The Night Shift

 

The late John Cushnie was once asked, “What was the best way to introduce wild life into the garden?” His reply still makes me smile I quote” plant out and water in your strip of bedding plants or lettuce retreat to the kitchen window and just wait for all manner of wild life to show up and devour your precious plants.

 

So what with the trend for more naturalistic and meadow planting schemes.

Also the new phrase coined at this years Chelsea flower show of “ English Natives” that’s weeds to you and I, all helping raise awareness of the depletion of habitat the decrease in numbers of the native bee and other such concerns, we should be pleased if our efforts in our own gardens do make a difference?

 

That really does depend on who shows up….

 

I’ve heard tell of several gardens not necessarily being over run with Moles, but just one can cause enough problems. One molehill filling a wheelbarrow! Standing on the lawn and being over whelmed by that sinking feeling, honest. Trying to encourage the gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat to move on to pastures new is not always easy. Pouring jays fluid in the run has had some effect, though almost totally blind the moles sense of smell is very acute. Sonic mole alarms having little affect!

 

I have herd tell of one land owner plumbing his land rover exhaust to a hose and inserting said hose into a mole hill, resulting in a scene from the land that time forgot, as the exhaust fumes emanated from the other hole in the network.

 

The most destructive of nocturnal garden visitors is the badger; I was talking to a farmer friend of mine about how one badger had striped back 100 sq meters of pristine lawn in a night, resulting in the gardener rigging at great expense around the whole garden. “That’s nothing,” said my friend “just look at one of our fields on Weeke hill it looks as if its been ploughed”

 

Both the badger and Mr Mole are in search of food that resides beneath the green sward, mostly worms and the larva of the crane fly commonly know as leather jackets. This marauding gang of none motorbike-riding hoodlums are intent on devouring the roots of your lawn, leading to yellowing and dead thatch in the spring.

Though there are commercially treatments available an effective solution is to cover part of the affected area with heavy black plastic over night and remove is mid morning. The lava comes to the surface at night and the black plastic lengthen the night time, the result is a mid morning meal for the birds.

 

Despite the devastation inflicted by the above, the most curious damage I have seen was the small tufts of grass plucked from the lawn each lying at a foot or so apart.

Squirrels will dig in a lawn looking for misplaced food buried last autumn, but this was not the same sort of damage.

 

This I later discovered was “Zirkelm” from the German Zerkel ‘ a pair of compasses’-translated ‘ open bill probing. The culprit the Rook as described in Mark Cockers book Crow Country,” who uses its stiletto like bill with its gnarled hilt of bone coloured skin to probe 5-6 cm beneath the surface in search of invertebrates and arthropods. The bird waddling along then seemingly at random punch its beak down with some force, then shifts its body around for better to prise open a cavity in which to search.”

 

 

 

 

 

General care

Summer prune side shoots on restricted fruit trees (such as espaliers and fans) to three to four leaves to form fruiting spurs. If necessary, prune nectarines, apricots and peaches after they have fruited, and prune plums, gages and damsons immediately after harvest.

 

• Irregular watering can lead to problems with blossom end rot in tomatoes, splitting of root vegetables and flower abortion in runner beans. Help prevent this by watering well during dry spells.
• Weeds can also compete with vegetables for water, and act as hosts for pests and diseases, so remove regularly by hoeing.
• Marrows should be raised off the ground slightly, to prevent them discolouring from contact with the soil.
• Take care when thinning out any late-sown carrot seedlings to prevent the scent released attracting carrot fly females

For more garden notes go to http://dartmouthgarden.blogspot.co.uk/

 

And photos of beautiful Devon gardens go to. http://earthgardencareanddesign.moonfruit.com/