The restaurant next door hasn’t exactly closed; let’s just say that the menu has been suspended, and I don’t mean literally. The nuts in the feeder have not been replenished since the frenzy on the first day of opening.
Still, there are measures that will discourage squirrels from bankrupting a bird feeder and you’ll find a good selection on the Dobbies blog which, unlike many blogs attached to commercial sites, is good fun and very readable. And I'm not just saying that because they guested here last week!
In Tips for Squirrel Proofing your Bird Feeder, Rob Plastow lists spicy seeds and spinners among methods to muddle the little munchkins. And there’s an excellent video showing the benefits of a greasy pole.
Still, if you’ve got a bird feeder that’s being plundered, rather than buying another, squirrel-proof version, a baffle might be the answer. Presents for Men has a sturdy looking one for £24.99. Hanging it above your current feeder might just “baffle” them into giving up. (If anyone's tried making one with a dustbin lid, let us know.)
Finally, squirrels seem to have more than their fair share of video online. Below is the advert for Carling Black Label from 1989, which still makes me laugh, while you can get more giggles at WebTVHub and Tom Jepson’s Funny Squirrels Page, which includes another laugh-out-loud ad, this time for Budweiser.
Ooh, the unexpected pleasures of a blogger! I’m quite excited because this is the first guest post to feature on Weeding the Web, and I'm very pleased to welcome Andrew from Dobbies. This post in is two halves. Today we have some useful tips, including how to spot a good tree from a bad one. Come back tomorrow for a quick rundown on the different types of Christmas tree.
How to choose the perfect real Christmas tree
Now we’re into December, even the biggest of Scrooges will be thinking about Christmas. Near the top of the list of Christmas to-dos, will no doubt be a tree.
Ever since St Boniface cut down a sacred Norse tree and put it in his home to prove a point some 400 years ago or so, people celebrating Christmas continue the tree tradition. However, this being the 21st century, the modern consumer is less likely to step outside and chop down a tree in defiance of Thor. Much more likely is that they will want a tree that looks good and hopefully won’t cover the house in spiky needles.
Tips to help pick the perfect Christmas tree:
1. Measure up - Before you leave the house, work out where the tree will be going. Measure the height and width of the space you have chosen and write them down. If you have a decoration that goes on top don’t forget to allow for that too.
2. Take a tape measure - whereever you end up getting your tree, take a tape measure with you so that tip #1 isn’t in vain.
3. Pick your moment - real trees will last 3-4 weeks when taken care of, sometimes a little less. So think about how long you want the tree on display and plan a date to get one.
4. Give a thought to your decorations - varieties of Christmas tree vary in colour and shape, from dark green to greenish-blue as well as having different densities of foliage. So choose a tree that will complement your decorations.
5. Select a fresh tree - healthy trees will have shiny green needles that stay on the branch when shaken. Look out for dishevelled bark and use your nose - you’ll know a fresh one when you smell it.
6. Give a thought to the environment - although most real Christmas trees are grown to be environmentally sustainable, there are further steps you can take. For example: make sure the grower has FSC accreditation, meaning they replant 2 or 3 trees for every one cut. Or, even better, get a potted Christmas tree that can be replanted in your garden.
In some parts of the country it is possible to rent a potted Christmas tree. This year some garden centres are also giving away free saplings with their Christmas trees. So you can plant them in your garden to replace the tree you use. The sapling will also provide you with your own homegrown tree in a few years’ time.
The Good Web Guide is about to announce the winner of its Website of the Year Award. The shortlist contains a fair number of sites to do with property and parenting (possibly reflecting the interests of judge Sarah Beeny, well-known for being pregnant in seemingly most episodes of the long-running TV show Property Ladder). However, there is one gardening site: Growveg.
So congratulations to Jeremy Dore, its founder, for getting this far. If you haven’t visited Growveg before, do go and have a look. One of the GWG awards is the People’s Choice, and Jeremy is hoping for a good turn-out on the voting front. If you’ve visited and liked it, you can add your vote to the growing pile. Voting closes tomorrow.
When she last posted on the subject, Emma had sprouted pepper seedlings earlier in October. Given that the difference between a good gardener and a not-so-good is about a fortnight, why not give it a go now? Although it's rather late, if you have good light and a heated propagator, you should get something started. Regard it as an experiment and let us know how it goes!
Emma transplanted them, repotted as needed, and gathered her first fruit the following June. Given that mine have only finally ripened in the last month, that seems darn early to me!
Incidentally, I managed to buy a pepper plant last spring. If anyone has the remotest idea what it was that I bought (see picture), do let me know.
If you grew peppers this year, chances are that you’ve still got a tired-looking plant hanging around with the odd fruit still clinging to it. You could chuck it on the compost, but how about the alternative?
The Chile Man, with a database of 3729 peppers and chillies, is chock full of information, including how to overwinter your peppers. It could be worth it, as peppers, it seems, nearly always produce more fruit in their second year.
I don’t usually recommend anything I haven’t yet read myself, but this is definitely worth a look. Not only is it published by Green Books, who release such useful and excellent tomes as Charles Dowding’s Organic Gardening The natural no-dig method (and, incidentally, currently offer 20% discount on purchases of £30 or more), but Andy writes the Hedgewizard’s Diary which I referred to as a useful resource in my last post, Dead Hedge and Leaf Fence.
If you haven’t visited Hedgewizard’s Diary yet, then do; recounting the experiences since 2006 of a pagan family’s “journey towards self-sufficiency in fruit and vegetables” in Dorset, Andy—“an optimistic idiot with a spade”—offers a very funny and engaging read.
And Amazon’s Look Inside facility on the Polytunnel Handbook, this time with authors’ names equitably swapped to Andy McKee and Mark Gatter, shows that their books are just as engaging as his blog.
Blogs come and blogs go. It’s a great pity that so many good ones fall by the wayside. And before you put out the flags at the thought of no more Weeding the Web, I’m actually talking about DIY Gardening, which ran out of steam in August 2008. Which is a shame as it’s easy reading, with a few nuggets of useful information.
The post on vegetable yields made me gasp. Startling figures taken from the Washington/Oregon Master Gardeners’ Handbook show the results for two identically sized plots, one unweeded, one weeded. The first produced 27.9lbs of carrots and the second (wait for it) 503.3lbs of carrots. Onions showed a similar disparity in yield, the least effect being seen on cabbages, but even they produced 81% more when weeded.
Planting by the moon - it either appeals or it doesn’t. Personally, I don't why, if the moon can affect tides, why it shouldn't affect other things too. My suspicion, though, has always been that to get good results you need real application.
For a rundown of just how simple or complicated planting by the moon can be, see The Gardeners’ Calendar. It explains the difference between the synodic cycle (which depends on the moon’s waxing and waning), the Biodynamic cycle (developed by Rudolph Steiner and more attentive to the zodiac signs) and the sidereal cycle (which takes into account the moon’s orbit). You’ll also find a daily update on what activity is good in which cycle.
It all sounds pretty confusing, so if you've had any experience (success or failure) of growing by the moon, then do click on Comment below and let us know how you've got on.
How many hearts were a-flutter at my local horticultural society recently? Impossible to tell. With our — how shall I put it? — well seasoned membership, enthusiasm is shown by attendance, rather than demeanour. But, going by numbers, it was regarded as quite a coup to land a talk by Tom Hart Dyke.
Tom, renowned plant collector, shot to national prominence in 2000 when he finally emerged from nine months’ captivity in the Columbian jungle. To this day, he and his travelling companion, Paul Winder, have no idea who their captors were, nor what they wanted.
But it was certainly terrifying. Informed one day that they would be executed the coming evening, Winder spent the day in prayer, while Tom — “I wasn’t going to bother Him upstairs” — distracted himself by planning his ideal garden. And it’s this garden, changed very little from the original plan, which now supports the family estate at Lullingstone Castle in Kent. The whole experience, though, has had a deep and lasting effect on the family, and The Times has a a touching interview with Tom and his mother, Sarah.
Tom caught the gardening bug when he was three and his granny (much revered and often mentioned) gave him a packet of carrot seed and a trowel. His passion for his subject is immense and one is left in no doubt of how “amazing” and “fascinating” he finds the plant world. Such is Tom’s eagerness that occasionally one fears that he’ll run out of breath before running out of sentence. Occasionally he does.
The World Garden — “my Columbian dream” — aims to show the origins of many familiar plants. Wild varieties make up the central displays, in beds shaped like the continents, while corresponding cultivated varieties are ranged around the edges of the two-acre walled garden. Every winter a fifth of the garden is dug up and moved into shelter.
This year it wasn’t enough. While I was mourning the loss of a single potted myrtle, our cold, wet February wiped out over 1000 of Tom's plants, including (as he alarmingly put it) the entire Canary Islands. Tom seemed sanguine. It all contributes to our knowledge of the plants and over the years he’s made interesting discoveries of what is and isn’t hardy and, with his seven volunteer helpers, lost plants are quickly replaced.
And transplanting isn't all that's been happening. Last weekend, not content with one World Garden, Tom unveiled the World Garden in Miniature, very cute and featuring alpines. You can read more on his entertaining blog.
Tom's engaging writing style also gets an airing in his weekly column for the Gravesend Reporter, which has a nifty e-edition, although their page counts are a bit off and you might have to turn the pages, rather than use the search facility, to find him.
The next event at Lullingstone is the Flower Festival on 6th June, but you can visit Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays until 26th September. For more, see Visitor Information. In the meantime, the slide show below gives a flavour of the World Garden, and the video a preview of Tom's Hot and Spiky Cactus House.
I’ve got a soft spot for the Garden Museum, Lambeth, even though, to date, I’ve found it disappointing.
As a museum to visit, I feel it doesn’t quite deliver, as I wrote in my review of the Beth Chatto exhibition for Landscape Juice.
However, they are branching out media-wise. The museum has taken on their first ever intern, Matthew Collins, and he’s bravely baring his soul on the Garden Museum Gardener’s blog. It’s a place, he feels, “to admit the extent to which I feel under-experienced, under-studied and a little out of my depth.” He keeps asking himself, “Are they sure they chose the right candidate?”
Well, not a lot of people are going to find out if the museum doesn’t advertise his blog better.
![In Tune with the Moon. Link to Amazon.](https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1844091783?ie=UTF8&tag=weetheweb-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=1844091783"><img border="0" src="51B8TRxZl7L._SL160_.jpg "In Tune with the Moon. Link to Amazon.")
...Landscape Juice Network
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