Category: Nature

It’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

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 

Autumn is well and truly here with trees and shrubs showing full autumn colour. What a good year it’s been for garden bedding plants of all varieties, but especially geraniums, and the various kinds of begonias. I grow both bedding varieties and the big showy ones and the latter have been huge this year, so much so that the weight of the flowers have often caused the patio pats to keel over in a bit of wind.

If you have a greenhouse now is the time to pot up plants you want to overwinter. They will survive quite low temperatures providing the compost is kept fairly dry.

Clear out greenhouses of tomatoes etc and wash down glass and glazing bars with ordinary household disinfectant.

Pot up spring bulbs to provide early flowers for next year.

On the allotment, take down bean sticks to store away for next year. Rough dig over bare ground and bury weeds, but remove perennial weeds such as docks, thistles and bindweed.

Sow autumn varieties of broad beans at least 3-4ins deep and protect rows to keep pigeons away. Thin out branches on blackcurrant bushes, taking out the dead wood. Remove blackberry canes that have fruited and tie in the long new shoots which will bear next year’s crop. Gooseberry bushes need very little pruning. Just remove some of the old wood.

Finally autumn is here and the leaves are falling. Don’t waste them! Leaf mould made from decomposed leaves is a great potting compost, soil improver and mulch Collect and store them in bin bags and leave to rot down. Chop them down and water first to speed things up.