Month: May 2024

The Soil Is Now Warm Enough

THE VILLAGE GARDENER

The Soil Is Now Warm Enough

Whilst weeding the flower beds, a couple of passers-by advised me to let the dandelions flower as they were a good early source of nectar for pollinators. These pretty yellow flowers seem to turn into seed clocks in a matter of minutes, you would need to watch them like a hawk if you don’t want your garden covered in them by the end of the season. These broad-leaved weeds smother everything around them. Just try digging them up, it’s nearly impossible, especially when they get established. Your neighbours will not thank you for spreading these across their borders. A few years ago, the authorities dug up 12,000 sq. metres of verge around Wenvoe, where weeds (wildflowers) were in their element.

Slugs are out in force now so protect the young shoots of hostas, lupins and delphiniums. Some of the new shoots of delphiniums and lupins can be cut off at the base, then potted up and put in a plastic bag, these Basel cuttings root easily and are a great way of getting more plants at little cost. The new leaves of roses will benefit from a fungicide spray now to prevent black spot and rust, before it can get established. If you follow the advice given by tv gardeners to wait until April before cutting hydrangeas back, they will give a better display. Cut them back to a new shoot.

This month the people at Greenmoor nurseries will be planting up their hanging baskets. These will stay undercover until established. Don’t put these outside until late May at the earliest, or they will go back and not give their best. As with potted up plants they will need a regular feed and consistent watering throughout the season, along with deadheading to keep them flowering.

And so it begins, the annual fight at the allotments between man and beast. This spectacle goes on until the end of the season. The young plants have been nurtured by the growers then planted in the hope of providing produce. On the other side we have the foe – slugs, snails, mice, rabbits and birds all vying for their bit. Runner beans are one of the favourites of both man and beasts, we like them in a dish smothered in butter, but the pests love them as they come out of the soil. Onion sets planted in neat rows are scattered about by the birds looking to see what’s underneath. There is still time to plant more peas to make sure you get at least some to cook as the mice will have decimated the first planting. Carrots planted earlier to avoid the carrot root fly need to be thinned out, allowing those remaining to grow on so the rabbits can have their fill.

Remember don’t be greedy when planting potatoes, it’s tempting to cram them in. If you do there will be no air flow between the foliage, and they will be more susceptible to blight.

Next month the Tuckers Spring plant sale will take place at the Church Hall on 11th May so if you have some extra plants you’d like to sell, this would be a good opportunity. There will be a raffle with proceeds going to the Wenvoe Wildlife Group and homemade cakes sold by the slice to take away or enjoy with a cup of tea or coffee. See you there.

Take care and happy gardening

 

THE VILLAGE GARDENER

 

4,000 Holes In Blackburn, One Or Two In Wenvoe

4,000 Holes In Blackburn, Lancashire And One Or Two In Wenvoe

In the Daily Mail on 17 January 1967, the Beatles famously found their inspiration for the Sgt. Pepper track ‘A Day in the Life.’ John Lennon’s lyrics repeated an article’s claim that there were ‘4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire.’ It went on to speculate that if Blackburn was typical there would be over 2 million potholes in Britain’s roads. One suspects today the total would be much higher.

It is estimated that, on average, there are about six potholes per mile in council-controlled roads in England and Wales. The RAC ‘Pothole Index’ suggests that motorists are now twice as likely to break down as a result of wear caused by potholes than they were 17 years ago.

No one actually seems to know where the term pot- holes comes from. One source attributes it to time when potters dug holes in Roman roads to steal the clay they were made with. Today we can firmly blame bad weather and heavy traffic for so many potholes. It is of course, the same the world over. And pot holes are dangerous. ‘India Today’ reported in 2018 that over 9,300 people had been killed and nearly 25,000 were injured in road accidents caused by potholes; a greater a danger they said, than terror attacks.

Meanwhile, back in Preston, Lancashire (and just down the road from Blackburn) an inquest found a pothole to have been the major cause of the death of a cyclist in January 2023. Interestingly, last year, The South Wales Argus reported the results of a Freedom of Information Request which revealed that the Welsh Government had paid out a massive £1,188,565.25 to an anonymous claimant for a ‘pothole-caused personal injury’ which took place four years earlier.

Citizens have become increasingly innovative in drawing attention to the problem. Recently on the streets around Bury and Ramsbottom, near Manchester, one man employed crudely drawn male genitalia in a bid to attract the local council’s attention to pot-holes. Within 48 hours, many had been filled. Back in India, fed up with the authorities failure to repair a pothole in the middle of a main road in north Banga-lore, artist Baadal Nanjundaswamy created an extremely lifelike sculpture of a huge crocodile and painted the area around it green to make it look like a pond. The locals were startled and the pot hole soon fixed!

So what about the Vale of Glamorgan? In March 2021, the Welsh Government announced £12 million extra funding to help improve the condition of our roads. You can report potholes to the Vale by completing a simple online form. To qualify for repair the pothole must extend in any direction by just over the size of a sheet of A4 paper. If they fit the criteria, the Vale target is, if possible, to fix all reported potholes within 28 working days. Potholes that are identified in a high risk area are repaired within 24 hours. Finally though, the Vale have a word of warning for us……’please don’t measure potholes, it is dangerous.’

 

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