Month: February 2022

February Tips From the Experts

 

THE VILLAGE GARDENER

Must Do Gardening Tips for December

February tips from Sharon at British Soil.

  • Cut down deciduous grasses left standing over Winter.
  • Cut back late flowering clematis.
  • If you need to move deciduous shrubs, then now is the time.
  • Cut back elder and buddleia
  • Give Winter flowering heathers a light trim, being careful not to cut into the old wood stems.

 

Advice from Barry Harper of Twyn allotments.

  • Chit early potatoes.
  • Plant rhubarb crowns in rich soil.
  • Cover strawberry plants with fleece or cloches to give them a good start.
  • Prepare beds for sowing by weeding. Then cover soil with garden compost.
  • Check what the other allotment folk are up to, so you don’t miss out.

 

There are countless magazines, radio and television programmes offering advice on what we ought to be doing in the garden in any given week. We need to be checking the local weather forecast before we start planting. There can be as much as four weeks between planting times between the southeast of England and the Scottish Highlands. Plants grown under nursery conditions will not take kindly to being put out in cold wet weather. Unless you can take care of the plants you see early in the season looking very inviting in neat rows on the garden centre shelves, please wait until clement weather can give them a good start.

The really warm weather in December has kept the grass growing as well as weeds and has also brought on daffodils early. During January the cyclamen and pansies were being pushed out by overzealous, under planted bulbs and corms. The Autumn sown sweet peas have put on a lot of growth and need the tips taken out to promote new side shoots. Repotting will help to give the roots space to grow.

Wisteria should have its Winter prune now to make sure it flowers well. Cut the shoots back to three or four buds but be careful to leave the main frame alone. Mahonia can be cut back now as the flowers fade. If the shrub has a good shape about it just remove the flower spikes. If it’s looking straggly you can prune it hard, and it will come back strongly.

The wet weather in late Winter will make greenhouses damp, the lack of sun to dry the air out can bring about grey mould which can do serious damage to over wintering plants. On milder days open doors and windows, check the leaves of plants and remove damaged ones. If some plants are badly infected remove the whole plant to the outside.

Allotment and veg gardeners have been troubled with potato blight over the last couple of years. It is very difficult to control but there are some preventative measures to take. One thing which can help is to grow early varieties such as Charlotte and Anya. Sarpo potatoes have a good resistance to blight. Experienced gardeners always leave a bigger gap between the tubers when planting as an increased air flow when plants are maturing helps enormously in blight prevention. If you grow potatoes in containers make sure you clean them out and disinfect to stop any infection and change the compost. Those gardeners who planted broad beans in the Autumn have seen a lot of growth due to mild conditions, which means they will need support.

Take care and enjoy your gardening

 

 

Advent Windows Great Success

ADVENT WINDOWS

A St. Mary’s initiative for the whole community

Wenvoe Advent Windows 2021 was a great success. This is the second year residents volunteered to decorate a window on a given date in Advent, so that a new window was lit up each night from 1st to 24th December.

There were different themes including Santa’s workshop which opened the windows on 1st and other Santa scenes, snowmen, angels, nativity scenes, winter wonderlands, mousemas! village panoramas, stars, a story of a Christmas Mouse in the telephone box and even a portrayal of the film ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’. Gwenfo School took an active part in providing 2 displays. The first included life size reindeers pulling Santa’s sleigh at the school and then a silhouette of the Nativity scene in the Church grounds on Christmas Eve. At this final lighting up we took the opportunity to invite children and their families to join us in singing carols to herald in Christmas Eve. Fortunately the rain that had been incessant all day stopped and it was a magical moment as families gathered with torches to see the nativity and to sing together.

Many thanks to all those who took part. There were many comments about ‘what I would do differently next year’ or ‘I have got a new idea for next year’. We wait to see what 2022 brings!

Jude Billingham

 

 

The Trouble With February

THE TROUBLE WITH FEBRUARY

February has long been at the centre of attempts to create a workable calendar. The fact it has 28 days can be traced back to ancient Rome. The Roman’s first lunar calendar was just 10 months long and did not even have a January or February, because the Romans didn’t think the period was important because it had nothing to do with harvesting. Eventually, Rome’s first king, Numa Pompilius (753–673 BC), decided to create a new calendar based on lunar cycles. This calendar was based on a 355 day year and introduced two new additional months – January and February. Even numbers were considered unlucky but if the new calendar was to work then one month would have to have an even number of days. February was chosen and given 28 days, all the rest had 29 or 31. The new calendar was constantly undermined by priests who had the power to remove a month from the calendar year. If they didn’t like someone elected to office the priests would shorten his term by leaving a month out!

To sort out the mess, in 45BC, Julius Caesar commissioned an expert to create a sun-based calendar similar to the one the Egyptians used. The Julian Calendar added a little more than 10 days to each year, making each month 30 or 31 days long, except for February left with 28 days. However every four years, now known as a ‘leap year’, February was given an extra day. Caesar was delighted. Not only was the new calendar named after him, but he chose to name July after himself as well. Not to be outdone, on becoming emperor Augustus Caesar named August.

By the 16th century, because the earth does not travel around the sun in exactly 365.25 days, Caesar’s calendar got way out of sync. To solve the problem, Pope Gregory VIII introduced the Gregorian calendar in 1582. This calendar got things in sync again but controversially involved moving dates up 10 days.

In 1752 there was widespread opposition to plans to bring our calendar in line with that of Europe. Ordinary people were alarmed by the changes to festivals, Saints days, birthdays and the dates of wage payments and trading contracts. Some came to the conclusion that the government were stealing 11 days from their lives. There followed the so called ‘Calendar Riots’ with popular cries of ‘Give us our eleven days back’ by protesters.

An Act of Parliament implemented calendar reform on Wednesday 2nd September, 1752, with the next day declared to be Thursday September 14th. The new calendar meant that New Year’s Day, previously on March 25th, now fell on January 1st. Interestingly, to avoid losing 11 days of tax revenue, the official start of the new tax year was changed to 5th April. A further change, prompted by a small leap year issue, was made in 1800, moving the date to 6th April where it remains today.

Not everyone was unhappy about the introduction of the new Gregorian calendar. According to one tale, a certain William Willett, keen on a joke, wagered that he could dance non-stop for 12 days and 12 nights. On the evening of September 2nd 1752, he started to jig around the village and continued all through the night. The next morning, September 14th by the new calendar, he stopped dancing and claimed his bets!

 

 

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