Gardeners Tips

In theory Meterology should help our ability to predict weather conditions including snow, rains and floods based on seasonal cycles using observation, measurement and atmospheric conditions.

Red Sky at Night …………………

Old wives or gardeners tales and sayings such as rain before seven fine by eleven, wet on St Swithens day rain for 40 days, wet seaweed, cones opening in wet weather etc are based on observation and experience. However hightech is taking over with models used to predict the long term climate around the Earth.

Meteorological Equipment & Instruments

• Gardeners rely on the thermometer for soil and air temperature. A max min thermometer will help measure/control night time temperatures.
• Commercial growers will have sophisticated humidity meters to assist controlling growing conditions.
• Anometers are used for measuring wind speed but I am happy enough with a simple wind vane in the garden.
• There is now a plethora of digital weather stations for home and garden use

Flood Warning

Professional weather forecasts and warnings are important as they forewarn gardeners of potential problems. I usually react to them just too late not just in time.

Selecting plants that produce seeds and berries at different times of the year can provide food of birds through the seasons.

Berries

Ivy fruits in November and can last for 6 months so it is a winter staple. The early fruiting plants include Wild Cherry & Raspberries with Hawthorn, Blackthorn, Holly, Elder, Yew, Rowan and Guelder-Rose providing berries from August.

I have a large Berberis Darwinii whose plentiful berries are devoured by Blackbirds every year. They also like sloes, rosehips and haws. The Mahonia looses its berries to some birds but I can’t see who eats them from my window and it is often too cold to sit watching.

Soft fruit and crab apples seem to appeal to a range of birds as my strawberries get pecked over as do most similar varieties if left unnetted. Cottoneaster is pecked over but Pyracatha seems to last on the shrub until spring.

Gooseberries sometimes succumb to pigeons at the flowering stage and I put this just down to badness of the pesky overfed birds.

Seeds

In the garden the most popular seeds seem to be the expensive shop bought variety put out in even more expensive feeders.

Growing the right plants can provide the seeds and nuts birds crave. Teasel and thistles would be high on any avian menu. Beech, Hazel and Silver Birch or Hornbeam would be a main course. Centaurea, Sunflower and Scabious would suit Chaffinches while Coal Tits and Siskins like conifer seed.

All that food for thought but I still put out peanuts (crushed in spring), dried meal worms for the Robin and Niger seed hoping to get Greenfinches. In winter and early spring it is fat balls that I hope to tempt the taste buds with.

This is a view of a corner in my Yorkshire garden that shows some recycling activity. I have tried various compost bin methods over the years. Initially I started with an open pile which was untidy and slow. At about this time I acquired a shredder which chopped up brown twiggy waste but only  squelched leaves.

I graduated to a wooden frame compost bin  structure the remnants of which are showing next to the dustbin. This was fine particularly when I used ‘garrotta’ as a speed enhancer but as the volume of compostables grew the space needs also grew. (The more compost I had the more the plants grew and thus the more compost I got until Les Barker made a song out of it).

Thermo Plastic Bins

• Now the latest incarnation is the thermo plastic green bins. One is always in current use and the other is rotting down older compost. The volume reduction continues for about six months.
• This has been a good investment in terms of conversion speed, heat generation in the pile and crumbly results.
• I leave the lid open occasionally to increase the dampness.
• Despite using hard standing the big bins twist as they fill and the double split lids do not work very well.
• The bottom half is separately hinged so in theory you can extract compost from the bottom as it rots. I find it is too solid and prefer to empty the bin in total. Coarse bits can start off the new bin.

Other Compost Corner Items

• The black plastic bin is used for leaves and slow to compost items that will take a couple of years to rot down. I sacrifice pure leaf mold for composting coarser items.
• The burner dustbin with air holes and chimney was used for burning far more before the plastic bins came into use. Now I tend to put bits of trash, old labels, broken pots etc in this bin as I work near the compost bins.
• The blue lid in the fore front is a local authority recycling bin that is the 4th they have supplied and is now superfluous to my needs. Now I recollect there were also two other bins one now buried to make a second pond and one converted into a potato barrel.
• The bird feeders and brush speak for themselves.
• The wheelbarrow is full of recycled seed and potting compost mixed with perlite. This will be used up on some pot plants after adding some granular fertiliser.
• There is a tub of grit and gravel which I plan to use but never get around to doing so.

Tips based on Looking Back

• Heat is key to quick compost. It is increased by air so fork or turn the pile.
• In days gone by I creosoted the fence see above. Keep chemically treated matter away from an organic compost heap.
• There is a sense of achievement by creating and using good compost. It is worth the effort and beats taking everything to a landfill tip.
• Hedges grow and in my case have created a rain shadow and trimming problem.

The answer to the question is ‘of course green is a colour.’ Green is a mixture, a hybrid in gardening terms, as it is made from yellow and blue combined in varying quantities. But the emphasis is on the ‘made from’ of this answer.  The leaves above contain a higher proportion of blue whilst those below are more yellow in content.

Green is fixed in our minds when we are taught the colours of the rainbow. Mnemonics and acronyms includeed Richard Of York Gained Battle In Vain, ROYGBIV,   Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo and Violet, Roy G. Biv,  and the song ‘Red and orange and yellow and green, blue and indigo violet too………….I can sing a rainbow’

Red is the complementary colour to green. They are opposite each other on the colour wheel.   A splash of red brings out the many contrasting green shades in this photograph.

 

 

There are many shades of green counted in the Irish  song ‘The 40 Shades of Green’. It is surprising how many of these shades use plants as a reference to the type of green colour such as; lime, pea, sage, olive, fern, juniper, shamrock, mint, moss, pine, seaweed and forest green (below with Lime) which all spring to mind.

Forgive this word play as here we have ‘Bowling Green’.

Frosted green has a blue hue as would most gardeners working in the cold.

The last Green picture is one of my favourite Hart’s Tongue Fern.

This post has been an excuse to use some of the many pictures of plant life that all rely on photosynthesis and chlorophyll to produce the greens we see.

 

Insects play a key role in pollination and plants reward them with pollen and nectar in a symbiotic process.

Children can learn from watching bees buzz around the open flowers on a warm spring day.
The sun encourages the crocus flowers to open. This releases a scent that attracts the bees. The bees drink the nectar and get pollen on their legs and backs. When they fly off to the next flower they transfer some pollen from the first flower to the second flower and this causes pollination.

Some flowers are pollinated by beetles rather than bees and flies.

How Pollination Works and Why Insects are So Important The First Flowers A book explaining how pollination works as a light and funny children’s story available from Amazon at £9.99

At the other end of the educational spectrum is Pollination and Floral Ecology by Pat Willmer costing around £61.75

Read Pollinators for Green Gardening