GARDENING HINTS August/September 2024
What a strange gardening year it has been. The rain…. The low light levels…The cold! Still on the positive side our large dipping tank at the end of the greenhouse has been full to overflowing all year. Everything looks beautifully green. I think having too much water is probably better than not having enough.
A year ago in this month’s entry for the Bridge, I first mentioned my own problem with the box moth. Since then, I have gone down the organic route and put up two box moth traps containing some sort of sticky pheromone paper and the good news is that I have caught some – they are quite attractive small moths – white with a black edge to the wings. The down side is that there have been a few casualties of other insects. This pheromone is supposed to only lure the male moth to it, and I do not understand why a harvestman or two, and some other very small bugs were tempted into the trap as well. Anyway the hedge survives to live another year.
The Gardening Club went on a visit to Broughton Grange in Oxfordshire recently and in one section of the garden there all the box hedging has been removed and replaced with another small evergreen. And have you noticed that Hillier’s have a big supply of little clippable topiary shrubs available, but no box now?
Meanwhile our wild flower lawn/meadow goes from strength to strength. The seeds were scattered on it by my grandchildren 5 years ago (a mix from the Cotswold Seed company in Moreton in Marsh). The first year nothing much happened and I was very disappointed. I think that I added a bit more yellow rattle seed and that certainly came up the next year with rather a lot of plantain and a scattering of oxeye daisies and I still wasn’t very impressed. The following year it was plantain and an explosion of oxeye daisies – so many that I was fearful that they would take over and wondered whether I should remove some. I asked a gardening guru and he said ‘Don’t worry everything will find its level.’ He was right. I added some more knapweed plug plants and cowslip seeds. This year it has been magnificent with lots more knapweed, bird’s foot trefoil, lady’s bedstraw, pyramidal orchid count up from two to three and a smattering of a little orange daisy, common name fox and cubs. I’d still like more campion but I’m very happy.
But where are all the bees, butterflies and buzzing insects that these flowers are for?? Almost no bee activity at all which is very worrying. Do tell me that I am just being pessimistic and wrong Further proof that the world is going completely haywire- as I write this in mid-July we have blackberries ripening