Today was the first time I've done any work in the garden for nine days, apart from watering the pots. I kicked off by deadheading the dahlias. The ones in containers are not blooming so well as they should be, and the leaves look rather pallid, so I had better dose them more regularly with tomato food. Then I did a run to the dump, and weeded around the compost bins. Never let it be said that I don't know how to enjoy my days off.
The weeds have grown prodigously in the last week, shooting up like, well, like weeds, really. Some have managed to set seed, which shouldn't have been allowed to happen, but there you go. The rambling rose 'Paul's Himalayan Musk' has made a tremendous flush of late summer growth, and has once again managed to block the steps down to the bottom of the garden, as I discovered on Sunday when we took our friends to see the holey stone, and had to go the other way round the block. Fortunately the wind was in the right direction recently for the Systems Administrator to have a bonfire, blowing the smoke back into our wood rather than on to our neighbour's lettuces, so there is space for me to dump a new pile of prunings. The S.A. has embarked on cutting the eleagnus hedge, which has shot out over the drive again, to the point where it would be a squeeze for a transit van to make it to the front door, let alone an oil tanker or any other delivery involving a lorry.
The stooled Paulownia tomentosa have responded to the damper weather by throwing up stout shoots fully 3-4m high, with truly enormous leaves. I raised the plants from seed, which I recall was fairly easy, and they also spread by suckers. The stems are hollow, and the books tell you to cut the trunks down in the spring, if you are going to coppice them. These ended up being cut down in the autumn, because I'd not got round to stooling them the previous spring, and they had got far too big for their position so close to the house. They survived the experience, despite the severity of last winter. Christopher Lloyd warns that repeated stooling can weaken them to the point of death, but these are still very much alive (so far).
Taking our visitors to see the garden statuary (at their request. I never inflict a garden tour on people unless they ask) I discovered that since I last made it down to the lowest part, the Dicentra scandens had scrambled over the Magnolia stellata so enthusiastically that the latter was practically invisible. The little yellow bleeding heart flowers of the Dicentra are quite sweet, and the leaves look so delicate that you could scarcely believe it would hurt anything, but I must keep an eye on the magnolia and check that it doesn't seem to mind being engulfed in late summer. There is a wild bryony in there as well, and that is going to have to go, as its large, vaguely vine shaped leaves are too smothering. It seeds like crazy, so there are plenty of others around the place.
The Kirengeshoma palmata was just opening its yellow bells too. This is a tall, handsome woodlander which rather unusually flowers at this time of the year rather than spring. I have tried and utterly failed to germinate it from seed, but the plant I bought and planted in a fairly leafy, shady, sheltered spot has grown happily with little further attention. Grown in black plastic 2 litre pots and exposed to sunshine as when for sale in the plant centre, it is one of the most wretched, scorched, miserable looking plants you have ever seen, and sells correspondingly badly (thus compounding the problem) whereas in the garden it is a fine-looking plant.
Showing posts with label weeds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weeds. Show all posts
Tuesday, 16 August 2011
Friday, 29 July 2011
gravel
I've been weeding the gravel, and dropping extra shovelfuls and handfuls on to the thin patches. The large bulk bag, when it arrived, looked an imposing amount to have to shift, and yet after taking just a couple of barrow loads, not even full ones, it seemed to have gone down alarmingly, and I thought that one bag was never going to be enough. It isn't, but I should get it spread out fairly quickly, and I can always order another one.
Hand weeding in a garden that exploits self-seeding as a deliberate effect requires a practiced eye for what the seedlings of weeds look like, compared to plants. Or rather, plants that you want to keep. I am gently amused by the customers who come into work with their mystery specimens and the question 'is it a weed or a plant?'. Sometimes I can identify the unknown garden occupant, then I can tell them how it is likely to behave, but sometimes I can't. Weeds are plants too, I then tell them. Do you like it? If so then why not keep it? This is slightly unfair, since many weeds are classed as such because of their terrifying ability to spread themselves around. For a full discussion of what constitutes a weed, for those who like that sort of thing, I recommend Michael Pollan and Richard Mabey, two thoughtful and considered writers with interesting things to say about humanity's relationship with the rest of the natural world. But I don't think some of the customers have thought very clearly about what they mean by the question, plant or weed. It could be that they are concerned about the unknown thing spreading intemperately, or about incurring ridicule for being seen to deliberately cultivate weeds, but I think it is more a desire to fit in with the established categories society has set down. It is comforting to think that there is a set of rules. These are things we have in our gardens. Those are not garden things. This is how it is done. Don't risk being an accidental iconoclast.
I have one mystery plant that came up in a border last year. I didn't recognise the seedlings, so left them to see what they turned into, which turned out to be something I still didn't recognise with small and rather boring purplish flowers. I really don't know if I tried years back from seed and didn't think much of, or if birds spread it, or if it is a native wildflower or exotic, or what it is. This year it has (I think) seeded itself into the gravel, and the young seedlings look confusingly similar to those of the teazels, that I want to keep, which is annoying. A surprising turn is that violets are seeding themselves around in the gravel. This is a small leafed violet which came in to the garden mixed up in the roots of other plants I was given. I think it is a UK native, and I associate it with shady hedge bottoms and woodland, so it is rather disconcerting to see it growing happily in gravel on very light soil in full sun. This is one of the limitations of the ecological planting approach. Ecologically speaking, it is obviously very happy with its new niche in the gravel, and I have found a plant that wants to grow in the prevailing conditions. The trouble is, it looks incongruous, and doesn't chime with the desert wash influenced, arid aesthetic I'm trying to cultivate in this area. I left the seedlings in situ, since it seemed a shame to waste them, but I think I'll have to move them. It will be salutory if they fail when given the semi-shaded, moister conditions I feel they ought to like.
Two gazanias have made it outside through not just the last winter but the one before that, which is fairly incredible given they are not supposed to be hardy. I like gazanias, and nearly bought some more this spring, but held off on the grounds that I needed to concentrate on restoring the structure, key plants and ground cover, before spending too much time on decorative fripperies. I grew the last lot from seed, and they spent their first winter miserably languishing in the greenhouse because the site wasn't ready for them that summer, so the ones in the gravel are probably over three years old. One has a yellow flower on it, very cheerful. If it sets seed I suppose I ought to keep it, and see if I can progress towards breeding a hardier strain, but I suspect the very sharp drainage had a lot to do with their survival. My Zauschneria californica, a subshrub that carries red tubular flowers in the autumn, has also reappeared, and they aren't the hardiest things.
There are an immense number of ants' nests in the gravel, and I have to be careful not to kneel on them. Ant bites up your legs are very unpleasant. They have undermined and killed some plants, which is a pity but again all part of the shifting aesthetic of this kind of gardening. Pulling up a tuft of dead thrift yesterday I uncovered a really large toad. It remained motionless, as toads do, but I moved it to the shelter of a hedge before the chickens could find it. They had got one once in their run, and were shaking the poor creature first by one leg and then another. I presume they ate it.
Hand weeding in a garden that exploits self-seeding as a deliberate effect requires a practiced eye for what the seedlings of weeds look like, compared to plants. Or rather, plants that you want to keep. I am gently amused by the customers who come into work with their mystery specimens and the question 'is it a weed or a plant?'. Sometimes I can identify the unknown garden occupant, then I can tell them how it is likely to behave, but sometimes I can't. Weeds are plants too, I then tell them. Do you like it? If so then why not keep it? This is slightly unfair, since many weeds are classed as such because of their terrifying ability to spread themselves around. For a full discussion of what constitutes a weed, for those who like that sort of thing, I recommend Michael Pollan and Richard Mabey, two thoughtful and considered writers with interesting things to say about humanity's relationship with the rest of the natural world. But I don't think some of the customers have thought very clearly about what they mean by the question, plant or weed. It could be that they are concerned about the unknown thing spreading intemperately, or about incurring ridicule for being seen to deliberately cultivate weeds, but I think it is more a desire to fit in with the established categories society has set down. It is comforting to think that there is a set of rules. These are things we have in our gardens. Those are not garden things. This is how it is done. Don't risk being an accidental iconoclast.
I have one mystery plant that came up in a border last year. I didn't recognise the seedlings, so left them to see what they turned into, which turned out to be something I still didn't recognise with small and rather boring purplish flowers. I really don't know if I tried years back from seed and didn't think much of, or if birds spread it, or if it is a native wildflower or exotic, or what it is. This year it has (I think) seeded itself into the gravel, and the young seedlings look confusingly similar to those of the teazels, that I want to keep, which is annoying. A surprising turn is that violets are seeding themselves around in the gravel. This is a small leafed violet which came in to the garden mixed up in the roots of other plants I was given. I think it is a UK native, and I associate it with shady hedge bottoms and woodland, so it is rather disconcerting to see it growing happily in gravel on very light soil in full sun. This is one of the limitations of the ecological planting approach. Ecologically speaking, it is obviously very happy with its new niche in the gravel, and I have found a plant that wants to grow in the prevailing conditions. The trouble is, it looks incongruous, and doesn't chime with the desert wash influenced, arid aesthetic I'm trying to cultivate in this area. I left the seedlings in situ, since it seemed a shame to waste them, but I think I'll have to move them. It will be salutory if they fail when given the semi-shaded, moister conditions I feel they ought to like.
Two gazanias have made it outside through not just the last winter but the one before that, which is fairly incredible given they are not supposed to be hardy. I like gazanias, and nearly bought some more this spring, but held off on the grounds that I needed to concentrate on restoring the structure, key plants and ground cover, before spending too much time on decorative fripperies. I grew the last lot from seed, and they spent their first winter miserably languishing in the greenhouse because the site wasn't ready for them that summer, so the ones in the gravel are probably over three years old. One has a yellow flower on it, very cheerful. If it sets seed I suppose I ought to keep it, and see if I can progress towards breeding a hardier strain, but I suspect the very sharp drainage had a lot to do with their survival. My Zauschneria californica, a subshrub that carries red tubular flowers in the autumn, has also reappeared, and they aren't the hardiest things.
There are an immense number of ants' nests in the gravel, and I have to be careful not to kneel on them. Ant bites up your legs are very unpleasant. They have undermined and killed some plants, which is a pity but again all part of the shifting aesthetic of this kind of gardening. Pulling up a tuft of dead thrift yesterday I uncovered a really large toad. It remained motionless, as toads do, but I moved it to the shelter of a hedge before the chickens could find it. They had got one once in their run, and were shaking the poor creature first by one leg and then another. I presume they ate it.
Sunday, 10 July 2011
picnic at Fingringhoe
I made a return visit to the nature reserve at Fingringhoe today, this time without the company of the over-talkative warden. It was very calm and peaceful, and we didn't see many other people. Out at the mouth of the river Colne two Thames barges made their serene way.
We didn't see many birds either. July isn't a great month for bird watching. They have largely finished breeding and are moulting and skulking about. One of our number is a keen bird-watcher, and was equipped with a pair of binoculars, so was busy trying to decide if the things swimming around on one of the ponds were coots, moorhens, dabchicks or some sort of unusual duck. I can never see anything through binoculars, although I can recognise coots and moorhens if I get a clear view of them, but I don't mind not knowing what birds are, or at least I use large and vague categories like 'duck', 'seagull', 'small brown one' or 'some sort of thrush'. The last category covers fieldfares and redwings as well as bona-fide thrushes that are too far off to tell (without binoculars) if they are song or mistle.
I'm not very good at the names of wild flowers either. Some people find this odd, but by taste and training I'm a gardener, not a field botanist. I can recognise the weed species that trouble me in our garden, and know what sort of roots they have and how they spread, though I don't know all their names. Gardening conditions your view of nature, and I found it impossible to respond with delight to a bank of purple loosestrife (or willowherb) that my companions found beautiful, because I couldn't shake off the image of those brittle white roots running through the borders at a rate of knots. Even though they were not in a garden setting, and I could see that they were excellent insect plants with lots of visiting bees, I couldn't quite help thinking of the plant as a tricksy weed.
In general the pendulum has swung back from categorising plants as 'weeds' and seeking to control them and towards classing them as 'wild flowers' and therefore desirable. I remember that when I was a child many more road verges were cut numerous times through the year and sprayed with herbicides to get rid of the messy weeds. Nowadays driving around north Essex I see cow parsley, hogweed, yarrow, red and white campion, mallows and many others blooming in the summer verges. This must partly be down to economics, as the money isn't there to cut more than a couple of times a year, and partly down to a re-thinking on pesticides. Nearly half a century after publication of The Silent Spring we are more cautious about their toxicity than back in the spray-happy days of the 1960s and 1970s, when nature seemed so easy to control, and to need controlling. And road verges are being recategorised as 'wildlife corridors', useful linking habitats. There are even some in Essex that are designated sites of wildlife interest in their own right.
The reserve at Fingringhoe provides lots of picnic tables, and we were able to find one that had the right degree of shade, not too hot and not too cold. A rain cloud passed not very far away, but just avoided us, and we used the excuse of it being a picnic to eat too much pudding. It is a nice peaceful spot, and I recommend it.
We didn't see many birds either. July isn't a great month for bird watching. They have largely finished breeding and are moulting and skulking about. One of our number is a keen bird-watcher, and was equipped with a pair of binoculars, so was busy trying to decide if the things swimming around on one of the ponds were coots, moorhens, dabchicks or some sort of unusual duck. I can never see anything through binoculars, although I can recognise coots and moorhens if I get a clear view of them, but I don't mind not knowing what birds are, or at least I use large and vague categories like 'duck', 'seagull', 'small brown one' or 'some sort of thrush'. The last category covers fieldfares and redwings as well as bona-fide thrushes that are too far off to tell (without binoculars) if they are song or mistle.
I'm not very good at the names of wild flowers either. Some people find this odd, but by taste and training I'm a gardener, not a field botanist. I can recognise the weed species that trouble me in our garden, and know what sort of roots they have and how they spread, though I don't know all their names. Gardening conditions your view of nature, and I found it impossible to respond with delight to a bank of purple loosestrife (or willowherb) that my companions found beautiful, because I couldn't shake off the image of those brittle white roots running through the borders at a rate of knots. Even though they were not in a garden setting, and I could see that they were excellent insect plants with lots of visiting bees, I couldn't quite help thinking of the plant as a tricksy weed.
In general the pendulum has swung back from categorising plants as 'weeds' and seeking to control them and towards classing them as 'wild flowers' and therefore desirable. I remember that when I was a child many more road verges were cut numerous times through the year and sprayed with herbicides to get rid of the messy weeds. Nowadays driving around north Essex I see cow parsley, hogweed, yarrow, red and white campion, mallows and many others blooming in the summer verges. This must partly be down to economics, as the money isn't there to cut more than a couple of times a year, and partly down to a re-thinking on pesticides. Nearly half a century after publication of The Silent Spring we are more cautious about their toxicity than back in the spray-happy days of the 1960s and 1970s, when nature seemed so easy to control, and to need controlling. And road verges are being recategorised as 'wildlife corridors', useful linking habitats. There are even some in Essex that are designated sites of wildlife interest in their own right.
The reserve at Fingringhoe provides lots of picnic tables, and we were able to find one that had the right degree of shade, not too hot and not too cold. A rain cloud passed not very far away, but just avoided us, and we used the excuse of it being a picnic to eat too much pudding. It is a nice peaceful spot, and I recommend it.
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