Veg Plotting

What a quiet spring we had pest-wise here at VP Gardens , apart from hordes of aphids which obviously like the dry sunny weather we've had. Thank goodness I've learned patience over the years to leave them and sure enough the small garden birds targeted the roses and carried off beak fulls to feed their young voraciously calling for attention at the bottom of the garden. Elsewhere, plentiful ladybird larvae cleared the blackfly from my dahlias in a matter of days. The one pictured above has grown large and fat on what was on offer and is ready to pupate and transform itself into the adults we love to see. Now we're in June - and with a fairly reasonable rainfall - other pests have arrived in droves to be dealt with. For some strange reason I only ever find rose sawfly caterpillars on my 'Kew Gardens' rose, perhaps its position in the middle of the garden is a favourable to the unseen incoming adults? Luckily, they readily show themselves (as shown above) when I do a...

Houseplants are trendy. Houseplants are cool. And who wouldn't be tempted by this spectacular  Alocasia x amazonica  (aka Amazonian elephant's ear) when it's going for a song at their local supermarket? Not I for one. Luckily I knew what I was getting as I lust after them whenever I see them at a show or in a heated glasshouse. Why lucky? Because there was no care label anywhere to be seen and most of the information out there rates these as Difficult. Later, I checked at several such outlets, then my local DIY store and found exactly the same situation: tons of attractive and tempting houseplants, succulents and cacti... all with zero information to tell the buyer what they are and what to do with them. In this instance the amazonica in the name is the clue. This is a plant that likes plenty of humidity and warmth. It needs rainwater instead of my limy tapwater and requires misting every day. It's currently around 10 inches in height, so I need to prepare my...

Chippenham lost one of its iconic buildings yesterday, known locally as the White House. This was the view of it from the end of the platform at the railway station. It was part of the Westinghouse  (then Invensys then Siemens) site where NAH worked, and I always looked out for it coming home on the train from Swindon or London. Not only did the White House welcome me home, it was my signal to get up and leave the train. A few weeks ago I arrived ultra early for a train one Saturday morning and knowing of the White House's imminent demise, I decided to have a final look. The site is being cleared for redevelopment and I've never understood why this building couldn't be incorporated into the housing scheme set to replace it. There is nothing quite like it in the rest of Chippenham and I'm sure there was scope for conversion into apartments. Here's the full view of the building. As you can see its final incarnation was as a furniture store. This moved som...

As well as the welcome garden visitors I blogged about on Monday , I also spotted this unusual looking ladybird on my Knautia 'Red Ensign'. I thought it might be the dreaded harlequin ladybird, but was reassured to find a similar looking one in a downloadable ID guide ; our native 2 spot ladybird also has a reversed red on black form. However, Dave Kilbey on Twitter told me: @Malvernmeet @KellyTunley @ChippenhamNow It is a harlequin (alas). Form conspicua. They can be quite variable in size. — Dave Kilbey (@kilbey252) July 13, 2015 He went on to say: @Malvernmeet @KellyTunley @ChippenhamNow if you like your ladybirds we have an app to help ID and record them - http://t.co/8CtsPixYdD . — Dave Kilbey (@kilbey252) July 13, 2015 The App is available for both android and iPhone versions and there's also an online form available for your observations if you don't have a smartphone. The Harlequin Ladybird Survey website is also a mine of useful in...

Christmas is usually a time when unexpected, random things happen. Our share for this year occurred at 3.15pm yesterday afternoon when one of ash trees on the public land next door decided to hop over the fence for a visit. Ironically, it was probably the last huge gust of yesterday's storm which brought it down. I heard a loud crack and then saw what at first looked like part of the roof falling past our bedroom window. It turned out to be the top of the tree brushing against the house on its way down. We were very lucky as there's only minor damage - just a small branch stuck in the gutter, plus my apple tree in the pot next to the house is no more. The council's website says they'll respond to this within 5 working days. In view of the strength of yesterday's storm I suspect we'll be quite a way down their list of priorities, so I'm contemplating decorating it for Christmas ;) Update 30th December: After a slight hiccup (the council initially ...

It's been a good year for the roses here at VP Gardens , so I suppose it's no surprise to find rose sawflies have made their first ever visit too. Grrr. They're quite hard to spot, but what usually gives them away is the skeleton leaves left after they've munched their way through the softer parts. Look closely at the picture just above the flowers to the left and right (click to enlarge if needed) and you'll see what I mean. Double Grrr. Even when you know they're there, it can take a while to get your eye in and spot them, especially when they're lined up nose to tail on a leaf's edge. I've found shaking the leaves gently can help - they then tend to curl outwards away from the leaf, as you can see some of them have done in the above photo. A mass squishing and re-inspection session ensued to rid my roses of these pesky blighters. I've added regular inspections of my roses to my early morning walk around the garden with coffee mug in...

I've taken the plunge recently and treated myself to a dwarf nectarine tree. It arrived nicely wrapped and in bloom earlier this month and is currently sitting just outside the patio doors awaiting its new home.* Thus the tree gets a daily inspection when I step outside into the back garden. Yesterday I spotted some of the leaves have taken on a distorted, blistered appearance with some areas showing a pinky, reddish hue. My initial fears have been confirmed via the internet: it's peach leaf curl :( Having read the above link re the biology of this fungal disease, it looks like the tree arrived with the infection in place. The cold spring and sometimes damp weather has helped the fungus show its hand. As the tree is in its first year, I'm not intending on letting it fruit, so at least I won't suffer a reduction in the crop. I've picked off and destroyed the leaves before the whitish fungal spores develop. With a bit of luck, the warmer weather forecast  fo...

No, not that tinned pink meat of a dubious nature, the other spam... It's clear there's been a LOT of spam around lately. By a lot, it's meant up to 50-80 extra comments for my blog on some days. This is what a spam attack looks like via my stats on Blogger. I'd often wondered why there were sudden spikes shown, but it took a rash of notification emails with attendant spam comments, all coinciding with 08:22 one morning for me to twig what was going on. On bad days, those spikes are happening every half an hour or so. It's not just Blogger with the problem. I see Wordpress has also warned of increased levels of spam and hacking attempts recently. I've noticed various types of spam comment along the lines of: Nice blog, I'll be back for more - really funny if it also compliments your writing on a Wordless Wednesday post ;) Asking advice on theme, hacking, plagiarism etc. Advising you of a problem with your blog or how you could do better Complet...

A couple of months ago NAH and I spent a pleasant Sunday afternoon in Gloucester. We like the colourful canal barges plus the industrial heritage and old buildings found along the wharves. I've already featured the planted walkways by the moored barges as part of my occasional Unusual Front Gardens strand. We strolled into the nearby indoor shopping centre.  How nice , I thought,  they're using real trees for their public planting inside .  That's not a flowering variety I've seen before . So I went a little closer to have a good look...and what did I find? Plastic flowers had been attached to the main branches of the trees. And the 'trees' themselves were really just lumps of wood placed in the planters. Here you can see how it's been done. Trunks and larger branches have been placed in the planters with smaller branches of plastic flowers bolted onto them :( It's a shame because only a few hundred yards away there's a commemo...

Readers and writers of Blogger blogs can't have failed to have noticed there's a new Word Verification (WV) kid on the block. A few weeks ago, Blogger opted to use the captcha method: i.e. the one we were grateful we didn't have when reading blogs on other blogging platforms. I believe it's because quite a lot more spam has been getting though lately and Blogger are trying to make it more difficult for the bots. Trouble is, it's a hell of a lot more difficult for humans too :( As a result I've been tinkering with the way comments work on Veg Plotting . The WV so many of you hated has gone. So far this hasn't increased the amount of automated spam arriving in my comments. *crosses fingers* Instead there's been a phenomenal increase in the amount of spam trapped by Blogger's spam filter. I also started getting around 10-30 spam comments per day in my inbox, as I'd opted for forwarding comments to my email. So last week I switched off that option....

Today sees a big change to Chippenham's kerbside (or communal in our case) rubbish collection. Now we have a plastics and cardboard collection one week and a land fill one the next. This replaces the weekly everything going to land fill rounds. The timing's quite ironic in view of the government's recent announcement on encouraging a return to weekly rubbish collections . I suppose our local council would argue it's still providing a weekly service. So we now have up to three bins to find room for in the garden*: green for landfill; brown if anyone opts in for the weekly garden refuse collection** and a blue lidded one for plastics ( types 1 -3 , but only of a certain kind) and cardboard. Judging by the bins put out last night, my neighbours aren't quite sure what's being collected today, or they're mounting a silent protest and insisting the land fill collection remains a weekly one ;) There's quite a lot which needs clarifying about the plasti...

There's been loads of comment on this week's announcements re the proposed BBC cuts, so I thought I'd add some personal and some more garden related thoughts to the mix, especially as there's quite a few things of interest which didn't made the headlines. Overall, I think the Beeb's been pretty savvy in snipping away across the board, rather than facing the active campaigning lobbies such as those which sprang up against the closure of 6Music and when deep cuts to BBC4 and the World Service were mooted. That's not to say protests won't happen - for instance there's already a strong campaign to #savebbcbirmingham - and I've also witnessed - and rightly so - some lively debates regarding more TV repeats and the changes to the BBC's news services. Here's some less well-known snippets: Gardeners' World , Countryfile and Chelsea Flower Show coverage are amongst the programmes set to move from Birmingham to Bristol. Whilst the...

Sometimes a local issue comes along which serves to make my brain hurt very badly as it raises so many others and I simply don't have the answers. The news last week that a Chippenham farmer nearby is proposing to convert 35 acres of his land to solar panels falls firmly into this category. That's 'solar farming' on the scale of around 15,000 moveable panels, each the size of a door and arranged in rows in a field(s) to maximise their capture of the sun's energy. There was quite a lot of talk about it on Saturday at our local resident's association quiz evening which NAH and I attended*. We're now expecting a 'call for action' email any day now and naturally the main point of concern raised so far is what this means from an aesthetics viewpoint. That's the least of my concerns and I'm having a major tussle with myself over whether this is a good thing or not. My greener living head says it is because it means we're making more use o...

I was a little miffed whilst listening to Gardeners' Question Time (GQT) today as Pippa Greenwood had a little dig at the quality of advice handed out by bloggers. The implication was that other media sources are much more reliable, so the following must never have happened: When I asked a question on GQT a few years ago, one expert advised me not to bother training a wisteria into a tree whilst the other two were most encouraging Me shouting no that's wrong , or you need to tell them about x whilst listening to GQT A certain allotmenteer rotovating all that couch grass on the telly Growers in places such as Scotland saying the RHS' plant trials aren't relevant to them because the conditions at Wisley are so different to theirs (I referred to that debate here , but unfortunately I can't find a relevant online link for you) My plants growing much taller than it says on the label Some of my plants thriving in conditions the book says are the kiss of death Of cours...

Once again Palmstead Nurseries put on a fantastic workshop yesterday and I've come back brimming with inspiration concerning how we can get the public planting we deserve. However, there's one big issue poised to put a major spanner in the works which I've only touched upon lightly so far. This is the result of the spending review due next month which will significantly affect all of our public services, including those parks, gardens, allotments and other open spaces managed by our local councils. Paul Bramhill of GreenSpace (an organisation whose activities I introduced to you here ) stepped up to the plate to tackle this thorny topic. Public open space is one of the few non-statutory provisions made by local authorities and thus is ripe for deep spending cuts. The fact that it's a tiny percentage of a local authority's budget ( less than 1% ) and so won't actually go that far in finding the massive savings needed just won't wash with them. Just like othe...

Hippeastrums (aka Amaryllis ) tend to be associated with Christmas in this country: various potted possibilities are usually on sale around November time, which means they'll be in bloom at the end of December and continue to brighten the January gloom. They're the ideal gift for a garden or plant lover starved of gardening activities or flowers around that time. Mine came into bloom yesterday. Regular readers know I'm pretty poor at planting my bulbs out at the given time and it looks like I might have gone down that road in a spectacular way. However, my giant Hippeastrum 'Vera' bulb wasn't purchased in November: Threadspider and I bought ours in the January sales from our local garden centre - reduced to £1.49 from £6.99 - a bargain. They were also giving out free eco-friendly shopping bags to garden club members that month, so it was only natural to use mine to bring all my other purchases home. Having emptied the bag of everything but my very large new b...

There's been some concern in the media over the past couple of days about the risks of contracting Legionnaire's disease from growing media (aka compost) bought from garden centres. This isn't new (I saw it first reported in 2008) or proven, but it's re-emerged recently owing to a report published last week in Eurosurveillance . It summarises three cases reported in Scotland in 2008/9 where inhaling the Legionella bacterium via water droplets from wet compost is thought to have been the cause. Three cases in a couple of years suggests the risk for any of us catching the disease from our compost is extremely low. The most common way people catch it is via the air conditioning or water system in a major building such as an office or hospital. Note it's not contagious as it's transmitted via the inhalation of contaminated water droplets. However, if anyone's still concerned, you might like to have a look here on the NHS website. What concerns me more is t...

Rach reminded me yesterday it's a couple of years since I posted about how difficult it is to get clear information about recycling plastic . In that time it has got a little better as companies have started to label their packaging more clearly with recycling details. Or have they? Rach's excellent post showed one labelling scheme in operation, but this morning I noticed another one as used by the supermarket chain, Morrison's. Which packet do you think can be recycled? The one on the right perhaps? Wrong. Despite the green tick and the smiley face the small print actually says: Not recyclable everywhere yet. To find out about recycling in your area visit www.recyclenow.com . As you may have guessed, I'm a little annoyed. I wonder how many people just go on the visual cues and happily recycle that bag with a warm eco-friendly glow as they do so? What are the consequences of that action? We seem to be experiencing a plethora of different labelling schemes for recy...

Last Thursday, whilst the poor people of Cumbria were enduring Britain's heaviest rainfall in 24 hours, NAH and I were not that far away in Liverpool for the day. Surprisingly we had no rain at all, although it threatened to do so for most of the time we were there. It was tremendously windy, the kind you can lean on without falling over and the antics of a pigeon on the ferry across the Mersey [cue song - Ed ] amused us greatly: it was clinging onto the deck for dear life, but the wind was still managing to push it ever closer to going over the side. We'd decided that the ferry was a holiday 'must do' and this was my first ever visit to Liverpool. Here you can see one of the classic Liverpudlian vistas: The Three Graces aka the Royal Liver Building, the Cunard Building and the Port of Liverpool Building (from left to right). NAH and I think the view's been spoilt somewhat by the brand new Pier Head ferry terminal in front of the Royal Liver Building: you c...

A line of silver birch trees brightening up a gloomy November's day along one of the paths on our estate. Just a few of the many trees that have been planted in our neighbourhood and which help to make it one of the better public spaces in Chippenham Following my report on Chippenham's Double Whammy Chestnuts a while back, I've eventually managed to talk to someone from our local council about them. As expected, it took quite a while to track down exactly whom I should be talking to. Here's what I've learned in the process. Who exactly I should be talking to: As I live in Chippenham, Wiltshire, it should be someone from Wiltshire County Council (WCC) right? Er, it depends... If the tree's on a main road or on a highway structure such as a roundabout, it's the responsibility of the Highways Agency, who are contactable via the county's CLARENCE hotline * If I want to discuss something like tree flailing which happened at the wrong time of th...