Gardening

[Wendyf]

I've been putting lots of effort into making a nice garden from my patch of weeds this year, cutting back on veggie growing and discovering flowers

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[Stanley]

The results show clearly the amount of work you've put in Wendy. A credit to you......

[Cathy]

Oh that’s lovely Wendy, I can just imagine sitting out there with a pot of tea (or glass of wine - I don’t mind ). Well done

[Wendyf]

It will be wine Cathy!

[Tizer]

That's lovely Wendy, I hope you get lots of satisfaction from it like we do from our garden.

We had a surprise a few days ago when a little stem topped by tiny buds popped up in our pond. They opened out into lovely small yellow flowers. Not something we knowingly planted. After dipping into our pond-life books we identified it as a UK native plant known as bladderwort (Ultricularia). It's carnivorous and the wispy leaves underwater have tiny bladders which catch things like water fleas. They have a unique mechanism that uses vacuum to capture prey. When the prey touches the top of the little bladder it suddenly expands, water and prey are sucked in and the top closes again.

[Stanley]

Nature is seriously weird at times!

[Tripps]

Next door kindly trimmed the Plum tree of its sprouts from the rootstock (again), and afterwards presented me with the crop. Not huge - but a lot more than last year - which yielded just two plums.

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[Stanley]

My experience of plums is that they vary in yield from year to year with no obvious cause. We had two at the Hey and it was either famine or feast!

[PanBiker]

It's the same with pears. You have to treat them badly and cut back hard each year. Ours seems to yield every two years. Its a Conference variety tree and has given nearly 40lb of fruit so far probably another 15 to 20lb to go.

[Stanley]

The espalier Conference Pear that my dad and I planted in 1960 on the gable end of Hey farm was a good cropper as long as it was pruned hard twice a year.

[Tripps]

it was either famine or feast!

Looks like it still is - and this year it's feast.

Here's next door's plum tree, and the wild damson tree down the track is full as well. The current drought doesn't seem to have had any effect at all, which is a bit odd? .

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[Stanley]

David, in my book Plum trees are beyond odd. I could never work out what the mechanism was that affected the trees so much.

[Tizer]

Our crab apple and hawthorn have plenty of good berries this year. The rowan has plenty but they're now badly wrinkled and shrunken.

[PanBiker]

Folk Lore would say that a good crop of tree and hedgerow fruit is a portent of a hard winter to come. Just what we need with the projected price of energy. Will have plenty of jam though and I can bake my own bread to spread it on when the cupboards are bare.

[Stanley]

True Ian but unfortunately verboten for me. I've seen me bake a loaf and eat half of it as jam butties for tea.....

[PanBiker]

It would not be verboten if it was a last resort as I am sure you would agree.

[Stanley]

It would still make me unwell so I would have to find an alternative.

[Wendyf]

I've just been up to the nursery at Hey Farm and can report that your espalier pear tree is in good order and has a fine crop of pears.

[Stanley]

It was always a good cropper Wendy. We bought it from a nursery on the higher ground, almost on the moor, at Heckmondwyke. We got from them on the grounds that if it could grow there it would survive anywhere!
One other point, it has never had more than minimal feeding and grows in very stony ground.....

[Tripps]

The grass is dead, but the Agapanthus has survived. neither was watered during the drought.

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[Cathy]

Ah the Agapanthus, very popular here in Adelaide. They’re everywhere.

[Tripps]

They’re everywhere.

Indeed -

I like them. No trouble, no work needed, flower every year, don't spread, then die back and come up again next year.

I've got a few more. . . .

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[Stanley]

Bit like me.....

[Cathy]

Loving my Roses - Gold Bunnies

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19 buds (so far) on one bush.

[Wendyf]

They look lovely Cathy, are the scented?