GreenFriends™ UK

Gardening Corner: May 2010

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"The ancients loved and worshipped trees and plants, such as the banyan tree, bilva and tulasi, not because the trees bore fruit and helped them to make a profit, but because the Ancients knew that they themselves in truth were one with all of Nature."
From Man and Nature by Amma

As I write this the weather is quite lovely. The trees are all starting to leaf now, there are many spring flowers coming up and the birds are singing beautifully. Have you wondered why on the whole we love nature? Maybe it's because as Amma says above, that in our hearts we know we are one with it.

Spring Flowers

I'm sure many of you already know that woodlands in this country are gorgeous in the spring. Many woodland plants leaf and flower early before the trees cast their heavy shade on the woodland floor. It is well worth having a look at your local woodland for such species as lesser celandine (yellow flowers), wood anemone, (white or pinky white flowers), and opposite leaved golden saxifrage, which has greeny yellow flowers (I just wish someone would give it a shorter name). There are all looking gorgeous at the moment. Soon to come we also have bluebells and red campion.

Birds in the Spring

I read somewhere that now is the time of year when bird song peaks. As well as the common resident species like robin, blue tit and blackbird, we have many summer visitors starting to arrive. We have heard two of them singing recently, chiffchaff and willow warbler. They look almost exactly the same, small greeny/browny birds, but have completely different songsThe chiffchaffs song is chiff-chaff chiff-chaff chiff-chaff chiff-chaff (that's how all the books put it!). The willow warbler has a lovely flutey song that trickles down the scale (that's also how all the books put it!).

If you are interested in hearing what they actually sound like, then trying these 2 links on the website for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/w/willowwarbler/index.aspx

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/c/chiffchaff/index.aspx

If you go on this link you will see that you can listen to songs and calls of hundreds of birds, all of which can be seen in the British Isles at some point in the year. If you want a real shock try the capercaille!

Allotment Diary

Well now we have first of the 2 busiest seasons on the allotment, planting season. Its quite hectic for the next 6 weeks until everything is in the ground and then we can breathe a (short) sigh of relief. We already have many seeds on the go, but there is still time for many others. Lettuce can be seeded up all through the summer (I hope your slugs are kinder than ours!).

The books all talk about seeding your root crops like beetroot, swede and carrot early in April or before. We are leaving it until May this year as our soil is a clay soil and takes a while to warm up in the spring. Several years we have tried the earlier sowings but they tend to fail. This is why it is important to know your own site well: your own soil type, microclimate, and other local conditions. In our case this last one includes flocks of hungry woodpigeons. We like woodpigeons, they are really attractive birds, but they have enormous appetites, which is why we net all newly planted crops until they are big enough to withstand grazing.

We also plan to seed up leeks, perpetual spinach, kale and as soon as possible runner beans, French beans etc.

Here we have Kaivalya demonstrating our new method of planting onions sets with a dibber. "What is a dibber?" I can hear some of you cry. It is basically a wooden object used to create a small hole in the soil. Ours is shaped like an ice cream cone, and has inch markings up the side, so you can measure:

(1) the distance between plants by laying it on its side,

(2) the depth to which you are planting your onions set/seedling by sticking it in the ground.

This picture shows Kaivalya planting seed potatoes.

This final picture is a little unclear but it shows about half of our manure delivery. We had 1/2 a ton of poo dropped outside our entrance, which we then had to shovel into wheelbarrows to move onto the allotment! We spent a whole day shifting it and to say we were tired is an understatement.  We were barely able to move the following day and then the day after we were back out planting all our seed potatoes and onions.  You could still give these a go yourselves, you may still get a harvest if you plant them in May, just a smaller one.

Happy gardening and see you all next month

- Richard and Kaivalya

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