Making our Meadow Blog

Limited time for activity...plenty of time for thinking

It is hard enough at this time of year to do the stuff that needs doing, with so few hours of daylight meaning only weekends are available to do things. Having a 6 week onld baby means that those weekends rapidly disappear as well. So far I have managed to do the following:

• finished off the new lawn (to give Max somewhere to play!).
• moved the perennials around in the long perennial bed.
• planted up and protected the Echium pinninana plants (see below).

Several years ago we went to the Eden Project in Cornwall and marvelled at the gigantic Viper's Bugloss plants growing there. I bought some seed and 2 years ago finally got round to sowing it. I had expected the plants to bloom this year since they are biennials, and planted them out in May, but while they have put on some growth they have still not flowered - I suppose it was a pretty crap summer. So while I was expecting them to have died off this autumn I was now lumbered with the prospect of protecting them from the frost. I checked with someone I knew at Cambridge University Botanic Gardens, and they confirmed that unless they were in a very sheltered south facing spot they shoudl be protected. So I staked them and wrapped them up in bubblewrap, in one of the few spare hours I had. Sadly the very evening after swaddling them up snug and warm I saw on Gardeners World that you should not use bubblewrap since it promotes rot. It took me another month to get the stuff off and replace it with fleece. The cold snap over the new year period has hopefully vindicated this decision.

Of course all those long dark sleepless hours in the middle of the night when there is nothing else to be done does allow you to think and plan. I have had to be careful not to overplan, it is all very well deciding to do things but if you only have two spare hours per week then it is only a good way way to ensure disappointment. Plans in the offing include:

• Install fencing at the bottom of the lawn and across the two perennial beds.
• Growing asparagus from seed in one of the vegetable beds.
• Growing Green Tomatoes.
• Moving the pondcam pc box to provide better views for the pond cam, which will also require:
• Fixing the pondcam!
• At the same time setting up a new time lapse generating cam to monitor the development of the meadow through the summer.
• Possibly removing the composters and replacing them with a shed.

The composters are to be moved to the allotment. Other proposed activities on the allotment next year include:

• Creating a sheet barrier to retain the manure when delivered.
• Creating a few new beds between the manure heap, and the onions. One for growing Italian Spagna butter beans has already been made and filled with manure.
• Growing white asparagus from crowns already ordered (not the same as the seed I am planning to grow in the garden!).
• Growing as many vegetables as time will allow!

Proposed varieties include:

Variety	English Name
Argenteuil	Asparagus
de Barbentane	Aubergine
White	Beetroot
Sanguina	Beetroot
Barbabietola di Chioggia	Beetroot
Ishigura Long White	Bunching Onion - Summer
Ishigura Long White	Bunching Onion - Winter
Friverde	Bush french bean
Cupidon	Bush french bean
Precoce de Louviers	Cabbage
Greyhound	Cabbage
d'Eysines	Carrot
Autumn King	Carrot
James Scarlett	Carrot
Amsterdam Forcing	Carrot
Early Nantes	Carrot
Borlotto Lamon	Climbing Bean
Cosse Violette	Climbing French Bean
Barlotta di Fuoco	Climbing french bean
Spagna Corona	Climbing french bean
Serpette Guilloteau	Climbing Pea
Louviers	Corn Salad
Genovese	Courgette
Mirella	Cucumber
Vert Petit de Paris	Cucumber
Dill	Dill
Aquadulce Claudia	Fava Bean
Piccolo di Parigi	Gherkin
Cavalo Nero di Toscana	Kale
Cavalo Nero di Toscana	Kale
Telephone	Late maincrop Pea
Winter Crop	Lettuce
Winter Density	Lettuce
Minnesota Midget	Melon
Dorata di Parma	Onion
Keepwell	Onion
Gigante di Napoli	Parsley
Frise Vert Fonce	Parsley
Tender & True	Parsnip
Turga	Parsnip
Tender & True	Parsnip
Etna	Peperoncini Hot
Spagna Corona	Runner Bean
Salsify	Salsify
Silene inflata	Sculpit
Picasso	Shallot
Beleville	Sorrel
New Zealand	Spinach
Giant Winter	Spinach
bloomsdale	Spinach
Queensland Blue	Squash
Round Small	Squash
Harrier Butternut F1	Squash
Sunnybrook	Sweet Pepper
mini pop	Sweetcorn
mini pop	Sweetcorn
mini pop	Sweetcorn
San Marzano	Tomato
Irish Gardener's Delight	Tomato
Galina	Tomato
Amish Paste	Tomato
Gold Nugget	Winter Squash
Jaune de Poitou	Yellow Leek
Genovese	Zucchino
Nano verde di Milano	Zucchino
Goldie	Zucchino

Since writing all that (over a month ago!) I have moved the composters to the allotment (but not out up a shed) moved the pondcam pc (but not yet fixed the pondcam) and planted the asparagus.No i wouldn't normally plant asparagus in january either, but the helpful people at seeds of italy sent them and the crowns were sprouting so i have had to plant them, give them a thick blanket of mulch and hope for the best. I have sown the first pepper and tomato seeds though - spring starts in January in this house. The chilis are already up!

Latest work, October 2008

It has been a while since I have been able to post, it has been a busy time getting the house, garden and allotment sorted out before my time is seriously curtailed by the arrival of a family. I expect that I will have less time for this too, but I might be wrong: friends have told me that there is a lot of hanging around to be done - perhaps that explains the number of inane blogs about people's kids. But i really need to watch what i say - it'll be me soon!

In the meantime the latest project was an attenpt to make a woodland edge habitat beneath the cherry tree. I cleared the existing, scrappy couch grass and replaced with hedgerow seed from Emorsgate Seed:

 

I had to use the geojute to stop the neighbours' cats from using the area as a toilet, but this time they seemed determined so i had to cover it with further protection. Bloody evil creatures...

Meadowcam1

As promised we had an attempt at making a film to record a snapshot of the whole meadow using a variety of cable car type devices to transport a small camera on video mode over the top of the meadow. The first used gravity to power the cable car, and the lack of control made it less than satisfactory. In fact at the end of the filming it smashed into the  post at the end. The second was a very complex affair using some sort of robotic lego gizmo. Looked great, but it did not work at all, so no film. The final version, and the one I think worked best, is shown below.

Here is the meccano version:

I have just received a new improved meccano model so may have another crack later when I get a chance.

More Scything

More of me scything the meadow...badly:

Scything 1

First attempt at using my new toy, erm, tool. This is shows my inherited tendency to start putting stuff together and using it with no reference to the manual whatsoever. I was making the cardinal mistake of using the scythe as a hacking tool. I have subsequently discovered that it should be used as a slicing tool. However, my meadow is so tiny I can hack away, get knackered and be really inefficient and it won't matter. One day I hope to post a video of me using it correctly. In the meantime, just laugh! ;o)

Be careful what you ask for...

Since we have been here I have always bemoaned the lack of birdlife in the garden, which I had mainly attributed to the number of cats in the neighbourhood plus the�lack of decent trees. I was envious of the thrushes in my father's garden, industriously eating all his slugs and snails, and the bullfinches in my art teacher's garden obligingly sitting by the back window. We had the occasional flock of starlings in the cherry tree, with�which�we would happily share our annual glut of fruit, and rarely a sparrow, but otherwise we seemed to inhabit a birdfree zone.

Now it seems�I have a new bete noir, in the form of�Turdus merula, and they are�a very black hearted pair of�blackbirds.�They are on their second brood now and have become very territorial, manically chasing everything in the�garden,�and their scolding alarm call starts at 3.30�in the morning�and goes on until 10 at night. Continuously. You cannot blame them, they are just being good parents. But it is still bloody annoying...

Now they have started picking over all the newly mulched beds and tossing the compost I had carefully spread to conserve moisture all over the gravel paths. I know they are�just looking for tasty worms and that it really does not matter much in the scheme of things but really, don't they know I am trying to save the planet with my compost? It's for their bloody benefit! Ungrateful buggers...

Anyway they seem to be settling down a bit on the noise front. So now all�I have to contend with is cats crapping everywhere in our vegetable beds and birds tossing the remains around like party poppers. I guess next year it will be plastic mulch. Although then�it will be the slugs of course!

New species spotted in wet meadow

I saw a male Small Skipper butterfly in/near the wet meadow yesterday, buzzing from sunny patches where it was basking to the still flowering patch of Birds foot trefoil where it was feeding. Since this is a species which is supposed to be quite restricted to hisorical sites (I think) while not being particulaly rare, it was quite a surprise to see one. I will keep my eyes open for a female, and will leave some patches of longer grass for them to breed in. Picture in the Animals Photo Album

June flowers

As June rolled on, the meadow continued to develop with a few surprises in store. After my neighbour's attempt to smother part of the sward with good intentions, I attempted to film the regrowth using a Canon Powershot S1 with a built in intervalometer. I made a polycarbonate box for it with a cheap tripod fixed to the bottom. For a change this didn't leak (see Pond Cam section for details of other failed photographic experiments) but instead the second hand camera sourced on EBay for about £50.00 just stopped working properly. It seems to have started again now so i might give it another bash later on. This is probably a really bad idea but following an innocent query to my techie mate Steen, we are going to try to record the development of the meadow over time using a sort of cable car mounted over the top of the meadow. I'm not sure it will work, in fact given the litany of disasters that have befallen all the other attempts at filming the meadow / pond so far it will almost certainly won't. But wait till you see the camera mounting mechanism devised by Steen on one of the many wet Sundays recently. It is a work of art... The meadow itself is looking excellent. The grasses are all flowering profusely (see previous post...) and the clover has pretty much all done its thing by now as has the Greater Birds Foot Trefoil in the wet meadow - although interestingly the plants nearer the pond are not only still blooming but are spreading into the pond. The ox eye daisies are now starting to to go over. The scattered buttercups, bulbous and meadow, are continuing to flower and the yellow rattle flowers have been popping up throughout the wet and dry meadows. The next most visually impressive plant is the Perforate St John's Wort which is now just starting to bloom on the dry meadow. The Common Knapweed had been flowering throughout June and is only now starting to set seed. Finally the Devil's Bit Scabious plants which I added last year have also just started to flower and are looking to be very impressive. But the real star turn has been two plants which I don't even remember buying. I don't know if they were a mix up or if my memory is on the blink but two enormous specimens of Viper's Bugloss have appeared. I thought they were scabious plants which shows how poor my botanical identification skills have become recently... Anyway it is such an impressive plant, throwing generous spikes of glorious sky blue flowers. If you haven't done so already have a look in the Plants 2008 section. Another recent event was the purchase of a sickle (along with some other tools) from the excellent Get Digging website, which I have added to my list of links but who can also be found here: http://www.get-digging.co.uk/ It really has worked a treat and I'm afraid that it resulted in a few random 'bald' patches. Or habitat diversification as those in the know call it.

Flaming Bloody June

I used to hate June. Ever since I was a small child with a burgeoning interest in natural history I have wanted to crawl around in the undergrowth, looking at all the wildflowers which are at their very best in June, delighting at the beetles and butterflies and marvelling at the ants, solitary wasps, spiders, snails and other invertebrates busily munching away through the meadows and each other. But every June I would be plagued by hayfever, turning into a useless wet blob, sneezing to exhaustion, blinded by tears, wheezing to the point where i could hardly stand up. It seemed a bit unfair back then. Now of course i have learned that all the drugs are just rubbish peddled by greedy pharmaceutical companies which simply do not work, and that this is the price of being outdoors. It still strikes me as being a bit unfair, why can't I be allergic to something I don't enjoy, like cats or football? But compared with all the death and destruction and doom going around it is a pretty paltry type of unfairness.

So, you may well ask why I am making a meadow, full of grasses to spread pollen to get up my nose? Well apart from the fact that there would still be plenty of pollen around, and the fact that the other 11 months are trouble free, I think I might use it as a pollen reserve and go out sniffing it every morning from april onwards and try to build up an immunity. Or maybe I just forgot that i get hayfever. Oh yeah that was it, I designed it in winter!

Bugger, i won't do that again!

Blimey, I'm not alone...

Blimey there are some people out there looking at this cobbled together piece of rubbish. Well, sorry i have been so completely lame and failed to keep up to date with developments in the meadow this year. It just seems to have disappeared up the spout and little seems to have occurred. OK so i ripped up the lawn, and produced a daft number of seedlings which we sold for the Wildlife Trust. But not much has happened in the meadow besides rampant spring growth. It is looking about as good now as it does all year. I am planning a comprehensive species list but so far this year we have had:

April: a really good flush of Cowslips, the first and only Bee Orchid has increased the size of its largest leaf up to about 50 mm (at this rate it will flower in about 10 years) before being destroyed by snails and the Salad Burnet turned into huge 50 cm tall plants. A single white Fritillary bloomed in the wet meadow

Early May: the first grasses started to flower, with good populations of Quaking Grass. Red Clover and Birds Foot Trefoil started to dominate. The Perforate St Johns Wort began to grow and later in the month the Ox Eye Daisies were starting to develop. The Knapweed started to develop.

Mid May: The Red Clover started bloom, dominating the dry grassland. The Trefoil began to bloom in the wet meadow and several Ragged Robin plants began to emerge through the sward.

Late May: Ox-eye daisy started to bloom in both the dry and wet meadows, in the dry meadow the Yellow Rattle seed I sowed earlier in the year successfully germinated in several spots and in the wet meadow the Ragged Robin bloomed.

The other main event of late may was a lovely gift left by my neighbour while we were away on holiday. Misguidedly thinking we would want his grass cuttings, he kindly dumped them over the fence right on the low nutrient dry meadow. Lovely. So I had to remove the mountain of cuttings and cut the sward to remove what was left. This has left a 'bald patch' which i have treated as an opprtunity so i have placed a camera with an intervalometer nearby and will try to make a time lapse film of the recovery, hopefully.

As i always say, will try to post more stuff and more pix.