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Cinnabar moth

A cinnabar moth caterpillar (one of many) feeding on what I think is ragwort at the Sustainability Centre yesterday.

Ragwort is poisonous (if ingested) to all invertebrates and is generally controlled in areas where animals graze. These lovely stripy caterpillars (which also have hairy heads) accumulate the toxins in their bodies – their colouring is a warning that they, too, are poisonous. Apparently they can feed on other members of the Senecio genus, including groundsel.

The Cinnabar moth is not the only insect that feeds on ragwort. According to Buglife: “at least 77 insect species have been recorded eating Ragwort leaves or living in the stems and flowers. About 52 of these are known to regularly feed on Ragwort as a significant food plant. More importantly, 30 species of invertebrate are confined to Ragwort as a food plant.”

The adult moth is also stunning, in black and red, but I didn’t see any of those.

Two egg days :)

Cluck Skywalker has been laying bright white eggs for maybe three weeks now. She has even laid an egg with two yolks – one of the highlights of chicken keeping that we had not previously expereienced. Chewbucka was obviously younger when she arrived – she was a tiny bundle of feathers with no comb to speak of (Cluck’s was huge, and is now even bigger). Chewie laid her first egg on Saturday, so we are once again a two-egg family (Princess doesn’t seem to lay anymore, but we don’t mind).

The only problem is that poor little Chewie has developed a limp, so we’re going to take her to the vet to get her checked out. She’s friendly, placcid and easy to catch, so that shouldn’t be a problem. If it was Cluck then we would have trouble, as she’s completely manic!

The last few days have been very hot, but yesterday was overcast so I did manage to spend some time in the garden. Initially I couldn’t decide what to do, but then I remembered that the jostaberry had disappeared among a curtain of tall weeds, so I went in to pull those up. Two hours and several trugs later, it has reappeared. So far this year it has escaped the sawfly that ate through it’s leaves last year; now that it has room to breathe I expect they will find it with no trouble!

The weeds were home to a number of snails. Some of them I chucked back into the ‘wild’ patch by the side of the Grow Dome; the others are starting an extended period of incarceration in the compost bin, where they can help dispose of the weeds.

This is a mug shot of one of the offenders. Anyone fancy thinking up a caption?

Solitary Bee Nester

Pete and I were kept pretty busy at the Hampshire Green Fair, and didn’t have too much time to look around. Pete bought some honey from the Petersfield Beekeepers, and we enjoyed the hog roast (both rather problematic as most of the visitors to the Compassion in World Farming stall next to us were vegans). When I had a chance to wander I came across a lovely guy called John (from Bee Happy who was selling these beautiful bee nests for solitary bees.

The box on mine is 21cm (8.5 inches) tall – for some reason the photo makes it look really tiny! I just need to find a good spot for it, somewhere sunny and sheltered. I already have a bug box, so the new bee nester may go in the same place.

We all know that bees of all kinds are struggling at the moment, and not only do Bee Happy make bee boxes, but they give talks and workshops as well. They’re attending several more festivals and fairs this summer, so if you’d like to catch up with them have a look at their website.

Bird Bath Winner

Thanks to everyone who entered the bird bath competition, I have really enjoyed reading your entries! Whilst some people simply named the bird they were hoping to attract, others sent me little stories explaining their choice, all of which were lovely.

The lucky winner was Adrian from Farnborough, who will shorlty be receiving his prize from the lovely people at Love Thy Space. Those of you who didn’t win this time can, of course, buy one of these lovely recycled glass bird baths for £25.

I thought you would be interested to see which birds had been chosen:

Blue tits were very popular, with their colourful plummage and cheeky personalities. A lot of people were concerned that they are not as common in gardens as they once were – fond memories of feathered childhood friends mean they are sadly missed.

The perky robin came in second, mainly because they are bold and will come and keep gardeners company when there’s the chance of worms being dug up. Robin red breast also reminded several entrants of loved ones who are no longer with us.

A lot of people wanted to attract a finch, although several different types were chosen. The tiny and shy wren was also a bird that many people hoped to draw out into the garden, but they love to hug the shadows under the hedge.

And there were a few entries from people who would like to attract larger birds to their garden, who wouldn’t find this delicate bird bath much of a draw! Kingfishers, a heron and woodpeckers are an unusual sight in most urban gardens (although I have seen a heron on nearby rooftops!).

It is perhaps encouraging that few people felt the need to attract blackbirds and sparrows – maybe it means that these characters are already present in many gardens and aren’t finding modern living too much of a strain.

Meanwhile, the Guardian has been looking at how you can attract some more unusual birds into your garden.

Be Nice to Nettles Week

This year, Be Nice to Nettles Week is 19-30 May 2010. Many people’s only experiences of nettles are being stung, or trying to erradicate this ‘weed’ from their garden, but throughout history nettles have been appreciated as useful plants.

The Telegraph currently has a picture gallery showing a Top Ten uses for nettles, which includes nettle soup and tea, a wildlife habitat and a free plant feed. Nettles can also be used in herbal medicine and to make fibres for clothing and rope, and more. There’s even a book called 101 Uses for Stinging Nettles

If you want to learn more about nettles then you could visit the Natural History Museum wildlife garden on Saturday 22nd or Sunday 23rd May for Nettle Weekend. But if you can’t get excited about nettles then how about signing up for the NHM’s cherry tree or bluebell surveys, so that you can help study UK biodiversity.

Forest Garden Friday:30th April 2010

A wood pile for wildlife, at Ewelme Nature Reserve

Welcome to Forest Garden Friday! The idea is to collect together all kinds of information about forest gardens, which are designed to mimic a natural forest system using productive plants – and thus provide a sustainable and varied harvest.

One of the main ways in which permaculture and forest gardens differs from regular gardening is that it understands that it doesn’t pay to be too tidy. There are many reasons why you might let a plant set seed, for example. Perhaps you want to let it self-seed, to add to the low maintenance nature of the garden. Or perhaps the seeds are valuable for wildlife. Or maybe you want to collect seed and share it with friends.

Leaving unkempt areas of garden has other advantages, too. A lack of dead material in gardens makes it hard for organisms at the bottom of the food chain (detritivores, or decomposers) to find anything to eat. Without them the soil doesn’t regenerate properly, and the animals higher up the food chain don’t have anything to eat either and the visible wildlife will also struggle to exist on your plot.

And so a compost heap is a valuable wildlife addition to your garden, but there are other ways to make use of dead material, particularly the woody stuff that won’t rapidly compost down.

Lia Leendertz and the Hedgewizard both have dead hedges – collections of dead plant material that make great barriers, wind breaks and wildlife habitats and are also quick, easy and free to make. I first encountered them at the Sustainability Centre in Hampshire, and I must remember to take a photo next time I’m there. They blend in nicely with the garden and don’t look tatty.

Another way to make use of woody material is through hugelkultur. In essence this means turning your woody waste into the bottom layer of a raised bed. This gives you a raised bed with plenty of organic material and air pockets to encourage healthy plant growth, and a slow-release source of fertilizer (potentially for years if you use a slow-rotting wood) although you do have to be on the look out in case your wood is too fresh and is locking up all the soil nitrogren while it decomposes. Well-rotted wood won’t give you that problem.

And, of course, you can simply make a log pile in a quiet corner that will make a home for all kinds of minibeasts and creepy crawlies, which will be beneficial to your garden (and very educational if you have kids).

What are your favourite ways to incoporate a little bit of death and decay into your garden, to complete the circle of life?

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If you’d like to contribute to Forest Garden Fridays then please check out the guidelines on how to do so.

Win a bird bath

In their last house my mum and dad had a bird bath just outside the patio doors. It was lovely to watch the birds coming and going, splashing about the having a drink, just yards from where you were sitting comfy on the sofa. Mum and dad were a little disappointed that their main visitors were pigeons, but you have to take what you can get!

I have never had a bird bath in my garden because, although I would love one, I just can’t face giving space to one of those great big gothic stone monstrosities or a tacky one with moulded birds around the edge. I tried to make my own with the door off a dismantled washing machine, but the birds just didn’t take to it and it was pretty ugly.

Which is why I’m pleased that Love Thy Space has offered me one of their stylish glass bird baths to give away to one lucky UK reader. They’re frost-proof, hand blown in Poland and made from 100% recycled glass as well! These dainty baths would no doubt attact much daintier and prettier birds than those enormous wood pigeons :)

Love Thy Space are happy to deliver this wonderful prize anywhere in the UK, so to be in with a chance of winning just email me which bird you’re most hoping to attract into your garden and why, together with your name and address.

The closing date for entries is midnight on 30th April, and the winner will be chosen at random. If you’re not lucky enough to win, then you can order your own petite glass bird bath from Love Thy Space for £25.

Signs of Spring

The nice weather this week means that I have been able to spend some time in the garden. I have spent most of the time moving things about and repotting plants. It is still hard to see the difference, but there are changes afoot in the garden.

These lovely catkins are from a couple of weeks ago, on my Webb’s Prize Cobnuts:

Catkins are the male flowers of hazels; the female flowers are hard to spot in comparison – they’re just tiny red tufts:

Other tiny splashes of red in the garden come from the ladybirds, which are just starting to emerge. This one is a native British seven spot ladybird:

Future Fruit

Grape vine cuttings, wildlife twig bundle and kindling

The weather so far this year has been pretty awful (and it’s snowing again as I type this), but Saturday was sunny and I spent a couple of hours outside pruning in an attempt to ensure bountiful fruit crops in the summer. I wrapped up warm, but it wasn’t cold unless the sun went behind clouds. The chickens, who have been shut in their run for much of the winter, enjoyed a short walk around the garden and the chance to have a good dust bath inside the Grow Dome.

I had a To Do list, arranged partly in terms of urgency and partly in terms of difficulty. I started off nice and easy, pruning back my autumn-fruiting raspberries (MTP reminded me) and giving them a good mulch with partly rotted bunny litter.

While I was there I did a little bit of light pruning of the blueberries, simply to remove dead wood and relieve any congestion.

Then I was off into the chicken run to prune two of my minarette fruit trees. Winter is the time to take the tops out of the apple and pear (the instructions say to prune the ‘leader’, but mine have several branches reaching for the sky), which encourages the growth of the sideshoots that bear the fruiting spurs. Later in the year I have to prune the fruiting spurs….

The third job on the list was the trickiest – pruning the grapevine. I used to have two, but one died. The remaining one was rampant last year and escaped onto my neighbour’s side of the fence. Whilst very leafy, it was not fruitful. I am attempting to tame it by training it in the Guyot style, and have cut off all the stems bar one. It should grow two or three stems this year, which I will bend down to the horizontal next year. Or something like that. One step at a time, and step one was getting it under control. Step two is fitting the training wires. But even if my vine doesn’t fruit, it has other uses.

As I took so much wood off the grapevine, I thought I would try growing some more from hardwood cuttings. I trimmed down sections of stem, stuck them in potting compost and have left them out in the Grow Dome. If they grow I will try growing a grape in a container, which looks like fun. I can’t remember whether this is the Cabernet sauvignon or the Sauvignon blanc, so I will have to check at some point.

I also bundled up lengths of stem for a wildlife habitat, and put them down by the fence. Any dinky bits of wood I saved to fuel my Kelly Kettle.

National Science and Engineering Week: What on Earth

12–21 March 2010 is National Science and Engineering Week, and this year the theme is ‘Earth’, to tie in with the International Year of Biodiversity.

They’ll be lots of science events going on around the country during that week, but one of special interest is the ‘What on Earth’ campaign, which is raising awareness of UK plants and animals facing habitat destruction and homelessness.

Free wildflower seeds are on offer at www.whatonearth.org.uk for people who want to take part in a little bit of nature spotting. It couldn’t be simpler or more fun. All you need to do is upload a snap of something you don’t recognise that you spot in your garden, and you will receive native varieties of wildflower that encourage greater biodiversity in your back garden or flower box. You can also download a free Biodiversity Activity Pack with lots of things for kids to do out in the garden and beyond.

The aim of ‘what on earth’ is to spot, collect and identify as many species as possible over the course of the week, painting a fascinating picture of UK wildlife for us all to observe and enjoy. Organised in partnership with The Open University’s iSpot website, NSEW’s specialists from all fields of natural science will examine, identify and catalogue as many finds as they can over the course of the week and beyond.

And that’s not all – a green roof will be awarded to a school in the area which has shown most support for National Science & Engineering Week’s ‘What on Earth’ campaign and uploaded the most pictures. So whether you are an avid nature watcher or you just happen to find something unusual crawling around in your garden take a picture and submit it to www.whatonearth.org.uk.

And a partridge in a pear tree

Starlings are long term residents in my garden: this was 2004

This morning I have spent an hour recording the number of birds in my garden as part of the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch – an annual event in which people all over the UK help to gather information on which of our garden birds are thriving and which are struggling.

You record the highest number of birds of a particular species that you see at any time during the hour. Mine was 7 starlings, 5 sparrows, a pair of collared doves, a blackbird and an enormously fat woodpigeon.

There’s still time to take part – you just need to spend an hour today or tomorrow birdwatching. You can register and submit your results online, and print out a recording sheet that helps you to recognise some of the more common birds.

If you discover that you like being an amateur ecologist then there are plenty of other ways to get involved with wildlife recording. Nature’s Calendar uses data recorded by amateurs to track the changing seasons (it’s called Phenology). And there’s more information on Phenology on the BBC’s Spring Watch site.

Plantlife have an annual Common Plants Survey monitoring the changes to countryside flora and there are local plant recording groups all over the country. Or perhaps you’d like to help the Woodland Trust with their hunt for Ancient Trees (they even offer a knitting pattern for a special tree-measuring scarf!).

Gardeners are being encouraged to report sightings of both our native ladybirds and the invading International Biodiversity Year and there are more ways to get involved with that via their website.

If you’re involved in another recording project (or even a more hands-on wildlife project) then you can add your links in the comments.

International Year of Biodiversity

2010 has been declared the International Year of Biodiversity (IYB) by the United Nations. Biodiversity is simply the range of life on earth, and lots of human activities have a devastating impact on it. We all know that species are becoming extinct at an alarming rate, that the rainforests are being destroyed and that climate change is already affecting how and where plants and animals live.

There are lots of ways you can get involved with the IYB, and if you can do one thing to promote biodiversity then they’d like you to spread the word as well.

Two events this weekend have caught my eye. The first is the RSPB’s annual Big Garden Birdwatch, where amateur birdwatchers all over the UK spend an hour or so counting the birds that come into their garden, to gauge how well wild bird populations are doing.

And in America January 30th is National Seed Swap Day. If you’ve got excess seeds that need a good home, or you want to pick up something new for your garden, then why not head along to a seed swap or host your own? If you want to have a biodiversity theme then include seeds and plants that are good for wildlife, with open flowers (for bees), edible seeds (for birds) or even hollow stems that could provide an over-wintering spot for beneficial insects.

My plan is to keep up with the IYB throughout the year.

Twelth Night

Twelth Night is traditionally the day that the Christmas decorations are taken down. Apparently it’s because greenery was brought into the house over midwinter to give the tree spirits somewhere to shelter, and if they were not returned outside there would be no spring, and the tree spirits would cause mischief in the house. These days most decorations are made of plastic, but if you had a real Christmas tree then now is the time to find a new home for it.

A living tree can be returned to the garden for the year, but what can you do with a cut tree? One suggestion from the British Christmas Tree Grower’s Association is that you strip the needles, dry them and use them as part of a pot pourri mix with cinnamon that will keep the Christmas spirit alive well into the New Year.

Gardeners might want to keep those prickly branches for spring time, when they can be used to protect vulnerable plants and seedlings from roving cats – you can use them to block access to the garden at strategic points or lay them over your beds to prevent cats from squatting and leaving you unwanted gifts or lying down and flattening seedlings.

According to the BCTGA you can also sink the whole tree into your pond as a habitat for your fish. If you have a chipper (or can rent or borrow one) then you can turn your tree into mulch, but many of us will just want to send our tree off to be recycled elsewhere. If you’re in London then check out Recycle for London, as all of the boroughs are offering recycling services, and some will even collect your tree. Kew Botanic Garden and the London Royal Parks are also offering tree recycling services during January.

Outside of London you’ll need to visit the trusty postcode checker at RecycleNow to find your local recycling points.

Volunteer at St. Tiggywinkles

When I was a kid I went through a stage of being mad keen on hedgehogs. I collected cuddly hedgehog toys and ceramic hedgehogs and was a member of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society. One delightful day I even managed to rescue a hedgehog that had wandered into the school amphitheatre and couldn’t get back up the steps.

I collected all sorts of newspaper clippings, and watched as St. Tiggywinkles evolved from one man with a van and a couple of sheds into a state-of-the-art wildlife hospital. I’m still a member now, and get their newsletters.

There’s always a section on things they need, and usually it’s mainly medical and office supplies and pet food. Now that there is a visitor centre they sometimes ask for things for projects for school groups.

This time they’re asking for garden plants and tools and volunteer gardeners. I asked for more details about their gardening project, but all I got back was a polite note from the visitor centre manager saying all volunteers would be welcome, but check with them before you go so that there’s someone ready to run you through the health and safety stuff when you get there.

If, like me, you are too far away to pop round for a spot of gardening then there are other ways to support St Tiggywinkles, including a great gift idea – you can adopt an animal.

UFOs too - Unidentified Fungal Objects

Over the past couple of weeks Pete and I have been watching the progress of a giant mushroom (toadstool?) growing in the garden. It’s lucky that it has a safe place to grow – anything this huge out in the real world would have received a good kicking by now and be in pieces.

It is huge – around 6 inches in diameter – and certainly the largest mushroom I’ve seen. It’s growing at the base of the jostaberry, although I suspect it’s living in the bark chip mulch. I know next to nothing about fungi (it’s on the To Learn list) – so can anyone identify it for me?

In the meantime, can anyone translate ‘Room to Let’ into fairy for me? I’d like to have fairies living at the bottom of the garden ;)

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