More Wildlife

A little while ago we came across an unfortunate Tawny Owl which had got itself entangled in the single strand of fishing line, strung around the waterlily pond to try and deter the heron from taking our frogs or Golden Rudd.

I cut the line and removed it from the bird’s wing, but it was clearly stressed and exhausted from its struggles, but otherwise unhurt. It couldn’t or wouldn’t fly when released but fluttered under our arbour seat. Worried that it might be spotted by a neighbour’s cat or a fox, we picked it up again and put it up a tree. It stayed there several hours but eventually disappeared. Not finding any feathers in the vicinity we are optimistic it must have eventually summoned up the strength to fly home.

Earlier this week much to my amazement I saw a Muntjac Deer in one of our neighbour’s gardens. It ran off when it saw me. I have been panicking that it may take up residence in the area and many precious plants may be browsed. I haven’t seen it again,
so hopefully it has returned to Hartswood, which is only a few hundred yards away as the crow flies.

Getting Soft in Our Old Age? (Part 2 Sword Tales!)

Happy New Year reader.

What a beautiful day for New Year’s Day 2013. The sunshine drew us outside to make a start on mulching our perennial and rose beds, with our own homemade compost. In two sessions today we have completed about half the job.

Anyway, back to the second half of the aquarium story. This time instead of asian tanks it is South American ones, or at least mostly from the Amazon area.

For quite a few years we have been running a fairly purist, four foot aquarium planted with Echinodorus or Amazon Sword Plants and a few other plants from the region. The tank is stocked with fish from the same area, including Engler type Guppies and various Characin species including several Tetras, Cardinal Tetras being in the greatest number. Amazon sword plants tend to need more light than Cryptocoryne species so we run three T8 fluorescent tubes. In addition they respond well to CO2 and feeding, producing colourful new leaves in succession.

This tank had suffered a bit from neglect over the 2012 three main gardening seasons, especially because the CO2 had not been kept going at times. We have now pulled it back fairly well.

Our third big project of the winter has been an attempt to seal a five foot long, two foot deep aquarium that had been empty for at least five years following a hisory of leaking. The tank was built about forty five years ago and was quite unconventional. The bottom of the tank is  a sheet of stainless steel, with the edges turned up at right-angles. Onto this has been welded a mild steel aquarium frame. It was then glazed with putty. The problem was the stainless steel base flexes easily if there is any movement in the base it is stood on.

The tank had been in two other peoples homes when I got it over forty years ago. I constructed what I thought was a sufficiently rigid stand and further sealed the bottom stainless steel to glass seams with melted tar. It was fairly well behaved for many years until we drained it following intolerable leaking. The problem of doing further work to the various glass to glass and metal seams was lack of access to some areas as large rock features were built into the design on its initial set up, here.

Following the two Crypt tank projects we cleaned out this tank of gravel and soil and then attempted to seal the seams which could be accessed, using more modern sealants. Normal aquarium silicon sealant was used glass to glass, vertical corners with a black mastic used on the glass to metal seams at the bottom. In order to have no glass lids between the lights and the water it was necessary to encase the mild steel top frame of the tank in strips of glass to protect it from rusting.

Above this is a hood constructed of 4mm mirror built onto a wood and hardboard frame, which is hinged onto the wall at the back and has counter balance weights on cables through pulleys to take the considerable weight of the mirrored hood.

The tank leaked rather worryingly for a day or two but further applications of mastic and resin adheasive to the outside combined with swelling of the ancient dried out putty and the water drips ceased.

I went on line again looking this time for Echinodorus and ordered quite a few exciting looking new ones. The tank has a long way to go especially before we can put any animals into it as it has been showing high levels of ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. This we think is because we used a quantity of recycled gravel which had been used as a substrate in a lizard tank. Although it was washed repeatedly it seems it wasn’t enough as the readings are exceedingly high. We are having to do daily partial water changes to lower the dangerous readings. After three daily, partial water changes the plants are looking happier at least!

I will post again when there is more to report on these projects.

Getting Soft in Our Old Age? (Part 1 Tales of the Crypts)

We haven’t fancied gardening much in the cold and damp, since finishing our leaf collecting. Besides the leaf tower is full anyway.

We have therefore done some intensive, indoor aquatic gardening, over the last few weeks.. I have kept tropical fish and aquarium plants for approximately fifty years continuously. However interest has waxed and wained, over the half century.

Linda suggested, when driven in doors in early November, that we do something else with an unheated tank with a huge filter running, and only one small, hardy Golden Rudd in it. The fish was put in the pond with its siblings and the tank emptied and cleaned. I have long been interested in a genus of tropical aroid plants called Cryptocoryne, some of which make slow growing and very attractive aquarium plants. We decided to make the tank into an Asian biotope, using Cryptocorynes almost exclusively.

We followed the advice of our close friend James, who owns and runs Wayside Aquatics, an immaculate bijou aquarium shop near us. He suggested we do a natural low-tech tank as a good way of growing Crypts, following the latest thinking. This involves a one inch layer of soil, low in organic matter, in the bottom of the tank. The ideal soil, apparently, is that produced by moles in their mole hills, or worm casts. Not having the patience to collect worm casts to cover an area of four square feet one inch deep, we searched out mole hills. We found some via another good friend, Mark, who is the gardener at Hutton Hall. He hadn’t seen any mole activity for months, but as if by magic, mole hills started appearing in the big lawn, there and then. He accused me of supernatural powers! Over the soil layer goes one inch of washed 2-3mm diameter gravel. Modest lighting was provided from one 1″ fluorescent tube and gentle circulation from one external Ehiem canister filter. A heater thermostat was added to maintain the tank at around 75°F .

Having set up the tank I was away, trawling the internet for Cryptocorynes. I ordered a sizeable collection from Germany, via eBay and others from three British online aquarium suppliers, as well as some bought straight from James. Would you believe it? – when they all arrived, I didn’t have room for them all, in the four foot tank.

We quickly decided on a tank in our bedroom, which had been empty of anything but cold water, since it was last used for raising tree frogs to froglet stage. This tank was hastily cleaned and had the remainder of our mole hill soil topped up with Wickes’ top soil added, plus gravel,as before. This time, as an experiment, we decided to add a CO2 system, we had redundant from an earlier project. This way we could see if the growth was better or different with additional carbon.. This tank is only three foot long and also has one fluorescent tube lighting and a slightly smaller external Ehiem filter and a heater thermostat.

A few weeks have now elapsed and despite some of the Crypts doing their famous trick of leaf melt, the great majority are settling in and producing new leaves, albeit frustratingly slowly. Some of them had an excuse for behaving badly, having been up to four days in the post, during the colder period of our early winter, not ideal for sensitive tropical aquatic plants.

A few shrimps and fish have been introduced to each tank, having waited four weeks or so to allow the chemistry of the water to settle to a stable and safe condition. Longer was probably advisable but it’s hard not putting a few animals in new tank set ups. We now have to wait patiently for the plants to grow and hopefully create a delightful living picture.

Well done if you’ve read this far!

Linda and I wish visitors to our website a happy and healthy New Year.

Autumn Leaves – Red, Orange, Gold and Brown to be Turned Into Next Year’s Black Gold

“Don’t get me wrong, I love trees, but not in the street outside my house.The’re so messy with their leaves in the autumn.”

I heard this kind of statement on many occasions, from members of the public, when I worked in The London Borough of Havering, Council’s Parks Department. They have a point, but that mess is a fantastic resource for us keen gardeners.

Linda and I collect not only our own leaves from our paths and grass areas, but also from a few neighbours’ front gardens and the verges, pavements and road gutters near our house. We pick them up using a rotary mower which partially shreds the leaves speeding the formation of leaf-mould.

We have a weld-mesh tower six feet high (1.8m) by four feet diameter (1.2m). We fill this each autumn and empty it a year later. When a year has elapsed it has reduced in volume to around half the height of the tower.

We spread the majority of this precious material around our Epimediums and other woodland plants, and over our Heuchera and Japanese Maple bed. Any left is put in bags to be used later for improving the soil for new plantings of woodland plants.

Autumn colouring trees and shrubs has long been a particular enthusiasm of mine.

However our garden doesn’t produce as good a performance from many plants as I  have seen elsewhere. This is in part due, I think, to the soil. Ours is generally a good rich organic topsoil overlaying London Clay. Many subjects seem to be much more colourful in Autumn on poorer sandy soils. However some of our Japanese Maples are reliable, Acer palmatum ‘Osakazuki’ with its rich red and A.p. ‘Senga Kaku’ with bright yellow to orange. On the other hand our two Acer griseums  don’t produce the strong orange colours we’ve seen elsewhere and our large Acer rubrum ‘Scanlon, and Liquidambar styraciflua are a bit disappointing for the three dimensional spaces they occupy.

I have just posted a dozen or so new images of autumn colour in the ‘Shrubs Gallery’ many of which are off young Acer palmatum cultivars in pots.

By the way, having lost quite a few young Acer palmatums in pots left outside or in our unheated large greenhouse in winters past, I now always heel them in the ground over winter with no losses due to roots freezing. I think they become safer when they have grown large enough to be in a 3 gallon bucket sized pot and above. However ours is a sheltered garden in the South of England. It may be wise to protect sizable specimens in larger pots or tubs with bubble-wrap or fleece in winter time if severe weather is forecast. It is heart breaking to loose a maple of significant stature.

Summer, What Summer?

I don’t know about other British gardeners, but I feel a bit cheated by our 2012 Summer.

The only good thing about it was not having to water so much, especially with our large number of plants in pots. The bad things were far more numerous, not least of all the plague of slugs of biblical proportions, but then I’ve already ranted about them twice before.

Our Eremurus, so good in the last couple of years, failed to flower at all.

We had no apples on our two young but established trees, and the first cropping year of our Plum ‘Lizzie’ resulted in a great setting of fruit which all rotted before ripening. Too late to be much help, I found a site on The Net advocating the spraying of the fruits with a diluted solution of milk with a drop of washing up liquid, at regular intervals. I will try this next year, in good time if the summer is again a wet one.

We have lost two unusual small trees probably by drowning, a Styrax hemsleyana and a Cornus x rutgersensis. Also our honeymoon purchased, Magnolia campbellii has given us cause for concern, as it too may have suffered severe water-logging. There was a considerable leaf fall in August, carpeting the ground beneath the tree. However It kept perhaps half of its foliage and still has some now, so may be OK. It is now 37 years old and a good size and we’d hate to loose it.

Let’s hope next year is a more ‘typical British Summer’!

Half a Hundredweight of Slugs?

Last night, having collected a particularly impressive haul of slus, I decided to weigh them. I placed another ice cream box on top and tipped away the water.

I weighed the two bxes with slugs and without and the difference was a pound and a quarter. I’ve been collecting most nights since the Hostas started to sprout and have guessed at perhaps an average of eight ounces a night. This could mean I’ve destroyed over fifty pounds of slugs this year.

Despite collecting thousands of them I feel I still don’t understand slugs. There is a very large clump of Disporopsis pernyi and almost every night there are two or three large slugs in one small area of it feeding on its foliage, but not elsewhere in the plant. They have practically defoliated a Kirengeshoma plant in one spot and about twenty feet away another clump is almost untouched. I would love to know whether the ‘innocent’ orange slug feeding on pigeon or fox poo is the same species as the identical looking animals eating the Dahlias, Hostas etc.. Innocent or otherwise they have all met the same fate!

Re-cycling

When we disposed of the willow crushed shed, we kept its door for future use.

We have now used it to replace the rotted door on the Second World War air-raid shelter in the garden

. It looks pretty good for a door we reckon must be fifty years old.

My father used the shelter to store apples and we have kept homemade wine in its stable cool temperature. Now it’s just a home for our thick hoses we use to empty ponds, and the stack of buckets in which we overwinter water lilies, when we empty the ceramic water pots each autumn.

Replacement for Rotted Log Seat

Over thirty years ago we installed a log bench consisting of two whole logs for legs and a seat formed from a larger trunk split in half. Sadly, eventually one upright rotted completely above ground and the top had deteriorated beyond repair. Recently we decided to replace the rotting bench, having come across an arbour seat we liked in Roots and Shoots, a local garden centre.

Removing the old more sound log proved no easy task, for as a young man I had done jobs to last.

The log uprights were supplied around four foot long and I had concreted over half their length into the ground with concrete from the bottom of the hole to a substantial collar above ground. We also dug out a fair amount of soil and a proportion of the old flowering Chusquea couleou to create a bay for the new seat.

I assisted our friendly local builder, Brett Lomas, to pave the area and install vertical stone slabs to hold back the higher ground.

We duly collected the AFK Arbour Seat on the car roof rack and constructed it with relative ease. It is a well made flat packed kit which fits together well.

The pond in front of the seat needs de-silting, and we reckon the seat will give us somewhere to take a breather when we are carrying out this fairly unpleasant task.

 

Feeding the Wildlife

Sadly, yesterday one of our large Koi Carp died, a Chagoi around 10lbs in weight, I guess. We used to bury dead koi in the garden, but there were usually dug up again by the wildlife,

so lately we’ve left them out for the foxes.

Last night while slugging I went to see if the fish was still where I left it. It had been moved a yard or so but was being devoured by a badger. The badger didn’t run off as the meal was too heavy to pick up and make a rapid exit, so he kept eating, ignoring me. I thought I’ll go back in doors and get my camera, to hopefully get a picture. It turned out that

even the repeated flash full in his face, wouldn’t put him off his, ‘as much as you can eat, fish supper’. I got closer and closer until in the end I was crouching no more than a yard in front of the feeding creature. I wanted him to look up and had to make quite loud noises for him to react to me, giving me the second picture..

Seedling Updates

The Phyllostachys kwangsiensis seed continued to germinate since my recent post about them.

About a week ago I potted them off into small square pots.There were a few with little or no chlorophyll in their leaves, and I think these have now failed. There are a couple with yellow striping in the leaves which I will watch with interest.

The Epimedium seedlings have been producing new leaves, but frustratingly slowly. I recall reading on an American website they get some flowering from Epimedium seedlings in their first year. I will be extremely surprised and happy if I see a flower from any of them next year.

It has been a challenge to keep them from being eaten, during the worst slug and snail outbreak I can remember. There have been several evenings when I have collected as many as I pictured in my earlier post. Only on suddenly colder nights does there seen less out there. Other than then, there seems little reduction in numbers despite my best efforts!