Berghill

Garden Gallery

Not posted many garden tours this year. Here is the garden as it was yesterday.

http://s703.photobucket.com/albums/ww32/Owdboggy/October%20Garden%202012/

Fruit Trees

If old, then do not prune too much.

If you want new growth then prune any time when the trees are dormant. If you want fruiting spures then prune now, though it is getting a bit late, bettter done in September really.

Shorten all new growth back to 3 buds from the point of origin.

Best of all buy a book on pruning Fruit trees, with pictures, much easier to follow than written info.

"For goodness sake, Google it!"

And Google does not give us the chance to show off, just how clever we are!

Inherited pear tree help

For a start, the Black spots are Pear scab. Spray with a Fungicide recommended for fruit trees.

Any dead wood should be removed back to healthy tissue. Then wait and see what grows in Spring before doing anymore remedial pruning. Old trees are best not pruned heavily as they are often not healthy enough to sustain the new growth which comes after pruning.

compost bin alive with slugs

It is your garden, do as you feel the need. Does sound as if there are far too many in there for the normal process. If the bin has a lid, then throw in a good handful of the Slug pellets which are non-harmful to other creatures and reduce the numbers.

compost bin alive with slugs

Many if not all of the slugs one finds in Compost bins are not the kind which eat your green plants. There are a number of slugs which do not have strong enough rasping parts (raddula, they do not have teeth, more like files) to eat fresh green material. This type live on decaying leaves and as such they help the process of turning plant material into compost.

Talkback: Planting snake's head fritillaries

Sadly the bulbs you see on sale in packets in G/C's are virtually dead. If you want them, either buy them when they are first dug up (Bridgemere often have them and if you go early they are still alive) or buy them already growing and plant out from pots.

Helleborus niger in family garden- too dangerous?

Rape seed is the ubiquitous yellow flowering plant ones sees in the country side. It is processed to make Rape seed oil which is a better cooking oil than Olive oil as it contains less harmful fats.

Pigeons may just want their lunch, but if you had seen the flock of a 1,000 or so which has just come up from the newly sown Winter wheat field from next to us, and it was your field I think you would be a little less generous. also they defecate over everything in sight. They are classed as vermin.

Helleborus niger in family garden- too dangerous?

Wild creatures do not eat poisonous plants. Our hens wandered our garden and sometimes the fields around us and we never lost one to them eating things they should not have done. Lettuce is more harmful to rabbits than anything else. Again these creatures would not have survived if they ate things which killed them.

The only thing I know of where a bird eats deadly poison is the pigeons which eat Rape seed, which does eventually poison them.

please help- car battery acid in soil how can i change this and make it a good?

Obviously the advice given about the lead pollution is sound, however, the whole of our garden (just under an acre) was full of batteries, though not car ones. Our batteries range in age from the Accumulator types of the early part of the 1900,s up to modern torch batteries. We still find the central core of these (the carbon rod) and the carbon squares of the older types. We put our Veg growing area in the place where we found the least number of them. Been growing fruit and Veg here for the last 18 years and eating it and we ain't dead yet.

So unless the soil is really contaminated there should not be a problem, especially if the batteries were intact, not broekn into pieces.

Hope you manage to find out what has happened, for your own peace of mind.

Plant id

Photo size

Sheds

A mild annoyance

Helleborus x hybridus

Timber

Silene and Phlox roots

Anyone used this mower

An invitation to View June 2012

A few of our bulbs.