|
|
|
|||||
|
||||||
|
|
| |||||||||||||||
|
What an incredibly warm October we had. The lawn has kept on growing and growing, whereas I'd normally be expecting to give it its last cut for the year sometime last month when it was dry enough, instead I've been mowing it every week as I do through the summer. My summer half hardy plants have been going strong for much longer than normal too, we haven't had a frost in Cambridgeshire to kill anything off directly yet, though various varieties have been flagging and I've removed them as they do so. The Petunias have gone, as have the Lobelias. My bright blue Morning Glory, while still producing flower buds profusely fails to open them properly and they wilt as so many unwanted miniature swirly ice-cream cones. The Geraniums however are hanging on there and still providing a good degree of very welcome late colour. It's making it all the more difficult to make me plant the spring bulbs that I still have to do. Most of them are in now - mainly in containers - but I still have some that need to be planted and I'm determined to get them in instead of like often happens, come the spring I discover a poor neglected bag of some bulbs or other that are doing their best despite being in a plastic bag in the shed - Don't let it happen to you!
The replacement looks rather forlorn at the moment at a fraction of the size of the one that's gone. It'll more than earn its keep however as it'll be a far better garden plant than its predecessor and hopefully it's ability to take over new territories will be greatly diminished!
If you can though, it's a great way to deal with at least some of your fallen leaves. You need a rotary mower with a grass box and you'll end up emptying the box about 3-4 times more often than normal. Put the grass box on and set the blades to a fairly high setting, it's very satisfying to do as well, a bit like vacuuming the lawn clean.
The elbow power approach with rake is quieter and gives me some exercise that I just don't get enough of - it's also better for the environment but in my case that is an accidental extra rather than the reason I do it. Armed with a spring tined rake (like in the picture above) sweep across the lawn pulling the leaves together in piles that center in circles the radius of the rake handle plus an arm length wide. It's a good idea to rake from alternate sides, left then right so you don't get too tired too soon or end up like Popeye from one side and Olive Oyl on the other. This method also has the advantage that the lawn gets some degree of scarifying if you didn't do that last month - and the added grass, moss and thatch pulled up adds nitrogen and so helps the leaves to rot down all the better in the way that using the lawnmower to mix clippings does. Don't underestimate the amount of effort this involves, it's a pretty good work out and will need to be repeated a few times before the end of the month.
Step one is to get rid of last years leaves if still have them sitting about - Many people regard a compost heap as somewhere you dump stuff ad infinitum without ever using what is made. If this is you, then the top 1/2 or 1/3rd depending on how old it is will still need to stay where it is to rot down, so lift this off to the side and dig into the rotted stuff underneath (no it's not horrible! stop making excuses) it should be dark and reasonably crumbly. Fork it into a wheelbarrow and spread it on the soil around your plants at least 3 inches deep near the base and for about 6-12" radius from the stem. It will soon get spread around by birds and worms and dragged down into the soil to add to the humous content of the soil. Even better if you feel like it is to fork it lightly into the top 3-4" of soil. Fork back the top part that you moved to the side and set up a second compost heap alongside so it doesn't happen again, this time you'll have a maturing heap and an adding-to heap. The ideal thing to do with fallen leaves is to shred them and compost them properly like you would with any garden waste. Ordinary garden shredders are able to chew the leaves up (which is the best way to get them to rot down) but have a tendency to get clogged if the leaves are wet or if you try to put too much in at any one time. There's a product I came across recently that seems to only be available in the US at the moment that should solve the problem admirably. A shredder but with a nylon-line "blade" like a nylon-line strimmer upside down and in a box. Another possibility that I've heard suggested but not tried (I don't have a strimmer) is to put the leaves in a large garden waste bucket and shred them with an ordinary strimmer - though my guess is that it's one of great in theory, but virtually untried in practise ideas you hear. Cutting leaves at least once helps the decomposers to get in and start to break them down faster. Leaves that are intact are much slower to rot (like they are on the tree). It depends on what volume of leaves
you have to deal with, but I try to mix them in with other softer plant material
where possible. How fast things rot down depends on a number of factors, one key
factor is the carbon:nitrogen ratio of the mix. Tree leaves have more carbon and
less nitrogen than is ideal, so adding lawn
mowings - a good source of nitrogen, or other green material, weeds are fine,
helps redress the balance. You
could also add a compost accelerator, though I don't, or pee on the heap
regularly, which
I do.
The sides of the heap should be closed but ventilated, I use
pieces of ply taken from old furniture (chipboard will even do, but only lasts a
couple of years before it falls to bits) with 1" diameter holes drilled at 6" intervals.
The top should be covered too, very important this, more so than the sides. Otherwise
the heap either dries out or gets too wet and cold from rain. If the top can be
insulated as well then all the better, old carpet (preferably synthetic so it
doesn't rot itself) folded
over is ideal. If you really do have vast amounts of leaves, and a paucity of old furniture,
then square pens made from a sturdy fence post (2x2" minimum) at each corner
with sides of chicken wire are a good way of getting extra capacity quickly. But
any of the other tricks you can do that I'm suggesting here will help, you
really don't want unrotted leaves sitting around more than one year, when the
next lot arrives!
Whatever you do, please don't burn the leaves (unless they're badly diseased) many local councils have recycling schemes for garden
waste these days where you can take them.
They need to planted
as soon as possible after receiving them, keep the roots moist and covered if this
is not immediately possible with damp sacking or similar. Heeling-in in soil
is the best solution if there is to be any greater delay than a few days, the trees/shrubs
are "planted" at an angle of about 30-45 degrees and have their roots covered. If
you have no room to do this, damp sharp sand will do, but needs to be checked for
drying out. Planting a bare-rooted
tree or shrub is harder work than a container grown plant as the root spread is
greater ( =better) so the hole has to be bigger ( =harder work to dig). Mix plenty of organic matter
into the soil and make sure the soil is trod down well to avoid air-pockets. A thorough
watering helps a lot too, not because the plant will need a drink, but to settle
the soil around the roots. Make sure you plant
at the right depth, a line of lighter stem colour above the roots should indicate
the previous planting depth. Don't try to cut corners by having the plant sticking
out a bit, your tree or shrub is likely to be there for decades, surely it's worth
an extra 15 minutes of your time at planting to ensure it does as well as possible?
Tell yourself it's another 15 minutes worth of "reps" in your own personal gym. Give the tree a good
stake to support it initially and make sure the stake is planted well so it supports
the tree and not the other way round! The purpose of the stake is to stop the roots
from being rocked by the wind until they can establish and anchor themselves.
If you really don't have any room to store it under cover, then at least move it off the grass so the legs aren't wet, propped up against the house / shed etc. out of the way will reduce the amount of rain falling on it. A large plastic sheet or purpose-made cover works well too. Plastic garden furniture benefits from a bit of care, keeping it out of the weather will help keep it cleaner. Whatever you do, don't leave furniture on the lawn over the winter, you'll unlikely to move it much and at the very least, the grass under it will be shaded and will suffer.
Stake if necessary to prevent the wind from rocking the roots until the plant gets established. A short stout stake just a foot or two high is better than a tall one that is tied to the tree at 4 or 5 feet above the ground. The point of staking is to prevent wind-rock of the roots.
It's also a useful thing to do with what remains in your compost heaps after the summer to make room for all the autumn leaves and the results of the tidy-up.
Top Selling Garden Tools
|
|
I did something very brave
this month, another of my mature plant replacements. This time it was of a large
(huge in fact) lavender near to the front door. It was ok, but not a very good
variety, far more foliage than flowers. Earlier this year I bought a replacement
that I planted into a much bigger container to grow on so it was a better size
when replacing the existing one. There were some flowers on this replacement, so
I cut them off to encourage it to put energy into leaves and roots instead. As a
testament I suppose to how good a flowering variety it is, it immediately
replaced all the removed flowers without any other growth! If I'd done that to
the existing plant that would have been it until next year. Anyway it did grow
on pretty well and so I set about taking the old one out. Not a difficult job
really, just surprising at how vast it had become, it covered around 12 square
feet much of which was growing over the drive-way. It
seems that as the braches grew horizontally, they started to trap dead leaves
and other stuff so making it's own soil, so by the time I removed it, much of
that area had 1-2" depth of soil and composted leaves into which all the
horizontal branches were rooting. Quite a fascinating demonstration of how
plants can take advantage of a small rooting space and then make their own
growth medium to spread. It also meant yet another job for me to clean around the edges of
this area and return it to the native driveway.
