Garden Blog

I come into the garden and witness three mesmerised volunteers. I quickly join them as we watch hundreds of tiny spiders crawling on the edge of a plastic table or dangling from threads. They are about 2mm across, and have obviously just hatched. The mother spider lays her eggs in autumn and wraps them in silken threads, making an egg …

It has rained all morning and much of the afternoon. Although May was very wet, the rain stopped in the last week of the month, and the temperature climbed to the mid 20s at the beginning of this week. Such hot, dry weather threatened to dessicate seedlings in our wildflower bed, and dry out our raised beds and pots, large …

It doesn’t feel like May. Not a day to shed a clout. We’ve had lots of rain, we could be heading for a record for the month. And temperatures stay in the chilly teens, feeling colder today with the strong wind. Yesterday, we had a visit from Kay Rowe nursery, all swaddled up and with parents and teachers. It’s becoming …

It’s been raining on and off. No complaints after dry April. It’s chilly, though, which has advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that plants in flower last longer. Hot days accelerate the life cycle giving shorter flowering times. It’s down to chemistry; the warmer it is, the faster are chemical reactions. Though with living processes there is a limit, and …

It’s been cold and windy these first days of May. The wind blew away the blossom from the large cherry in a gale that one can imagine picking up our book shed, like Dorothy’s house in Kansas. But not quite a whirlwind, though it knocked over pots and chairs, and flattened the maize seedlings I had planted that same day. …

There’s garlic and garlic and there’s garlic. All tasting and smelling of garlic, but from different plants, closely related, mostly alliums. There’s the garlic we are familiar with in the kitchen, Allium sativum. It’s a bulb and we break off cloves for cooking. Breaking off cloves is also the easiest way of growing it. Simply plant a clove in compost. …

I was surprised to find stitchwort (Stellaria holostea) in the garden. It’s a wild flower common in country hedgerows and woodlands this time of year, but I don’t recall seeing it around here before. It has five white petals, almost looking like ten as each petal is split. And this struck me as the ‘stitch’ meaning in the name, as …

The sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) leaves are just coming out and with them the flowers. The latter are green which might lead one to think they are wind pollinated, as insect pollinated flowers are usually colourful. But it’s nectar that matters most. That’s what insects come for, and the sycamore flowers have it. Colour isn’t everything. The sex life of the …

It has been cold the last week, with frost on some mornings. Cold slows living processes. We, ourselves, are warm blooded but have to swaddle up on cold days and warm our houses in order to function properly. Birds are warm blooded too but really suffer in the cold. Their feathers insulate them but they have little bulk to hold …

We had lots of rain in the first weeks of March, and then it stopped completely; the rest of the month was dry and hot, with temperatures up to 24ºC. So the hose was used for the first time this year and the garden given a soaking. Our greenhouse plants are especially needful as on a warm day, under glass, …