Hoverfly Lagoon

Looking up more information on the Bees 'n Beans citizen science project we'd signed up for via Twitter, we read about the University of Sussex Buzz Club and their hoverfly lagoon project to provide suitable habitat for hoverfly species that have an aquatic larval stage. A perfect way to learn more about these critters and perhaps contribute to the wider study of the state of the nation's pollinators.

There was just enough time between breaks in storm Katie's last throes to assemble the lagoon from an upcycled 5l water bottle (previously used as a cloche), a cracked 7l terracotta pot, nettle, dried leaves and a handful of sticks.

Ta da! We stationed the lagoon next to the nettle patch (growing in the long-time decommissioned garden incinerator) and compost bin at the bottom of the garden.

This ground bug Rhyparochromus vulgaris(?) was out and about.

Garlic

It's that time of year again when there's not a loveliness of ladybirds in sight and even a howling storm like Katie can't huff and puff and blow away the hordes of aphid sapping the vitality of the rose shoots in the garden.

Being forced indoors by the weather, some of the Easter weekend was whiled away prepping garlic infused water to spray the critters. Four bulbs cut up into 2.5l of water and steeped for a couple of days. This 'tea' can be strained off and diluted with a further 2,5l of water for spraying. The chopped garlic can be steeped again and again until you notice the 'tea' is a lot less pungent. We use a high pressure pump spray to knock the critters to the ground. Spray every couple of days until the aphid population is much reduced and then every now and again until soft plant shoots mature.

All Is Quiet

The gloomy morning was spent on garden odd jobs. These onion and garlic nets* were upcycled into barley straw bales to prevent hair-like blanketweed in our two ponds and the water container garden.

It is best to thread the string through both ends of the tubular net, tying off one end before stuffing with barley straw. Leave the ends of string long as they can be used to tie the bale to a half brick. This will help to submerge the bale discreetly in the pond otherwise it will bob on the surface.

*Apologies in advance but this is a niggle that infuriates us on a daily basis: this type of over-packaging of supermarket consumables is a flagrant disregard of the impact of product end-life on the environment. Since retailers will continue to do so with impunity we feel that it is up to consumers to spend their earnings politically. By upcycling these nets we are trying to make good out of others' bad and are not encouraging new purchases.

The sweet pea shoots were topped to produce side shoots. Tomoto seeds were sowed: Pink Zebra, Green Zebra, Garden Grape, Zapotec PLeated all from Populuxe Seed Bank, Garden Pearl from our Cultivate Waltham Forest 2015 seed pack and Black Russian and Ananas.

Let it be a long, sunny summer.

Peat Free

So starts the sowing of seeds. We would have to drive miles out of our way to find a retailer that sells ready mixed peat free seed sowing and seedling compost so the alternative is to continue to reconstitute coir compost blocks...which is easily done.

In our experience we add half the suggested amount of water to get a dryish substrate into which we can evenly mix additives such as biochar, rock dust, grit or vermiculite depending on the seeds we are are sowing. That said we are not sure about the true ecological impact of using these mined & processed minerals, though logically it can only be negative. So we're going to use the very last from the bottom of bags from the years of yore and then experiment with garden soil, watching for damping off and germination rates. Hey ho.

Lovely stuff

Imogen Huffs and Puffs

♥ Peasticks ♥

We finally found a local source for hazel peasticks. A big THANK YOU to the Epping Forest Centres Officer: Heritage and Lifelong Learning who arranged for them to be bundled for us to pick up from the View for a donation. We're plucking up the courage to ask if they cut rods for bean poles too.

If you haven't walked Epping Forest, or visted the Queen Elizabeth Hunting Lodge or the High Beach visitor centre - what's keeping you?

A Bounty of Bulbs

With all the buzz about beekeeping, we were soon entertaining dreams of ourselves waddling down the garden path in beekeeping suits to sit the summer evenings out under our hive, listening to the sleepy hum of the girls settling in after a busy day out and about. (The added attraction of course of having an excuse to wear a suit with fencing veils is that it's the closest we'd ever get to wearing a spacesuit).

Our sweet dream soon soured when we discovered that in London the urban bee-keeping trend was putting further pressure on existing honeybees, solitary bees, bumblebees, butterflies and moths, hoverflies and beetles battling to keep their niche as beekeepers were not planting sufficient forage. Professor Francis Ratnieks and Dr Karin Alton from the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects (LASI) at the University of Sussex advise" “Our calculations indicate that each new hive placed in London would need the equivalent of one hectare of borage, a plant that attracts mainly honey bees, or 8.3 hectares of lavender, a plant that attracts mainly bumblebees but some honey bees."

Resource:
Rise in urban beekeeping in UK may have gone too far scientists warn, University of Sussex Last updated: Thursday, 15 August 2013
‘To Bee or Not To Bee’, Professor Francis Ratnieks and Dr Karin Alton from the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects (LASI) at the University of Sussex, The Biologist, vol 60 no 4 Aug/Sep 2013

This lead us to assess the diversity of nectar sources we provided for our existing plucky plot57b pollinators. We very quickly came to the conclusion that we need to grow MORE flowers, especially plants that bloom in very early spring or late winter.

As a quick fix we dodged rain squalls to plant a good number of bulbs to lay on a veritable floral buffet next Spring. Though 'The Knees' doth protest it was good to be head to head with the breathy overgrowth, tucking in little parcels of promise in pockets of moist earth. We felt as smug as squirrels, though we'll be sure to forget where we deposited things only for them to pop up and surprise us next year.

White Ermine moth, Spilosoma lubricipeda caterpillar

Great Green Bush-cricket nymph(?), Tettigonia viridissima

Despite being banned in the EU and the UK the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) decided to allow some farmers to use neonicotinoid insecticides this July. This will harm pollinators. Some biochemical companies are profiting from the destruction of our natural biodiversity and potentially undermining our food security.

Resources:
Fears for bees as UK lifts insecticide ban, Daniel Cressey, Nature international weekly journal of science, 23 July 2015 Updated:24 July 2015
Bees are a political issue, Natasha Little, July 31, 2015

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust

Butterfly Conservation

The bulbs we planted:

• 40x Allium sphaerocephalon
• 5x Allium 'Spider'
• 25x Crocus chrysanthus 'Spring Beauty'
• 25x Muscari armeniacum
• 5x Tulip 'Green Wave'
• 15x Tulip 'Spring Green'
• 25x Tulipa sylvestris
• 15x Iris tuberosa
• 30x Tulip Turkestanica
• 50x Narcissi Tete-a-Tete
• 30x Obvallaris (The Tenby Daffodil)
• 50x Winter Aconites (Eranthus hyemalis)
• 50x Anemone Nemerosa
• 100x Winter Crocus Species Mixed

More Paved Paths

Tubby tabby checked and signed off the levels.

No rain as forecast however we made good use of the cooler overcast day to level and pave another path. We also managed to chisel 3 stone path slabs out of the spot where we plan to create a patio and haul them to a shaded, screened place under the plum tree. We are going to put a bench here.

To make sure the path doesn't fall away at the edge we laid the bricks and levelled them, then removed those along the edge and recessed a channel to hold a layer of cement.

We set the edge bricks into the cement, this will anchor them in once it cures. We used a bag of all purpose concrete mix as we had it on hand. If you were laying paving to a higher degree of accuracy you would need to use bricklaying mortar which will allow you to level and space the pavers more precisely. All we had to do was add water as per the instructions. The fine concrete does fly up when emptying the bag so do wear eye protection and a dust mask.

Cement is caustic so prevent it from getting on your bare skin. Don't dispose of excess concrete or gray water from cleaning your tools by washing it down a drain.

*This pic is inserted here but was taken a week on after we'd back-filled the soil.

Paved Paths

We recycled a stack of bricks from a crumbling garden wall which we've earmarked for several garden projects. Around the end of March, we laid out 10 or so bricks to try out a perpendicular herringbone paving pattern on a path alongside the raised beds. Pottering about, we've become aware how immediately the resident critters make any and every nook and cranny their home so we have an all-out policy of never stepping on any logs or loose bricks in the garden. The paving project was stalled by other commitments and we had taken to leaping over the bricks whenever we've needed to access the far ends of the beds (as you do, right?). This weekend we started the paving project over.

First we trans-located the beasties to the permanent brick pile.

We lifted the bricks gently without dragging them. One by one, we exposed the critters and then placed a cocked, dark, damp muddy flowerpot immediately next to them. We busied ourselves levelling another path. We returned after a couple of minutes to find the critter had taken refuge in the pot. We used this method to carry them (making sure they couldn't leap out of the pot in transit) to the permanent brick pile we built as a wildlife habitat under the medlar tree.

Do make an effort not to touch amphibians as the acid, salts and chemical residues on our skin can damage their permeable skin. Picking up a fleeing amphibian can cause fatal stress and injuries.

We worked on the two inner paths - we levelled the ground and spread a 3cm layer of sand to help level the bricks, some of which were chipped or had lumps of concrete adhering to the backs of them. We'd not planned to pave the paths when we positioned the beds so we had to space the bricks to cover the area evenly.

We used a lump mallet and a bolster masonry chisel to remove old concrete and to halve bricks.

We infilled the gaps by sweeping in and compacting a mixture of clay soil and sand and then sowed creeping thyme and lawn camomile.

We didn't use an underlay of weed barrier fabric as we feel this is a "contaminant" even though inert. We're hoping the creeping thyme and lawn camomile will create an effective weed deterring blanket and that the mass of fine roots will bind the paving together. Fingers crossed.

We've got the outside two paths to pave yet.

Mullein Marvel

This is the first mullein we've grown and we're smitten. Her superpower is that she's sprinkled in fairy dust- the white down dusting her blue-green rosette skirt, the flock of her flower spike; she's a charmed beauty and we and the garden pollinators have succumbed to her spell.

All in a Weekend's Work

We cleared approximately 2m3 of soil to reveal these concrete slabs. Then we lifted the majority (some 5.5m2) of them, leaving some to make a navigable path to the compost bin.

MIFFED.

The pudding took refuge in a tomato pot as we hauled the slabs up the path and through the house to the kerb for collection.

We worked slowly and with breaks so as not to disturb the new family of blue tits. We have left the levelling of the soil we dug up and the planting of the spuds (it's getting late, we know) for next week.

Our patch of wood anemone is out in it's petticoats.

The blackbirds meanwhile, gorged themselves on the unfortunate worms we uncovered.

Sunny Sunday, Monday

Before we can plant our spuds we need to install a new trellis at the back of the garden ... and translocate and rebuild the compost bin. As you do.

We removed a trug load of brick rubble in digging the holes (with trowels and teeth-gritted determination). We positioned the posts to meet with the verticals of the trellis.

We had more than a GRUMBLE about the fact that we'd purchased a 2.5l and a 1l pot of the same branded, tinted wood preservative only to discover that the difference in colour between the two pots was more than several shades out when dry. Poor QA, it's not on is what we say. We were forced to sit in holiday traffic, shell out for more preservative than we needed and put in an extra couple of hours to put it right. This is supposed to be the the holiday that peeps knock back and eat hot buns and chocolate.

We held the posts upright by jamming brick rubble back into the holes. This allowed us to walk back up the garden and check whether they looked true. We didn't use a spirit level as the existing visual verticals contradicted a 90° perpendicular.

We discovered that postcrete is very easy to use, requiring no mixing. A heads-up: make sure you wear a dust mask (or pull your t-shirt up over your nose as we did) because it billows up in a great dust storm when you empty it from the bag into the hole, no matter how slowly you pour.

We fixed the first two posts and sections of trellis to make sure that the horizontals were level. We adjusted the height of the posts by pushing rubble underneath.

We fought the holly and dog rose and we won.

This old compost bin was once hidden away under the canopy of a very large fig tree...its time had come.

Before starting we searched for any wildlife that might be sheltering in the old compost bin and its surrounds (every year, when turning it, we wish for hedgehogs but to no avail). We dismantled the compost bin taking care not to disturb this sleepy toad. She's a beauty.

We re-used all the sound wood from the old bin. We had to use an offcut of new marine ply to make up the short fall. The new bin was built to fit the dimensions of the offcut which we used for the lid.

"Cat-a-stroppy"! Tubby tabby was NOT amused at the destruction of her sunning perch.

The new bin with improvements: the lid is braced to prevent it from curling. The front enclosure is split in two for easy removal and is held in place by sitting in a slot on either side.

We think it scrubbed up well.

Sadly no tatties were planted as we discovered concrete slabbed paving buried under the spot we were planning to dig. Another job for another day. Let's hope next week end is sunny.