The Big Seven O!
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
Following a series of depressing months I did hope that November
would bring us more settled weather and perhaps for a change, a few
crisp frosts.
And we duly had some: this is one of the best at
-6C fittingly on my birthday.
Followed by a day of glorious sunshine
In a month when it is more typically "no sun no moon no
morn, no noon" to quote from Thomas Hood's famous poem about
November, it was of course too much to ask for setted
weather
However we were lucky on 5 November when there was a
stunning "Beaver Moon" on a clear, cold night
All the plans I had to catch up on essential gardening
work after getting behind because of house painting and polytunnel
repairing, went out of the window. So no cutting back the borders,
weeding or general maintenance work all around the garden. In a
drier interlude however I did at last manage to dig all the root
vegetables for storage.
Carrot harvest, Purple Haze, Amsterdam Forcing 3 and the
oddity, white carrot Creme Delight, interesting but not a strong
carrot taste
It wasn't however all doom and gloom as I had my 70th birthday
to celebrate with a series of outings and events. Where do the
years go to? I consider myself to have been very fortunate in so
many ways throughout all those years, until recently with my
poor health. I also cherish the fact that I grew up in the
countryside which has left a lasting legacy all my life. Growing up
surrounded by plants and nature it is no surprise that from an
early age (6) I became hooked on gardening. I had a small part of
the plot at home and a neighbour who was an experienced
gardener spent time with me giving me plants. Incredible
coincidence that his name was Roy Gardiner. As Gertrude Jekyll once
remarked "The love of gardening is a seed that once sown never
dies". You do however need someone like Roy to set you off down
that road and I am sure if he was still around now, seeing what I
achieved over many years, he would consider the time he spent
with me worthwhile!
And to celebrate my birthday our dear friends and
neighbours Ifor and Catrin found the perfect card for
me
And they were up at the crack of dawn to decorate the
picket fence which really was a nice surprise.
And the path to the house was strewn with
glitter!
Weather
16 rain days three of them continuous all day, 12 days with sun,
9 frosts, 2 typical misty foggy November days. Min -6C Max
14.7c
A lovely sunset after one of the colder
days
First real frost on 9 November which brought to an
end growth on most herbaceous plants.
Frozen Paddock pond after
- 6C on 30th
Garden update
The borders continued to look good with plenty of colour early
in the month, until the first proper frost put the show to an end.
Just in time I dug up most of the mature salvias to overwinter as
stock plants for storing in the large tunnel, where they will
continue to flower well into winter. The more woody forms of salvia
such as microphylla x jamiensis types, s.involucrata and patens
have generally proved hardy here and will survive all but the
hardest frosts. Two of the best and most reliable are Salvia "Hot
Lips" and S. "Nachtvlinder" with deep purple almost black flowers
on a low spreading plant.
The grass hasn't stopped growing although the cutting regime was
reduced to once a week until the final cut on 26th by which time
the ground was so wet that cutting the lawns was beginning to cause
damage. One final winter feed when (if!) the ground dries up is all
they will need until the early spring.
A major November task is fallen leaf gathering all around the
gardens, much easier the last few years since I acquired a power
leaf blower - a job that could take almost day, now completed in
just a few hours. Many of the leaves are blown straight into
adjacent borders where they can break down and enrich the soil.
Where this not possible the leaves are used elsewhere as mulch for
more tender plants.
Masses of beech leaves prior to blowing.
Leaf patterns on polytunnel roof
Having thought that at last work on my tunnels had
been finished there were 2 episodes which made me think again. In
the small tunnel on the night of the coldest in the month, the
heater packed up and the frost got in, damaging a cross
section of the tender plants there. Most seriously affected were
plectranthus, begonias and impatiens but there are signs now that
some may recover. Note the hardy chrysanthemum in the foreground
which lived up to its name
In the large tunnel condensation on the new plastic became
a problem dropping large quantaties of water onto the plants below
and even onto Kit Kat who has some of his favourite sleeping places
there, to the extent that he was so wet it was like he had been out
in the rain!! It needed to be addressed because excessive moisture
on growing plants can cause botrytis and other fungal diseases a
build up of which can be fatal. Fortunately I found a product
called Sun Clear which having cleared the excess moisture from the
plastic, you spray onto it. It all seemed very simple and has
improved the situation, but it has struggled to cope once the
frosts began.
A first for me was growing new potatoes for late autumn and
winter. The variety I chose was "Venezia" our favourite salad type.
Planted on 28 August in 4 deep 35 litre pots in a
rich growing medium and placed in the large tunnel, they
made rapid progress and I was hopeful of a good crop around
Christmas. When the plastic blew off the tunnel, the foliage was
damaged and flattened so I decided to harvest them on 3rd of this
month, earlier than planned. And were we delighted with them?
small harvest but perfectly formed sweet tubers. A taste of high
summer as winter approached.
What's looking good?
Flowering plants being at a premium in late November
attention turns to structure and foliage in the garden and the
impact that the spent seed heads can make, particularly when
the frost is on them.
Leaves of cyclamen hederfifolium mingle with those from beech
and acer.
Hydrangea preziosa one of the last to retain
colour until the more severe fost came
Large flower heads on sedums are always welcome as
the colour seems to intensify the older they get.
Rodgersias are good late colour in the
borders
Hydrangea Annabelle holds its leaves until late
winter
Astilbe "Beauty of Ernst" has some of the best
autumn leaf colour anywhere in the garden over a long
period.
Lamium "White Nancy" fresh silver leaves lift the
border.
And the real silver stuff on rudbeckia seedheads is a
delight and worth leaving the spent heads for.
A waterfall of ice on miscanthus
A lovely contrast between the beech hedge and
glacous blue of euphorbia characias ssp. wulfenii which stays in
good condition ecept in severe weather
A few clematis kept flowering for most of the
month.
Clematis x texensis held onto its flowers all
month, incredible when you consider that the species is native to
south eastern USA
Lovely seedheads too
Some roses just keep flowering almost up to
Christmas whatever the weather
Serratula var.seoanei one of the latest perennials
here to flower. Small thistle like flowers set amongst wiry
foliage on a 2 foot wide and high plant.
If there was a prize for the perennial with the
longest flowering period Iberis "Betty Swainson" would surely
be a deserving winner. Flowers late spring until the end of the
year. Ordinary maybe but great value
Wildlife and
Countryside
One of the eagerly awaited sights of late autumn and early
winter is the gathering of starlings (murmurations) towards dusk
most days. At present there aren't large numbers and we
haven't yet seen the highlights of those magical flying formations,
but they have started to gather in the trees. Strange thing is that
we don't see that many starlings in the summer months - where do
they go to?
Redwings and fieldfares have come in dribs and drabs,
never many of them and difficult to tell them apart without the
benefit of binoculors, and they never arrive from northern Europe
until the colder weather comes.
Now for a horror story concerning a bird. Kit Kat is a great
hunter and catches all sorts of things but he rarely kills them,
bringing them into the house and letting them go, leaving me to
catch and remove them. A few days ago in the middle of the night I
got up for a call of nature. When returning to the bedroom, without
warning a magpie flew straight at me and circled the bedroom -
Alfred Hitchcock could not have done better. It was not in the room
when I got up - where it came from is like all the best
horror stories - a mystery. It took some catching as it clattered
around the room and after 10 minutes with my heart beating from the
shock and the effort of the chase, I managed to capture it and put
it out of the window. Just as I was going back to sleep there was a
commotion outside the bedroom window and there on the windowsill
were 2 other magpies clattering in that machine gun way of theirs,
then they cleared off.
Research on the internet next day revealed that magpies
particularly family members roost together and that the young often
stay with their parents for up to 2 years. There is just such a
roost in the large conifers in the Paddock Garden and my guess is
that when Kit Kat took the young bird (I did think it was rather
small for a mature magpie) and brought it into the house, the
parents somehow tracked it down and came to get it back. The
wonders of nature.
An altogether gentler bird is the grey wagtail seen here
on the house roof some way from the river where it more frequently
seen
Visits
Just one outing this month to Picton Castle www.pictoncastle.co.uk
where there is always something of interest and for the first
time this winter Maria's cafe is open on most days as is the
Castle, gift shop and Galleries. A new attraction is the Secret Owl
Garden which is open every day.
Boardwalk through the frost decimated
gunneras
Bananas in the tropical garden won't ripen but
still an achievement to get to this stage outdoors in
Wales.
The walled garden has many attractions the long pond
graced by a tasteful dragonfly being one of them
Unusual and rare plants too like this very large abelia
Schumanii still covered in scented flowers which fade to leave a
prominent long lasting red calyx
Iris foetidissima with attractive berries all
winter
Some of the 27 owls from all over the world in the
Secret Owl Garden. They are flown every day and visitors can fly
them. A really good and appropriate asset to the gardens amd well
worth a visit.
Exotic agave flower is a tonic on a cold
day.
