out everywhere. So we covered up the entrance hole with some leaves and left them to it  ..... and went on to another patch of Ground Elder, we have lots to choose from!

This morning the bees seemed to be going about their business as usual.

Shiny red tulips

Most of the daffodils have faded and their colourful display is being replaced by tulips. We have several clumps just outside the kitchen window. When the sun is out the red tulips shine with what seems like an inner radiance. It's quite difficult to photograph them. The camera picks up the sheen as bright yellow or white, whereas the human eye just sees a plain, even-toned red. Maybe it's to attract the bees which have different colour sensitivity to humans. Plenty of bees buzzing around this morning. Some seem to have set up home in the UPVC door frame of the utility room, where the cover for the hole in the plastic for fixing is missing.

Bright red tulips with a yellow glow picked up by the camera

Red and yellow tulips outside our kitchen window

Bumble bees

Seen a lot of big bumble bees especially on the hellebores and heathers. We've had a lovely few days with quite a bit of warm sunshine during the day which has brought out the garden flowers nicely - daffodils, hellebores, primroses, little pink starry bulbs....I saw a deep red camellia in full bloom up by a house up on the main road and some ornamental trees looking gorgeous.

However, no honey bees yet. Maybe they are still being fed by their keepers and don't need to get out yet. Hope this isn't a sign of empty hive syndrome around here. There's loads of flowers, both in the garden and the surrounding fields and hedgerows. I can't believe that not enough food can be a problem for fewer bees. More likely disease or pesticides.

Bee House

The garden is buzzing. My fears for the bee population and consequences for our fruit and vegetable harvest seem unfounded.

After the late spring we've had some warm, even hot, days followed by rain with the result that everything is over-producing to catch up. The garden looks like a jungle. Loads of foliage, flowers - and weeds!

Of necessity and by choice our garden is pretty wild, albeit based on a great design by the previous owners. We have a lot of comfrey which grows like crazy and the bees love. I let some grow at the edges of the vegetable beds to attract the bees who hopefully will move on to the beans and raspberries.

I'm not really fussed what insects do the pollination. Two years ago we had a wasps nest in the ground behind the greenhous and they did a sterling job with the raspberries and currants. We were given an insect house which is basically a bunch of hollow bamboo canes in a wooden box and we placed it in a conifer hedge facing south east. We've noticed some activity in previous years with the ends of the bamboo filled with wax, but this year it's home to small bees. Fascinating to watch them come and go, laying down wax and sealing the tubes.



Bee house - bees were shy when I took this photo but are busy and buzzing this morning.

  

I don't know where the nearest conventional bee hives are. We certainly rely on a variety of types of bees as well as other insects for pollination and I guess I don't mind who gets the job done. 

 

EU ban on pesticides

"Bee deaths: EU to ban neonicotinoid pesticides"

See story and background info in BBC story http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22335520

Good news that the EU and member state's governments are taking this matter seriously at last. Our ecosystems are so complex it's difficult to pinpoint the cause of lack of bees. Maybe it's the pesticides (these or others), maybe it's the weather, mobile phones or just a natural cycle we haven't recognised. But we should try to find an answer and reverse the trend. There has certainly been a reduction in bee numbers here - especially honey bees. Actually, I don't really mind what insects do the pollination. One year we had 2 large wasps nests in the garden which did wonders for the raspberries which the wasps seemed to adore.

I do wonder whether commercial bees are getting publicity for their problems when the issues may well also be with bumble bees and all the other bees and insects that work hard for our harvests as well as themselves.

See my post on first bee seen http://froggartscottagegarden.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/first-bees.html 
But it's only this last week that we've seen many more - mostly big bumble bees.