Tag: organic gardening

The Final Cut

At last a half day of dry weather allowed us a window in which to cut our last meadow on the allotments. This meadow is situated close to our very mature oak tree and within the grasses we grow wildflowers and cultivated plants that we know attract bees, butterflies and moths, hoverflies and all sorts of beneficial insects. It is home too to amphibians, small mammals and even grasshoppers and crickets. The flowering plants here this year just have not stopped flowering their hearts out so we have left cutting the meadow down until last.

So early in November four of us set to with strimmers, mowers and rakes and we made sure we had our water proof clothes at the ready. An hour into our work and we needed them. But we persevered and got the job done. Beautiful rainbows came out to wish us luck.

A few weeks earlier lots of members worked together mowing, strimming and raking away on the other meadows while the weather held. We were lucky to get so much done, finishing off all but one of our many meadow areas. It is really important to look after the meadows around the site as they are such an important habitat for wildlife and of course help us with our pest control by harbouring predatory insects.

The meadows grasses beneath the fruit trees in the orchard get very thick so take a lot of sorting out. Luckily, Ian one of our committee came along and he is a builder so he made light work of it.

The turf spiral is a very fiddly job but John came along and got to work with his strimmer. He loves strimming so we left him to get on with it! It looked really smart!

When we had finished we had time to appreciate the wonderful colourful fruit of the Crab Apples which we grow in the orchards to improve the pollination of our main apple trees.

When we stopped for our coffee and cake break we discovered that our resident Little Owl had been using the picnic bench before us. He had left a pellet for us to examine. We learned by studying it closely that he had been enjoying meals of beetles and mice.

Tags allotments, apples, autumn, autumn colours, community gardening, fruit and veg, fruit., garden photography, garden wildlife, gardening, meadows, organic gardening, wildlife

allotments autumn community gardening diy garden buildings garden wildlife gardening gardens Land Art natural pest control recycling Shrewsbury wildlife

Pumpkins, a BBQ and Homes for Wildlife

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date November 5, 2013
5 Comments on Pumpkins, a BBQ and Homes for Wildlife

At the end of October we held our first ever family oriented working party social day at our allotments, Bowbrook Allotment Community. It was a great success even though the whole day was spent in wellies and waterproofs. The ground beneath our feet was saturated and occasional showers got us from above, but neither distracted us from our aims of the day.

We started just after one o’clock when a photographer from the local newspaper came to take some shots of families working together on our “Homes for Wildlife” projects and one of our most recent award, the RHS Britain in Bloom “National Award of Distinction” which we were awarded for our community involvement.

First task was to make some birdboxes and Wren Pouches. All the materials were collected together by one of our picnic benches and tools readied. It was heartening to see children, their parents and grandparents working together creating these nest boxes. Three generations together!

We made some hanging bug shelters too, created from broken flower pots, driftwood and bits of bark.

We wished also to make a couple of bug hotels, a small one along the fenceline and our most ambitious yet a 6 ft high creepy crawly cottage both based on recycled wooden pallets. We began with a stack of pallets and a collection of natural objects collected by allotment holders, sticks, old garden canes, stones, fir cones etc.

The “cottage” soon began to take shape as pallets were stacked and fixed together to give the basic structure.

All we have to do now is choose a name for our new insect home. We have challenged the youngsters from the allotments, our Roots and Shoots group, to choose a suitable one. So far we have a few ideas – “Minibeast Manor”, “Bugtique Hotel” and “Minibeast Metropolis”. The difficulty will be how to decide!

The smaller insect hotel was made from five pallets and again filled with objects that would provide shelter for wildlife. We finished it off with a stone pile, the perfect home for beetles.

The final jobs before our BBQ was to plant lots of acorns, sweet chestnuts and hazel nuts to grow on and plant in our hedgerows and to plant up a whole sack of daffodil bulbs alongside the paths in our meadows.

The BBQ brought us all back together and once darkness fell we lit our pumpkin lanterns. And we even found time for Jude to do some face painting.

As we enjoyed the BBQ the light disappeared and we prepared ourselves for the Twilight Walk, when we wandered around the site with lit pumpkins to light our way in search of sheds decorated as Spooky Sheds.

And as the night fell we disappeared into the gloom with our pumpkins to guide our way.

Tags allotments, bird boxes, Bowbrook Allotments, community gardening, garden wildlife, Halloween, insect homes, insects, organic gardening, outdoor sculpture, pumpkins, wildlife, wildlife shelters

allotments autumn community gardening garden wildlife gardening gardens meadows wildlife

Autumn Working Parties – sorting the meadows.

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date October 28, 2013
3 Comments on Autumn Working Parties – sorting the meadows.

Our Autumn Working Parties at the allotments are mostly to do with treating our various meadows to their annual haircut, brush up and manicures. Last year we were badly held up by the wet weather and struggled late in the year to get our meadows sorted. This year we had no such problems and managed to get the ball rolling in mid-September. We did however have an audience who sat and watched us, three of the Mallard ducklings who live on site, eating our slugs and snails with raspberries for dessert. Now that is what you call organic pest control!

The main wildflower meadows need a lot of work to get the thick grass cut down low and to ensure the thatched grass layer is removed.

When we cut the meadows in the orchards we tidy up by clearing grass back form around each tree and top dress with a good deep mulch of manure. This will keep the area weed free and slowly feed the trees next year. We had given the orchards a quick trim over a few weeks earlier and as can be seen in the photo below the warm moist weather had encouraged fresh growth.

They looked very neat when we had finished. We can now wait for the first bright green spikes of the bulbs that will give us colour early in the year.

When the meadows are cut very low and well raked, some patches are scarified to allow us to sow seeds of Yellow Rattle, a wild flower which parasitises on the roots of strong growing grass. This weakens the growth of the grass and allows the wild flowers to get better established. It is also good at attracting beneficial insects and bees. So on an allotment site this helps with pest control and pollinating of crops. We spend a lot of time keeping an eye on the meadows to see when the seeds of wild flowers ripen so that we can collect them for re-sowing in the spring.

One area will not be getting much attention yet though, the three beds that make up the “Perfect for Pollinators” garden. As the photo illustrates one of these is planted up with garden plants, one with a mix of native and garden plants and the third (at the bottom edge of the photo) is seeded each year with annual wildflowers. This annual bed will be cleared completely and then sown afresh in the spring.

Tags allotments, autumn, community gardening, garden photography, garden wildlife, gardening, meadows, organic gardening, wildflower meadows, wildlife

bird watching birds garden wildlife house martins migration natural pest control swallows wildlife

Mad Autumn Moments with Martins

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date October 6, 2013
1 Comment on Mad Autumn Moments with Martins

Six weeks or so ago our flocks of martins suddenly departed southward and the swallows gathered on the telephone wires above the road passing the front of our house. They chattered and fidgeted, stretched their wings and tails and preened busily ensuring that they were in the best of trim for their long migratory adventure.

Then one day the skies were silent and the wires empty.

But a week later as we were working away in the garden borders we heard excited calls overhead and dozens of swallows were swirling around just above shrub height. They were so close to us as they enjoyed a feeding frenzy. They must have been en route south from further up North, Scotland or the Lake District perhaps, when the big old oak tree in the paddock behind us and the gardens of our little group of houses called them down. This place meant insects to gorge on to refill and prepare themselves by stocking up for the next leg of their long migration. As we watched stunned by their excitement, their noise and flying acrobatics, they were joined by an equal number of house martins.

They periodically stopped in mixed groups on our roof ridge to chatter and catch up on the latest migration news. For us of course there was the added bonus of all those garden pests being hoovered up by gaped beaks. Great pest control!

Now that is entertainment!

Now in early October they have definitely all gone. We miss their constant chattering in the sky above the garden and await their return in the Spring.

Tags birds, community gardening, garden wildlife, house martins, migration, organic gardening, summer migrants, swallows, wildlife

allotments fruit and veg garden wildlife gardening grow your own kitchen gardens recycling

Trench Composting

Trench composting is an underused way to improve your soil texture and add fertility to your soil. And it has the added bonus of getting rid of those tough old stems of spent sunflowers, sweetcorn and brassicas. We spent a day trench composting the quarter of our allotment in which we shall be growing our roots next year. Many books tell us not to add manure or humus to the patch where you are planning to grow your root crops but we have found by experience that if the trenching is carried out in early autumn it works just fine. As the depth of soil on our plot is less than a border fork deep we need to keep adding to it in an attempt to build up some depth.

The job gets started as Jude, aka Mrs Greenbench or The Undergardener, takes out a 2 foot wide trench down to the hard layer of boulder clay. I then follow on with the rotovator breaking up this hard packed layer of clay and large pebbles. It makes the rotovator work hard and it jumps and lurches around at the bottom of the trench. By doing this we hope to gain depth and let worms and other creatures of the soil work in the humus we will be adding. While the rotovator turns up the stones and pebbles we collect them up to use as a stonepile, a beetle shelter. The beetles are useful predators who will help in our pest control.

Green waste from the spent crops on the plot are then placed all along the bottom of the trench, with the tougher material needing chopping with a sharp stainless steel spade. Even the toughest of green waste such as brassica stalks, sunflower stems and sweetcorn stalks will break down in the depths of the trench. We also add shredded paper (only non-glossy), torn card board and lawn mowings.

To further improve soil texture and add more nutrient value we mix in a barrow load of quality farmyard manure.We find this encourages the soil critters to get going.

To finish Jude replaces the soil over the top of the material in the trench and as a final touch we add a thick mulch of farmyard manure.

We then hand the trench with its added ingredients over to the creatures of the soil. When we trench again in a few years time all that material will have totally broken down.

We carry on by digging out another trench alongside the first and keep moving over the area until it has all been trenched. We have our plot divided into four sections to allow for crop rotation so we trench one or two sections each year. This method of composting is a very efficient way of recycling green waste including the tough materials often thrown in refuse bins. Plants grown in the richly textured and nutrient rich soil will grow strongly and therefore be healthier so will be better able to cope with attacks from pests and diseases.

Tags allotments, composting, fruit and vegetable growing, grown your own, natural pest control, organic gardening

garden design garden photography garden wildlife gardening gardens open to the public grasses hardy perennials meadows natural pest control ornamental trees and shrubs recycling walled gardens wildlife

Boughton House – The Gardens

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date September 15, 2013
9 Comments on Boughton House – The Gardens

Back to Boughton as promised and this time we are off to the more intimate gardens closer to the house. These contrast strongly with the large scale landscaping with the huge land forms.

Refreshed with a good coffee and a slice of lemon drizzle cake from the restaurant in the stableyard we wandered off to the walled garden.

On the way we passed through a couple of old gates, presenting an odd juxtaposition with one so grand and one rather normal. Finding an old orchard was an unexpected pleasure. The old apple trees are being sensitively renewed through careful and very skillful pruning.

The gateway that led to the walled garden was most welcoming and we accepted readily its generous invitation to enter.

And what a sight met our eyes! The area enclosed by the old honey-coloured stone walls was far larger than we expected and contained a sensory garden, a wildlife garden, herbaceous borders and old greenhouses surrounded by interesting plantings in a selection of eclectic containers.

The garden designed to attract wildlife contained some interesting insect shelters and great plants for beneficial “critters”. We were most impressed by the insect home called “Creepy Crawly Cottage and the impressive bird bath.

The old gardeners’ bothy was full of character. I loved the bell!

At the far end of the walled garden the sensory garden satisfied our noses with sweet herby scents.

I shall finish this report on Boughton with a couple of interesting features that caught my eye throughout the garden.

Tags apples, garden photography, gardening, insects, meadows, organic gardening, wildlife

bird watching birds climbing plants colours conservation fruit and veg garden design garden photography garden wildlife gardening grasses hardy perennials ornamental grasses ornamental trees and shrubs photography roses Shropshire village gardens wildlife

A Garden Bouquet for August

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date August 31, 2013
5 Comments on A Garden Bouquet for August

It is time I took up my camera and took photos of the delights our garden has to offer. This is a particularly important set of photos as we have decided on August 3rd as the date we are going to open our garden for the National Garden Scheme next year. We keep looking for gaps or places in need of improvements be it little tweaks or bigger tasks such as re-laying our main central path in the back garden.

So I went off around the garden with my zoom lens attached to see what’s what in our patch. As it panned out there was so much to see in the back garden that all this month’s photos were taken there. Please enjoy the journey and feel the damp, cool morning air which acted like a soft lens filter giving a delicate misty blue atmosphere to some of the shots.

In the “Shed Bed” the delicate china blue flowers popping out of the spiky spheres of the echinops provide sustenance for our bees and the apple tree trained over an arch will provide sustenance for us. The odd white flowers come from the gentle creamy colours of the hydrangea heads.

Our tulbagias continue to flower in the new slate garden close by and above them the purple sedum foliage hangs from the old gypsy kettle on our old ladder.

There are lots of plants to look at around the end of the greenhouse where the vine is dripping with grapes awaiting late summer sun to ripen them and paint them in purple and black. The Quince vranga tree has a few fruits hanging at the tips of the branches and the soft pink curled flowers of Sanguisorba “Pink Elephant” brighten the border below.

In the long “Tree Border ” this lilac flowered clematis is dripping with flowers and the thornless blackberry is heavy with young unripe fruits.

The Secret Garden and the Chicken Garden are at their best, blooming brightly with the cordon apples full of ripening fruit acting as a backdrop, many of which are just beginning to develop a flush in their cheeks. The Shropshire Damson tree overhangs one border and its deep purple fruits are weighing down its branches so heavily that the fruits look like they are reaching out to hold hands with the flowers.

A few new plants are waiting, still in their pots, in the Secret Garden while we decide where to plant them. They seem to be the colours of citrus fruits!

Along the central pathway our pears are close to their peak picking time. As I pass each day I look longingly to see if a couple are ready. Surely this is the ultimate gardening experience, eating a juicy, scented pear still warm from the sunshine just seconds from leaving the branch. The few plums look sad and lonely – from all four cordons we have just one clump of fruit. A poor year!

In the greenhouse the tomatoes are producing prolific amount of fruit in shades of yellow, red and purple. We are picking and enjoying them daily and adding some to the store of produce in the freezer. In the late autumn we shall make them into chutney coupled with our onions and apples.

From the greenhouse door I can look out across the “L Bed” and the “Long Border” through an arch draped in richly scented roses and a delicate china blue clematis. This is a herbaceous clematis rather than a climber, but it does enjoy a good scramble over everything in its path.

This strange fruit is a heritage cucumber called Booths Blond, which Jude the Undergardener tells me is very tasty. I don’t eat them, they are one of the few fruits and veggies I don’t enjoy. This variety certainly looks very different to the long straight regimental cucumbers sold in supermarkets.

We have been concerned about the lack of butterflies and bees this year but recently they have come back in good numbers. Honey bees, bumble bees and solitary bees are all feeding furiously on any simple flowers. The butterflies are particularly tempted by the buddlejas and the marjorams. We garden with wildlife in mind particularly in the choice of plants we grow. Our flowers tend to be simple and open, just the sort preferred by pollinating insects. We rely on our insects and birds to look after our garden for us. We garden totally organically relying on wildlife to do our pest controlling and pollinating of our crops.

As I am writing this the sky is full of House Martins and Swallows gathering together in readiness for their long migratory journey to the African continent. There they will find flies to feed on while here in the UK the insect population will disappear with the onset of winter. These acrobatic flying little birds seem to be celebrating a good English summer!

In the shrubs and trees warblers and titmice are busy feeding up after a period of moult. August and September are when we tend to see our warblers, Willow, Garden and this year even a Grasshopper Warbler. Chiffchaff and Whitethroat tend to be with us most of the year.

Tags apples, birds, clematis, damsons, foliage, fruit and veg, fruit and vegetable growing, fruit., garden photography, garden wildlife, gardening, grasses, greenhouse gardening, grown your own, harvest, insects, organic gardening, roses

allotments fruit and veg garden wildlife gardening grow your own July kitchen gardens National Garden Scheme natural pest control NGS Shrewsbury

A lottie visit.

It seems a long while since I featured our allotment plot in Greenbenchramblings and it was from the old green bench on the lottie that my blog was launched, so when I was nominated for a pair of blogging awards I thought it would be a good time to say thank you by taking you for a quick look around our plot.

Firstly thanks to aristonorganic for the 2Awards in 1! I am not a competitive person but I do feel privileged to know that someone appreciates my blog. It brings a smile to my face.

The awards are “Shine On” and “Very Inspiring Blogger Award”.

By accepting them I promise to tell you 7 things about myself and pass on the nomination to other bloggers I enjoy reading.

7 Things About Me

1 I am registered “Bionic”.

2 I want to know what is going on in our garden at night so have just got a live moth trap.

3 I keep a flock of hens at the bottom of my garden and talk to them regularly. I think they talk back!

4 I enjoy our monthly trip to jazz club.

5 I garden with wildlife in mind.

6 I am chairman of our allotment community.

7 I enjoy watching 20/20 cricket.

Bloggers who I wish to nominate are

mybeautifulthings

The Scottish Country Garden

lensandpensbysally

Penny’s Garden

grandparentsplus2

Catherine Howard’s Garden

pbmgarden

So let us go for a wander around our lottie plot. We welcome you through an archway where a “meeter-greeter” awaits your arrival.

Fruit grown as cordons line our paths and here red currants, almost ready to pick, are netted against the attentions of the local blackbird population. We grow flowers with our fruit to bring in beneficial insects which act as pest controllers and pollinators.

Our Runner Beans are in flower providing bright splashes of red whilst below them French Beans give us purples and mauves to enjoy.

We grow Sweetcorn and Courgette together as they are good companions. The large leaves of the Courgettes provide ground cover holding moisture in the soil and creating a cool root run for the corn. Of course it saves space too!

We welcome wildlife onto our plot to benefit us as gardeners and for us to enjoy watching and listening to. Our little pool is alongside our seats. We have little insect hotels dotted around to help us keep our crops healthy and free of pests.

We have a couple of wildflower strips to help our Brassica crops and Blackcurrants.

A barrier of fleece keeps Carrot rows free from the attentions of Carrot Rootfly and the flowers of Heartsease bring in beneficial insects. Growing members of the Allium family close by also helps fool them by emitting strong scents to mask the sweet aroma of Carrots.

You may remember me telling you about making our green roof atop our shed in a post a few months ago and as you can see it is slowly getting established. On the communal spaces near our plot we have at last got the willow dome complete. It has grown enough to train growth over to form a full roof. It is lovely and quiet, cool and shaded in there and it is a popular place for children to sit and read or to look through the woven window and watch the birds on the feeders. We hold our open day at the allotments this weekend, when we open for charity, under the auspices of the NGS, so we can proudly call ourselves a “Yellow Book Garden”.

Tags allotments, community gardening, fruit and veg, fruit and vegetable growing, fruit., garden wildlife, gardening, grown your own, insects, NGS, organic gardening

colours garden design garden photography gardening hardy perennials meadows spring gardening

Aquilegias in June

As spring-flowering bulbs fade hope relies on the Aquilegias for the next big colour burst. In our garden we have many selections of self-seeded natives and several species from elsewhere. They are grown for their unusual bonnet-shaped flowers, which come in a huge range of colours and shapes but are best recognised by the spurs that fly from the back of the blooms. Some have virtually no spurs at all but others can have spurs several inches long. They are traditional cottage garden plants but in the wild grow in a range of habitats throughout the Northern Hemisphere and can be found in meadows, woodlands and higher up mountain sides.

One of their strengths is their hardiness, defying whatever the weather may throw at them but also shrugging off pests and diseases. We have never had a problem on any of our hundreds of plants, so they are excellent plants for the organic gardener.

Please enjoy a walk around our garden looking for our aquilegias. Just click on any shot and follow the arrow.

Tags aquilegias, garden photography, gardening, meadows, organic gardening

bird watching birds garden design garden photography garden wildlife gardening natural pest control photography Shropshire shrubs village gardens wildlife

Summer house revamp

After ten years our summer-house, our little quiet place of escape at the bottom of the garden, was beginning to look worse for wear. The back wall faces directly south so gets harsh sun on it in the summer months and as our garden is at the bottom of a hill temperature inversion in the winter means that the poor summer-house feels the full effect of the cold frosty air as it rolls down the hill to hit our summer-house first. The first two pics show the summer-house as we began work, with the original interior on the left and the first stages of cladding the walls on the right.

We decided to re-clad it inside and out and then repaint both the inside and outside. A job that ended up taking us a long time as we fitted it in between more interesting gardening tasks.
But at last we have finished! A big sigh of relief can be heard all over the garden!

So, first let us share with you what it looks like now.

The summer-house is our little secret place where we hide at the bottom of the garden and ignore the telephone and doorbell, pretend that television and computers don’t exist and believe there is no lane passing our house.

It catches the evening sun in the last few hours before it sets, so is a great place to end the day. We sit and listen and we can appreciate a different view of our garden. We listen to the calls and songs of our garden birds and those passing over our heads. We can share the intimacy of their bathing as they come to freshen up in the shallow end of our wildlife pool. A square of decking sits in front of the summer-house and hangs over the pool.

Please share the view from our summer-house seat.

To give you an idea of some of the special things we can see right now from our little house I have taken a few shots with a long zoom on my camera.

As we enjoyed a coffee in the summer house today, a female blackbird came to bathe almost splashing our feet. She must have been enjoying a few moments off the nest, a few moments to herself. A house sparrow also came to bathe when the blackbird returned to the nest. On the nearby bird feeders a nuthatch noisily bashed away at the peanuts with its long powerful beak and took small bits back to its young in a hole in a nearby tree. It soon returned for more and we heard its beak tapping on the metal mesh of the feeder.

A blue tit couple are rearing young in a nest box fixed to the summer-house and we watched as they appeared with beaks full of wriggling caterpillars. We could hear the fledglings begging as they open their yellow wide gapes to beg for their share of the wrigglers.

In the pond itself life lives on the film of water and secretly below the surface. Pond skaters dominate the surface but they are frequently joined by sub-surface dwellers in need of a gulp of air, newts, water boatmen and water beetles. Below the surface we can watch tadpoles of frogs and toads feeding and fattening themselves up.

The pond is home to many of our pest controllers such as newts, toads and frogs who all breed here at our feet.

But as we look out and appreciate our garden and its life, one nosey bird looks in to see what we are up to. A robin comes close, perches on the nearby malus and watches us with head cocked to one side as if bemused.

As we rest in our little summer-house world the garden and its wildlife busily carry on close by.