Awful weather - typical Brits talk

in_my_wellies

Woolsery said:

Right now I just need to work out what to do with maybe 50-100 tonnes of spare soil. I'd make a ha-ha, but hee-hee, the land slopes the wrong way! Years ago, when we first clashed with troublesome neighbour, I had this fantasy of building a huge berm on the boundary and disappearing him behind it.....Perhaps it's not too late?

 

When I read earth moving I immediately thought you should build Devon banks. I can even supply you with a ton or two of stone. Dumped by the edge of the woods I have about 300 of the sort you see for sale in garden centres for £5 each but no one here wants them - we all dig them up. 

It's sunny here but I haven't even looked in the greenhouse yet. I spent yesterday clipping my son's box hedge back into shape. It's a rectangle with a cross inside and an urn in the centre. I just caught it in time to reshape it. I must have looked like a 'proper gardener'. Two people passing asked if I was free to do their hedge. 

Liberty Lily, my apple trees look about the same as yours although they have been pruned drastically over the years. We reliably know they were planted in 1942 as part of the 'Dig for Victory' campaign. 

liberty_lily

in_my_wellies said:

Liberty Lily, my apple trees look about the same as yours although they have been pruned drastically over the years. We reliably know they were planted in 1942 as part of the 'Dig for Victory' campaign. 

That's interesting, in_my_wellies, thank you 🙂

Unfortunately there's no-one here to confirm if ours was planted then or earlier. Someone reckoned it was closer to 200 years, but he is well known locally for his telling of tall tales! As our property was owned by the 'big house' till 1999 (and that itself has changed hands a few times since, no longer being owned by the local landed gentry) when it was bought by a property developing woman who in turn sold it to a naive city couple (who were repossessed in 2017, shortly after which we bought it from the lender), we had no real point of contact to ask those kind of interesting questions 🙄

Originally a mill, it became a tenanted residential property 100+ years ago. Bits of our land still contain traces of when it formed part of the big house formal gardens, whilst other areas have evidence of historic pig-keeping and veg/fruit growing. That's the only fruit tree we inherited but there were loads of raspberry canes and brambles etc...

The weather has been super here over the weekend, but I confess that other than a spot of watering and tidying, I've done little other than lounge around with a book, a pen and an alcoholic beverage!

Here's the little apricots....

And our ramsons - down in the 'yet to be decided (aka cleared)' area....I love the smell and really must try making pesto with them!

RAS

An apple tree is unlikely to be over 100 years old; whereas pears can easily exceed 200 if on pear rootstock.

It's certainly in better nick than one I know (on M25) planted by a local widow about 60 years ago, but it is showing signs of old maturity (limited new growth). 

If you get the tree surgeons in to sort your fallen trees, I'd be inclined to take off a few of the upward shooting branches close to their junction with a spreading branch. Not more than one fourth of the wood though.

Am currently coaching our chain-saw guy through reducing a couple of trees and the tree surgeon next door keeps insisting they need harder pruning.

in_my_wellies

RAS said:

An apple tree is unlikely to be over 100 years old; whereas pears can easily exceed 200 if on pear rootstock.

It's certainly in better nick than one I know (on M25) planted by a local widow about 60 years ago, but it is showing signs of old maturity (limited new growth). 

If you get the tree surgeons in to sort your fallen trees, I'd be inclined to take off a few of the upward shooting branches close to their junction with a spreading branch. Not more than one fourth of the wood though.

Am currently coaching our chain-saw guy through reducing a couple of trees and the tree surgeon next door keeps insisting they need harder pruning.

Thanks for the reassurance. One of mine, the weaker one in the shade of the other has always leaned. I've wedged a large forked ash branch under it and removed two large branches (10cm and 7cm) to lighten its load. Last year I removed another. I'll leave it for this year - I didn't know about the 'one forth' rule. It's a Bramley 

Woolsery

Ah, your Ramsons remind me why I must keep mine under strict surveillance and control, lily. I also noticed and like your combination of the orange Welsh poppy and bluebells. We have plenty of the former, but after waiting about 4 years that's also the number of flowering bluebells we have; two in the mini wood and two by the stream!

I tried to push on with making a deep bed yesterday, but the slope of the garden defeated me. To keep it level one side needs to be 150mm high and the other 200mm, but I only had 150mm boards. Cue visit to the wood yard soon.

High temperatures seem to be predicted for some places towards the middle of the month and I had a shock before realising I'd forgotten to change the forecast location from near London to our localish place in Devon. There's a difference of at least 5 or 6 degrees. Not much difference in the dearth of rain down south though.

A Devon bank is a distinct possibility wellies. We have a lot of decent stone here too, possibly the aftermath of demolishing farm buildings in the past that are on old maps, but no longer here.

Today's flower is a favourite at this time of year and a generally good doer:

Farway

RAS said:

Farway, that little dark mark on the left hand fruitlet looks suspicious. Might be an idea to check it's not pear midge? If it is remove and dispose; preferably incinerate.

Thanks RAS, pear midge is not a pest I’d heard of, probably ‘cos I’ve not tried growing pears before. A timely warning and I’ll go and check them out later

 Up and out early this morning, warm, bit dull but nice enough. I wanted to get going planting up the troughs / pots at my volunteer place.

With lack of rain the pots were bone dry, which at least meant the grass in them was dead , duly weeded, two large pots with Hot Lips in were dry but HL still going, gave them a good haircut, Grownmore & a good drink. And finally planted up in a trough the cosmos I’ve been growing from seed.

I’m at a committee meeting on Thursday PM so will give them all another drink then, the watering may become a weekly routine again I suspect if the summer is like last year

Today’s pic is an unexpected success and a silver lining.

Some may recall I bought some Cape Primrose plugs from Dibleys at the beginning of March, one a Texas Hot Chilli, arrived with a torn leaf and I decided to use the torn leaf end as leaf cutting, given the plugs were over £4 all very MSE

Yesterday I spotted growth and looks like three more Texas Hot Chilli at least are on the way.

Here's the original torn leaf on arrival

liberty_lily

Thanks RAS, that's interesting to know 😀 My childhood home on the south coast of England was built (in 1925) on the site of an old apple orchard.  By the time I came along in the late 1960s, the tree in our garden - and those in a few neighbouring gardens - was massive. I had a tree house in mine, accessed from the shed roof and built when I was about five (1972), so not sure when those trees dated from.....

We sold my parents' house in 2012 when they both required nursing home care and by then the tree (regularly pruned during my parents' ownership) was looking rather worse for wear. Not sure if the new owners kept it, although I know they were keen to.

Regarding the tree surgeons - yep, we need them in again! When we purchased in Feb 2018 there was one half (split vertically) of a huge beech laying across the land. I believe it had come down at least five years previously as the owners had been letting out the mill before it was eventually repossessed. We had it cut up into manageable chunks in 2019, only for the other half (seen in my pic) to come down two months later (December 2019). We then couldn't get a tree surgeon during the whole of the pandemic and more recently our priorities have also been elsewhere, lol 😆 When we do get around to it, there's another leaning badly that needs attention before it, too, goes over!

Really blustery here today, dull but warmish. No gardening being done as I'm getting on with more building prep indoors.

Murphybear

It’s been gorgeous here in sunny Dorset.   . I take the view that it’s the rain that makes our country so beautiful.  

Woolsery

Murphybear said:

It’s been gorgeous here in sunny Dorset.   . I take the view that it’s the rain that makes our country so beautiful.  

My new computer thinks its in Chelmsford. It says it's just stopped raining. I laughed at it's foolishness and then looked outside. It had!

Not enough to do any good, mind.

Farway

Woolsery said:

Murphybear said:

It’s been gorgeous here in sunny Dorset.   . I take the view that it’s the rain that makes our country so beautiful.  

My new computer thinks its in Chelmsford. It says it's just stopped raining. I laughed at it's foolishness and then looked outside. It had!

Not enough to do any good, mind.

  My computer is right location, and is spookily accurate with its forecast, today is cloudy & humid and it is, rained overnight but no use for garden just dampen the leaves stuff

And now damp enough to give me an excuse not to weed a few of the pots at the back ready for the beans and beetroot