Category Archives: Garden

30 Days Wild 2019 – Day 17

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This evening I was determined to get some of the flowers planted in the garden while the rain stayed away.  I always have a look around the garden first to make sure everyone is happy and tend to any plants that need a little extra care.  I noticed that the red campion had started to go over. 

What I have never seen before is the little pod filled with seeds.      

I think it is a great example of evolutionary design; when the wind blows the seeds are spilt from the pod and dispersed.

I decided to give the plant a helping hand and took a few of the seeds and spread them in the garden and field.  What I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t taken a photo of the seeds in my hand is the texture of the seed; like a tiny lychee!

30 Days Wild 2019 – Day 15

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I saw on Twitter that volunteers are needed to spot insect ‘spittle’; my initial thought was ‘there is loads in the garden, I can do that’.  Last year on June 1st I wrote about cuckoo spit and froghoppers; so carrying on from last year’s blog, today I went out into the garden to take part in the survey. 

The reason for the survey taking place is the UK is on high alert for the Xylella fastidiosa disease which has been found in several locations in the EU.  The disease is moved from plant to plant by plant-sucking insects such as froghoppers.  By people submitting data of where they have seen either cuckoo spit or froghoppers themselves a distribution map of the potential path of the disease can be made.  I think it is important to be clear that the disease isn’t in the UK and the map created from the data will be used to make an action plan if it does ever arrive here.  Please don’t remove any of the cuckoo spit you might find as the nymph growing inside is doing no harm, it will grow into a very cute little bug 🙂

To complete the survey all you need to do is..

Log the amount of time you spend looking for spittle/spittle bugs, take note of how many spittle only / spittle with insect / adult you find on what type of plant and how many square metres you have searched.  It is also important to take a photo of the nymph if you can to submit with your data. 

To be able to see if there is an insect in the spittle you need to tease them out.  I used a bit of grass to slowly move through the spittle; the nymph leaves the spittle enough to be able to have a look at it.  Some would run off down the steam and others would move a little and freeze.

When you enter the data online, each plant species is a separate data entry so make sure you have your data separated out for each plant species.  In total I found..

Plant Spittle only Spittle with insect Adult
Lavender 15 26 0
Penstemon 0 1 0
Rosemary 3 9 0

All of the nymphs found were Meadow Spittlebug (Philaenus spumarius), you can use the ID sheet provided online to help with your identifications. 

When complete make sure you add all your data to the iRecord entry form 🙂

30 Days Wild 2019 – Day 14

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I got home late this evening so didn’t get into the garden until the light was starting to fade.  I wasn’t sure what I would find, after a little searching I found what I think is a garden spider (Araneus diadematus), it was in the lavender where it had built its web.  It is tiny; only a little bigger than the aphid it was eating. 

Garden spiders are seen between June and November. 

30 Days Wild 2019 – Day 12

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Over the past few weeks there has been a fox seen in the patch garden.  It has either been finishing off the cat food next to the front door or been spooked when it has been in the back garden.  No one has got a good look at it other than to say it was a fox! 

This evening I happened to look out of the window and saw it under the bird feeders. 

I quickly ran upstairs with a camera to get a photo out of one of the windows.  Thankfully I didn’t spook her by opening the window.  She looked but didn’t run. 

The birds had cleared the feeder earlier in the day so all she had to eat was scraps she could find in the grass.  I guess she must be hungry to be picking at the meagre left overs. 

She kept looking up at the feeder like she knew there was food there, but she couldn’t get at it.

 

30 Days Wild 2019 – Day 09

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I didn’t have any plans for today’s ‘wild’ activity, it was meant to rain and that hampered my thoughts of what I could do.  I decided to play it safe and just spend some time in the garden.  I know at some point I want to take part in the spittlebug survey so I went to have a look at the lavender to see if there was any about, strangely I didn’t find any but did come across a rosemary beetle. 

There was a lot of buzzing coming from a neighbours garden so I popped round to see if I could find out where it was coming from.  They have a plant on the fence that adjoins our garden which was covered in bees.  There must have been approx. 30-40 bees on the bush at anyone time.  Unfortunately we have no idea what plant it is but it would be great for any garden that wants to attract bees!  

As far as I could tell there were four species of bee; Buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) which seemed to be the majority, honey bees which I saw two of, Early bumblebee (Bombus pratorum) and then Tree bumblebee (Bombus hypnorum).

Once I was back in my own garden I noticed I had a harlequin ladybird larvae on me, I knew there was blackfly and greenfly on the runner beans so I thought that would be a good place to relocate him.  I didn’t expect him to start eating them straight away.  I have never seen them feeding before 🙂

30 Days Wild 2019 – Day 08

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This afternoon I searched for ladybirds in the garden.  Last weekend I spotted a couple of ladybird larvae in my Mum’s garden; she has been gardening for years but had never seen them before!  This weekend I decided to see how many she had hiding in the flowers.  After a little searching I found two 7-spots (Coccinella septempunctata) sunning themselves on some leaves…

…and then two 7-spot larvae.  Sadly one of them had passed away but the other was hunting for food.  

As I was watching I noticed some yellow in amongst the leaves, it was a 22-spot ladybird (Psyllobora vigintiduopunctata).  

Ladybirds or ladybugs (if you are American) are common in our gardens and  can be found throughout the UK. There are 46 species in the UK and the 7-spot is one of the most common.  They feed on a variety of aphid species and can usually be found where there is an influx of their food source; they can consume approx. 5500 in their lifetime! and why ladybirds are called a gardeners friend. The 22-spot on the other hand doesn’t eat aphids it feeds on mildew on a variety of plants, usually umbellifers and low-growing shrubs.

All of my finds have been added to iRecord 🙂

30 Days Wild 2019 – Day 07

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We have a hazel tree in the garden and today I noticed it is starting to form this years fruit.  I like the hazel tree, it provides a lot of cover for the birds and occasionally in autumn a squirrel will come across the field and collect the nuts.  I don’t think there are a lot of hazel trees in the area, there aren’t any in the hedgerow as far as I know and the copse on the other side of the field doesn’t have any either which is a shame as it is one of our UK native trees.  Its leaves provide food for a number of moth caterpillar; I will have to have a closer look to see if there is anyone feeding on them.

The tree has got a little out of hand and probably needs to be coppiced this year to improve its health, I plan on keeping any branches to use in the garden next year 🙂 

30 Days Wild 2019 – Day 03

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If you have been reading my garden blog posts you will be aware I have been growing wild flowers from seed to plant in the garden and also the field.  Tonight I spent an hour planting out as many as I could into the garden. They really needed to be planted out before now but I’m new to all this and still learning; though I have a feeling they will all be okay 🙂 I keep forgetting that we are only at the start of June and at this time last year I was only just sprinkling seeds in the beds hoping they would germinate, so feel I have made more progress this year. 

The flower bed I have been planting isn’t very big but even if you only have a few pots on the patio, adding wildflowers to the garden is a great way to give additional support to our pollinators. They will also look amazing too 🙂

Tonight I have planted out red campion, oxeye daisy, common fleabane and lady’s bedstraw.

My Patch – A Garden update: April 2019

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This month I have concentrated on trying to get the garden into a tidier/cleaner state for the planting out of the flowers when they are ready.  It has meant a lot of work so other aspects have suffered a little! 

April 1st – the basil has started to grow 🙂

April 2nd – as it is meant to be frosty for the next few nights I thought I would leave my cowslips and garlic mustard outside to ‘chill’.  They are meant to have a period of cold to start germination so I thought it can’t do them any harm as they don’t seem to be doing anything anyway! I tidied a little more of the glasshouse and found another five terracotta pots I will be able to use.  They will all need a bit of a clean, I just need to work out if I have any shorter plants which I can put in them; probably birdsfoot trefoil and sweet williams.

April 8th – tonight I potted on some of the sweet pea, sunflowers and borage.  I know I should have probably potted on the sweet peas earlier but I wasn’t sure where to pot them on too!  I knew I needed a deeper pot, I still have more that need rescuing from their small trays.  

Last year I removed a purple/red coloured steamed plant from the raised bed as it was in the way of the bird feeder!  I put it in a pot as no one knew what it was – thanks to @porridgebrain on Twitter who posted an image of her peonies I discovered what it was! It is still alive! I have removed all of ‘weeds’ from its pot and moved it to a sunnier spot – I plan to put it back into the raised bed but in a more suitable location.  

April 9th – This evening I decided I needed to take some images of the garden before I started to tidy/clean.  It does look a bit of a mess and its starting to make me stressed!  I know gardening isn’t meant to create stress it is meant to reduce it, but when there is so much to do it gets a bit much.  

I also potted on more of the borage and removed the ‘weeds’ from all the pots in the left garden.  The mint looks much better now I can actually see it is growing; I think it will need to be re potted this year.

April 10th – I finished potting on all of the borage today; I think I should have potted them on when they were a little smaller.  I have 73 plants in total.  I was going to sow some more though I think that will probably be more than enough for this year! 

April 11th – my common fleabane has started to sprout 🙂

I have only just thought about taking photos of my seedlings so I know what they look like in future years – I hope the flowers will seed themselves in the garden so next year I need to know what they look like so I know what is growing!

April 12th – So today I jet washed the left side of the garden’s patio; it only took 10 hours!!

April 15th – the mint has started to grow 😊  I have sown more rudbeckia as for some reason it hasn’t germinated.  

April 16th – sowed red campion, tall marigolds (I collected seed form the garden last year so I don’t know exactly what they are!) and perennial flax seed which I also collected from the garden.  

April 18th – painted the left fence, ‘weeded’ the raised bed and one of the love-in-the-mist has sprouted.

April 19th – was also a busy day, I moved the garlic mustard from growning in the right hand patio to the raised bed in the hope that it will survive, jet washed the patio, looked at repairing the garage guttering so a water butt can be fitted; we had to remove one of the branches from the hazel tree as it had caused the guttering to break.  I also potted on 62 cornflowers, potted on the rest of the sweet peas and put up a bee hotel 🙂

April 20th – I concreted 90% of the right hand patio – it took all day!

April 24th – Potted on 37 cornflowers and  33 teasel, the marigolds, red campion and the new batch of cornflowers and rudbeckia have sprouted.  I wasn’t expecting the perennial flax to germinate but it is doing quite well.

April 25th – Potted on 36 teasel and 21 sunflowers.

April 26th – Tonight I tweeted a photo of a tiny daffodil looking flower that is located in one of the window boxes.  @Mark_Couper replied to let me know they are daffodils; a variety called ‘new baby’. At least now I know what to do with them when they are relocated out of the window box, as at the moment they are surrounded by ‘weeds’ and very little compost!  

April 27th – today I visited a nursery sale with my Mum.  We went last year; this year I was going with a list of what I wanted to buy.  I managed to find only one plant on my list echinacea, I did also buy martin’s spurge as I thought it would look nice against the green of the fence and also add some foliage in the winter as I believe it is evergreen.   

April 29th – tonight I concreted where my potted plants are going to go so I will be able to start moving them about later in the week.  It will be nice to know some are planted up and are ready to just grow!  I have a few large pots that I assume had shrubs delivered in them, the pots have been kept for years so I have started to utilise them.  They aren’t the most attractive; black with handles on the them but I intend to hide them behind the more ‘attractive’ pots!  Tonight I put some borage in one of them.  I have probably made a mistake when putting 3 plants in one pot as I have read they can grow rather large, I think it might just be trial and error this year!  I also thought I probably needed to plant out the Martin’s spurge as their roots were coming out of the bottom of the pots.  I know they will expand and fill the pot; maybe when they do they can be separated into two pots.  By potting the plants out it meant I had some more small pots I could then use for potting on the remaining sunflowers 🙂 

Also throughout this month… the strawberries, field forget-me-not, garlic mustard, red campion, lilac and choisya ternata have all started to flower 🙂 

So far this year; total number of plants grown from seed and potted on…
99 cornflowers
73 borage
27 sunflowers
69 teasel