Category: Nature

Garden 7th Cavalry has Arrived!

Firstly, a big thank you to Trevor for all the good work he has put into his column over many years. Trevor is still available for advice as there is no substitute for experience.

Gardening, whether it's a postage stamp or at a country house, is well known for lowering stress levels. It's easy to get involved, especially in Wenvoe, with allotments, wildlife group, environment team (under Trevor's watchful eye) and, of course, the produce show in September. It's a well known fact that Gardeners love to share their knowledge. So here we go, first bit of advice, if you can get on to your lawn at this time of year, brushing off the worm casts is a must as weed seeds attach to the little mounds causing more weeds than you can shake a stick at.

If you haven't already, cut the dead flower heads of hydrangeas just above first bud or to a lower bud if the plant is outgrowing its space.

Start to grow seeds on the kitchen windowsill and cover seeds and compost with vermiculite to stop the annoying fungus fly laying eggs We are all tempted by the seed and plant catalogues that come via magazines and through the post, but beware that these young plants may be smaller than you expect and will not be hardened off. If given the right care they will be worth the effort.

You should, by now, be chitting [getting them ready to plant] your early potatoes by putting them in open egg boxes in a sunny, frost free place until stalks are shooting. Basic stuff, but I still need to be reminded. Also, plant some peas in pots and keep in a sheltered spot as it is so worth trying to get them to grow early . Eat them straight off the plant – they are truly lovely.

Before the gardening season takes off, there's lots to get ready. Seed trays and pots need to be cleaned, make sure all hand tools are fit for purpose, mowers need to be serviced and if you have a greenhouse it needs to be cleaned with disinfectant.

Did you get an Amaryllis at Christmas? If so when flowers start to fade cut them off but leave the stalk and leaves. Feed and water sparingly and when foliage has died back keep in a cool place ready for next year.

One last thing, I recently put some chive seeds in a pot, sealed in a clear plastic bag, on the kitchen windowsill and they were up in 8 days.

 

Happy gardening!

 

 

Spring Preparations

 

Spells of colder weather and heavy rain have limited our activities but now that Spring is on the way there is masses to do. By the time this issue is out we will have installed two benches and a noticeboard and bee hotel down at Goldsland Farm. Next another orchard which will make it 5 that we have created. Many of the fruit trees are varieties we have not planted before such as Gabalva and we have arranged for some Perry Pear varieties to be specially grafted which will be available in the Autumn. Another apple variety is called Holstein which is very appropriate as it is the UK's highest yielding type of cattle in terms of milk. We are planting up a pond on the way to Wenvoe Golf Course and this includes a water lily whose flower is the emblem of Friesia – you have probably heard of Friesian cattle as well.

It is not too late to be putting up bird boxes. You can make them yourself but there are perfectly good robust, wooden ones in the cheaper 'pound' shops from around £2.99. Check the advice on websites such as the RSPB's as to where to site them to avoid too much heat from the sun or the ubiquitous cats. We have been putting up bird and bat boxes along with the smaller bug hotels which can also be purchased very cheaply at the discount stores. The insect homes need full sun so aim for south-facing positions. If you have the odd hour to spare or would like to get children you know closer to nature why not get in touch with us. Next month there will be details on our Easter Trail for this year.

 

 

 

AGM and The Wild Orchard

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We held our 10th AGM in January with 28 attending – not many organisations get such a good turnout. However we still need practical help from people who might be able to contribute the odd hour here and there. So if part of your New Year's resolution is to get fitter and healthier and help to Save the Planet, do get in touch. Absolutely no experience necessary.

 

 

 

 

Much of our work in January was concentrated on the Wild Orchard – so where and what is it? This orchard runs along the noticeboard 2edge of a field at the eastern edge of St Lythans. It is a public footpath that runs from the road between Twyn yr Odyn and St Lythans (metal kissing gate by metal gate and ST 1115/7324 if you have a GPS) and eventually reaches another footpath which connects Wenvoe Woods and St Lythans Church. From the road, walk through one field, over a stile and the orchard starts just beyond this point. It is a linear orchard running along the edge of the field and currently has around 60 trees planted, marked with bamboo canes. There is a bench and noticeboard.orchard

 

 

 

The orchard is called 'Wild' because all the trees are of native fruit, including Crab-apple, Wild Pear, Wild Plum, Wild Cherry, Bird Cherry, Bullace, Cherry Plum, Chequers Tree and Hazel. We are gradually introducing a labelling code where each bamboo cane will have a colour tape corresponding to the type of tree and the code is on a notice on the noticeboard. The canes are there so that we can find the trees throughout the year – there are some vigorous nettles growing here and in the past we have lost some of the shorter trees in the vegetation. Hopeful-ly we now have it under control. The public footpath is becoming more and more popular with walkers and it is nice to see the bench being used regularly

 

 

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The Final Garden Notes

 

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welliesIt’s never easy for our birds to find all the right nutrition they need and it’s even more difficult in the cold days of winter and early spring. It’s up to us to help out by making sure we always provide nourishment and water, and we’ll be rewarded by regular visits, not only from birds which are very familiar to us, but some we don’t see that often. Recent visitors to our garden have been a nuthatch, flocks of long tailed tits and even a rare visit from a thrush.

Garden centres provide a variety of choice bird food from seed to peanuts to dried mealy worms, the latter so loved by robins, but buying these in large quantities can prove expensive, so why not investigate your own larder to see what you can utilise to supplement what you have to buy, such as the afore mentioned products? I can tell you not much goes to waste in our kitchen. If we think it’s OK for the birds we save it and the list is endless and most of it is leftover- cheese, bacon fat, biscuit crumbs, bread, cooked pasta, grapes, apples etc. Before fat balls were on the market we even made our own bird cake – oats, cereal, sultanas, currants, nuts, bound together with melted fat and cut up when solidified. If you grow sunflowers, save the dead heads to hang in from a branch. They don’t look very attractive but the seeds are full of valuable nutrition and the birds love them.

Does anyone remember a pheasant which was a regular visitor to gardens on Walston Road many years ago? We used to put out peanuts for him and eventually he became quite used to us and would feed from our hands and we grew quite used to seeing him around.

This is my final piece in its present form, having provided the magazine with gardening notes since it was started, during which time many aspects of gardening have been covered, and I feel I have very little else to say. However if someone would like to take over from me, please get in touch with the editors.

 

In the meantime, if any reader has a gardening question let me know through What’s On and I’ll do my best to give you an answer.

 

From the Editor

Rumor has it that someone has volunteered to step into Trevor's Wellingtons.   Watch this space for when Trevor's Garden may morph into The Wenvoe Garden Guru

 

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Snails, Slugs and a Very Rare Tree

 

 

Snails and slugs

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Snails and slugs may not quite get the pulse racing like Cheetas and Gazelles but they are a lot more practically useful in and around the Parish. Without them and the other small denizens that munch their way through fallen leaves and other vegetation we would soon be disappearing under a mountain of debris. Those who have visited Molluscopolis on the Upper Orchid Field may have learned a bit about the variety of different snails you can find here but a relatively new one is the Girdled Snail. SEWBREC, who record all wildlife sightings for South East Wales, this month asked people to look out for the Girdled Snail as they had very few records for the whole of Wales. This is a Mediterranean species, first noted in Britain (Devon) in 1950 but spreading steadily up the country. It is usually found in gardens and waste ground and is very easy to identify as it has a distinctive pale -coloured girdle or keel around its middle. Within a couple of hours we found the one shown in the photo which was perched on a plastic composter, just waiting to be recorded. The chances are there will be several hundred in Wenvoe so, gardeners in particular, look out for them and, if you find them let the Wildlife Group know.

The Service Treeservice tree

The Upper Orchid Field has been host to a very rare tree, Sorbus domestica, commonly known as The Service Tree. It grows in a few locations in South Wales and ours fell off the cliffs near Fontygary and was spotted on the shoreline. It was replanted in our field but has never been very happy as the site is both damper and shadier that it would ideally want so it is heading back to a safe location near Fontygary where hopefully it can prosper and reproduce. We still hope that in the future we will be able to provide a home for a a couple of these in a suitable location so that we can help consolidate and expand the population. We have already planted in the Upper Orchid Field, the Wild Orchard and the Community Orchard a close relative Sorbus torminalis, The Chequers Tree, the fruit of which was once used in brewing and which many pubs are names after.

 

 

 

 

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Peregrine Falcon Order

 

 

The Destruction of Peregrine Falcon Order

 

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falcon02In 1940 the Government issued a Destruction of Peregrine Falcon Order because this most successful of predators was taking out the pigeons that were being used by bomber command if the crews had to bail out in order to get a message back with their location. Around 200,000 pigeons were supplied by private breeders as message carriers.but maybe 600 peregrines were killed as a result of the order. In areas like Cornwall and Devon peregrines were almost completely wiped out. By the 1960s pigeon-fanciers in South Wales were complaining that the peregrines were causing major losses but in the investigation that followed it was found that there had been a massive decline in the numbers of this falcon and this was primarily down to the use of DDT. In 1962 they reached a low point with only 350 pairs left in Britain. Our ancestors revered the falcon – the male was known as a Tiercel from the French for 'la tierce' as it is a third smaller than the female. They would have been horrified to hear how we have been persecuting a bird that has been descibed as the Ferrari of the bird world, 'our most splendid bird of prey' and 'of all wild creatures the peregrine is the most truly symbolic of freedom'. Fortunately egg collecting became illegal from the 1960s and persecuting the birds is illegal. That however does not stop it being shot and poisoned as regular reports of killed birds appear in the newspapers. Last year a Peregrine nesting on the roof of the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust's headquarters building was shot and killed. But they are resilient birds and it is wonderful to be able to publish this photo of a peregrine taken in the parish of Wenvoe in late November.

 

 

 

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Keep Wales Tidy Awards

 

 

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WWGWe were runners up in the Biodiversity category of the all-Wales Keep Wales Tidy awards. This is the second year we have been shortlisted and we shall enter a different project again next year in the hope that we make it to the top spot. Thank you to everyone who voted for us at Tescos. Again we did not make it to first place but the substantial grant involved will enable us to make significant progress on our wildlife initiatives down at Goldsland Farm. We have had two school visits during December. The first involved Year 11s from Michaelston College who really got stuck in to the Community Orchard, spreading compost, planting a cherry tree and taking cuttings of Guelder Rose. A number of them expressed a wish to return and we shall be delighted to have them. Younger children from Wenvoe Primary School also had a short walk, gathering holly, ivy and other bits for decorations and hopefully learning something along the way.

 

 

 

 

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Preparing For Winter

 

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What an autumn it’s been, so mild with some days warmer and sunnier than many summer days. As I write this piece in mid November, the trees have yet to shed half their leaves and throughout the land the autumn colours have been spectacular, notably the maples of which there are several in the village.

I have only just emptied our containers and dug over the garden beds and really the geraniums and bedding begonias were in such good condition, they could have gone on until the end of the month. However the time is right for bringing my wallflowers down from my allotment for planting out in the garden and the winter bedding is ready and waiting in the greenhouse, to fill pots and containers. If you plan to fill your containers with bulbs, shrubs and other permanent plants, make sure water can pass through easily as good drainage is doubly important in winter. Clear any blockages in the pots and water should drain through readily. Ants and worms nesting under container bases can block holes but pots can be raised on broken pieces of tile or even half bricks.

I’ve been spending some time on my allotment in this fine weather, pacing myself with my digging – just a half hour at a time and not going mad as I used to do. I like to dig. I get the same satisfaction from the job as my dad used to do. I’ve got a rotavator but I still like to dig.

I was asked how long leeks, carrots and parsnips could be left in the ground. Leeks are winter-proof and can be left in the ground and lifted as required as can carrots and parsnips but these will begin to deteriorate after January if the tops begin to grow again.

Do you really want a poinsettia in mid- October which is when they’ve appeared in supermarkets this year? It wouldn’t do for us. We’re lucky if this plant lasts through December and rarely into the New Year, so we’ve admitted defeat and we now enjoy them in other folks’ homes.

So to all readers of What’s On I hope you have 

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The Harlequin Ladybird,

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dec-harlequin-nnNovember in the parish saw an invasion although you might not have noticed it. The Harlequin Ladybird, which only arrived in Britain in 2004, is now well-established over most of Britain, even having been spotted as far north as the Shetlands. Less common in Scotland and North and Mid Wales it is very common in South Wales and during November would have found its way into many buildings if a window was left open. Whilst they are generally harmless to humans they are a major threat to our native species. With huge appetites, once they have run out of aphids to eat they move on to the eggs and larvae of other ladybirds as well as moths and butterflies. In the 1980s it was introduced to North America to help to control aphids on crops but quickly became the dominant species. Its introduction here was probably accidental. It took the Grey Squirrel 100 years to colonise Britain, the Harlequin just 10. Whilst they are bigger than our native ladybirds they come in a huge range of colours and patterns, the one featured in the photo being a common form spotted in both the Village Hall and Community Centre last month. You can help by reporting sightings to the Ladybird Survey – http://www.harlequin-survey.org/ – where you will find a lot more information on what they look like and where they have been seen.

 

 

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Green Flag Awards

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With Christmas and New Year imminent, this is an opportunity to reflect on what has been achieved this year. We managed 3 Green Flag awards, the only village in Wales to get three and one of these was the first Green Flag to be achieved on a working farm. We now have 7 sites – one for every day of the week consisting of one meadow, 4 orchards, one woodland and one farm. We managed to obtain funding from BiffaAward, Waitrose, Nationwide and Tescos although we are still awaiting payment from one company who agreed the funding in June.

We have again been short-listed for a Biodiversity award, one of only 3 in Wales. On the negative side the Vale of Glamorgan Council still has no money to cut the Upper Orchid Field so we continue to rely on help from local farmers or landowners to prevent the meadow reverting to scrub. The loss of trees in and around the village is disappointing and we have failed to get mistletoe to grow (but will keep trying!). On the plus side we are starting to see a modest fruit crop with some unusual ones such as Quince fruiting for the first time. Our wildflower planting has been well-received and is why we have been short-listed for a biodiversity award.

 

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pete_plantingWe continue to give talks, lead walks and involve local schools. 2017 is going to be just as busy so if you have any spare time and would like to get involved, please get in touch. Absolutely no experience necessary.

 

 

 

 

A big thank you and

Happy Christmas to all our supporters.

 

 

 

 

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