Tag: gardening

Counting on … day 177

24th September 2024

Community gardens can not only boost biodiversity but also the supply of locally grown food. 

“Pam Warhurst … the founder of Incredible Edible, a food-focused guerrilla gardening movement, wants the state to get out of people’s way. “The biggest obstacle is the inability of people in elected positions to cede power to the grassroots,” she says… Her big idea is guerrilla gardening – with a twist. Where guerrilla gardeners subvert urban spaces by reintroducing nature, Incredible Edible’s growers go one step further: planting food on public land and then inviting all-comers to take it and eat. “I used food because it seemed to me that we needed to act fast,” Warhurst says. “We needed to get experience as soon as we could, and probably food was the thing that we could demonstrate an alternative way of living around, in a really simple way.”” (1)

Here in London the Edible Bus Stop in Lambeth grows a range of flowering plants, herbs, vegetables and fruit trees. https://theediblebusstop.com/the-kerb-garden/

  1. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/13/radical-food-group-incredible-edible-guerrilla-gardening?

Counting on … day 100

6th May 2024

We are lucky enough to have a good sized garden. Not being successful growers of vegetables, we have chosen to make the garden more of a wildlife haven. We don’t use pesticides, herbicides or fertilisers – other than home made compost. Nor do we use peat. This approach also means we aren’t buying things that come in plastic bottles, bags or containers. 

Over the years we have planted a number of fruit trees – apple, plum, pear, cherry, fig – as well as having raspberries, strawberries, rhubarb, currant and gooseberry bushes and a grape vine. In between the fruit grows a mix of herbs, self seeding salads and green leaf crops, bulbs, and wild flowers. Other flower beds are a mix of roses, herbs, and perennial plants, whilst the lawns remain uncut for most of the year. I have tried to transform these into meadows by transplanting into the grass suitable plants such as buttercups, plantain, ox eye daisies and sorrel etc. The garden also has a pond with flags, buttercups and pond weed, and is home to small pond creatures including dragon fly larvae. Usually there is frogspawn but none this year, which is disappointing. 

We replenish a number of bird feeders daily and have a bee hotel and a dead hedge all to encourage more wildlife.

further reading –

The Green Tau: issue 39

https://greentau.org/tag/gardens

Counting on …. Day 1.073

16th March 2023

Growing our own food keeps us in touch with the reality of food production and helps reduce its carbon footprint if only minimally. Growing delicate crops such as salad leaves and herbs would be the best win win. Salad crops can include simply growing mustard and cress on a paper towel.

For those without a garden – https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/mar/24/how-to-grow-your-own-veg-without-a-garden?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

And for those with –  https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/grow-your-own

Welcoming Garden Birds

The sparrow is still the most commonly observed garden bird but we have not seen one for about 20 years in our garden.

Can we do more to encourage bird populations that frequent our gardens?

  • Fresh water – provide a bird bath, pond or shallow bowl of fresh water for both drinking and bathing. Bowls and baths should be regularly cleaned and topped up with fresh water. 
  • Food – providing food is an easy way of attracting birds. Commercially produced bird food offers a wide range of seed and fat based foods. Some are specially adapted so that spilt seeds do not sprout so preventing a mini grain field growing under your bird feeder. Different foods can attract different birds. For example nyger seeds are popular with goldfinches. 
  • Growing bird food – you can provide bird food by growing it in your garden. Goldfinches like eating the seeds from dandelion heads, from teasels and from lavender bushes (leave the ‘dead’ seed heads in place). Blackbirds like apples. Starlings like the berries from the mahonia bushes and yew trees. Blue tits and great tits like eating aphids and other insects that congregate on plants stems and shoots.
  • Hygiene – birds can be killed by germs that multiply when bird feeders become fouled by bird droppings and by stale/ rotting food. Regularly cleaning bird feeders is important, as is removing stale food. The ground underneath bird feeders can also become foul so it is good to regularly move their positions and to clean the area underneath them.
  • Shelter – hedges and shrubs provide welcome places of shelter especially for small birds such as wrens and sparrows.  Bushes can provide a safe place from which birds can check out the safety of a  bird feeder before darting out. 
  • Nesting boxes provide a particular form of shelter. Different birds have different requirements. Blue tits need boxes with only a small opening, whilst robins prefer a wider opening. Swifts and martins need high level nesting places. Hygiene again is important: winter is a good time to clean  old nesting boxes ready for the new season. 
  • Variety of habitats – by learning more about different bird species, we can understand better the habitats they prefer and how we can shape our gardens to better meet their needs. Black birds for example are ground feeders. They eat grubs and worms that they pull from the soil. Short, rather than long, grass makes this easier. Black birds can’t hang from bird feeders but they can perch on bird tables. Sparrows and wrens like hedges. Starlings like tall trees where they gather and survey the land.

Gardens as nature reserves

4th April 2022

Gardens are our very own nature reserve right on our doorstep!  

There are many ways in which we can boost their biodiversity and make them even more environmentally friendly (space permitting).

  • Let your garden grow wild at the edges
  • Choose plants so that there is always something in flower throughout the year.
  • Create different habitats with trees and shrubs, ground-cover and climbers
  • Maintain plant cover over all the soil to protect; have different layers of planting. 
  • Use intercropping techniques, sowing fast growing vegetables between those that need more space, eg radishes between cabbages, or eggplant daises between leeks. 
  • Install a water butt 
  • Leave seeds heads and dead stalks in place over winter
  • Use hand tools rather than power tools 
  • Plant some soft fruit bushes or strawberries or rhubarb

P

  • Plant a fruit tree

Counting on …day 115 

7th March 2022

Another potential garden pest is the aphid. There are about 500 different types of aphid in the UK, most of whom are partial to a particular type of plant: eg the mealy cabbage aphid likes brassicas, the black bean aphid likes broad beans,  and the plum leaf-curling aphid likes plum trees. Whilst they can damage young leaves that one hoped to eat, they do not diminish the  productivity of the plant as much as one would expect. On the other hand aphids do provide food for a large number of other insects – Lady birds, hover flies, lace wings, wasps, earwigs, and beetles. These insects themselves are a source of food for other creatures such as small birds. In other words aphids are an important part of the food chain and an important contributor to biodiversity. 

The RHS recommend various ways of curtailing aphids should that be necessary – eg early in the season when there are fewer predators at hand to keep numbers in check. https://www.rhs.org.uk/biodiversity/aphid-predators