Helen's Garden Renovation Project

We have been very lucky with the weather in September. Today I finished moving the compost from my Dalek-type bins to my square bins next to the greenhouse. The first compost bin I emptied was the middle one in terms of how long the compost had been in there. I didn’t find any larvae in it. The second bin that I emptied was the most recent to be filled, and it was full of larvae. The third bin that I emptied was the first to be filled, so had some lovely crumbly compost in it, and that was full of larvae too. I have come to the conclusion that the reason I didn’t find any larvae in the first bin I emptied was that the eggs hadn’t hatched then, or hadn’t been laid.

(Update: when I first wrote this post, I thought the larvae were vine weevil larvae. I now think they are cockchafer larvae (previously illustrated in April 2009), as they have small brown legs, and vine weevil larvae haven’t got any legs. Also I think they are a lot smaller).

Whatever sort of larvae they are, here is a set of six for you to look upon with revulsion:

Larvae found in compost heap

I would take a picture of my progress, except that it doesn’t look much different from before because I haven’t moved the empty round compost bins yet. They are useful to cover the earth as a cat deterrent.

The next job is to stain the greenhouse staging, now that the wood preservative I applied must have dried by now. I would much rather break up the path, but the weather is right for staining (not too hot, not too cold) and I had better get on with it.

I can’t remember an autumn that involved quite as many beech nuts in my garden as this one. Perhaps I am noticing them more because quite a lot of them land on my greenhouse roof, but I am sure I have never had quite this many on my lawn before. The nuts come from the beech tree next door. They are being very inefficiently eaten by pigeons. Possibly squirrels are having a go too, but I haven’t seen any so far.

This is a good time for Renovation because (1) I am working fewer hours at Health Promotion because it’s term-time (2) I have some pupils, but the numbers haven’t built up yet to frantic levels (3) the temperature is ideal for heavy work.

I have now moved the contents of two out of my three round compost bins. The first bin was the first one that I filled, so the compost was quite well done. I sieved it and used anything that went through the sieve for repotting members of my Portable Herbaceous Border. I put the lumps in one of my square compost bins by the greenhouse. The second bin was the last one to be filled, so most of the compost wasn’t done yet. It had a lot of waterlily in it from when I emptied the old pond. It also had about ten nasty little vine weevil grubs in it. Since the birds are so busy eating the beech nuts, I decided not to leave the grubs out on the path in the hope that something will eat them. I mean, would you eat vine weevil larvae if there were a zillion beech nuts all over the place to eat instead? So I chopped them in two with my trowel instead. I didn’t find any vine weevil grubs in the first compost bin. Maybe they preferred the sliminess of the not-yet-very-rotted compost.

I need to get some pyracantha with lots of health and safety warnings to plant near my square compost bins to deter burglars. It’s so easy to jump on a bin and get over the fence, and I don’t want anyone doing that. If I can get a variety that is willing to be trained on top of the fence it will deter cats too.

The Sungold tomatoes are still producing, at the rate of one or two tomatoes per plant every day. They have not got blight yet. I love copper fungicide (but I always wash it off before eating the tomatoes).

I am taking this week off work and once again I chose the right week! Well, it has been a little drizzly sometimes, but generally the weather has been ideal, and it looks good for the next few days too.

It is now cool enough to attempt to stain the staging of the greenhouse. I really wish I had done this before the greenhouse was installed, but I didn’t think of it. The staging is pretty awful. The wood is very poor quality and the edges have been rough sawn and are very splintery. I started sanding the five pieces of the staging, having first unscrewed them from the supports, and although I can’t say they are nice, they are a lot better than they were before. I have swept the floor of the greenhouse and dusted off the cobwebs with a soft brush, and tomorrow I will clean the staging with methylated spirit and then it will be time to apply some wood preservative before staining it.

I am continuing to monitor my plants for signs of confusion and incompetence. This blackberry ‘Black Satin’ seems to think now is a good time to do a flower.

Could this be a winter fruiting blackberry?

It’s in a pot, so I wonder whether if I put it in the greenhouse I would get blackberries in November.

Also worth a look is my little purple violet, which thinks it’s spring.

Lovely violet, wrong time of year

My sedums and London Pride are putting on a good display. They are neighbours in my border because the proper name for London Pride is Saxifraga x urbium, and therefore they both begin with S.

Sedum flowering correctly. Not sure about the London Pride.

Apart from the greenhouse staining, my most urgent job is to split up and repot some of my perennials, especially the Waldsteinia. In fact, I may plant some of the Waldsteinia in a little strip by the fence. I’m also thinking of putting some ground cover among the thuja at the end of the garden, to deter the cats. As well as that, I am continuing to move the compost from the bins on the left to the bins on the right. This will be several hours’ further work, but there’s no urgency for that. Indeed, since it’s quite heavy work, it’s best to do it when the weather gets cooler.

I think it is the end of summer because I have now set my central heating to come on in the evenings. The end of summer is in some ways bad because it means the first frost is not long away, and it gets dark earlier, and the rain is colder… but this week I have for the first time felt that there might be some chance of getting on with some Renovation instead of purely weeding and mowing the lawn.

Some things I have done since my last entry:
(1) I sprayed the tomatoes (Sungold, my all time favourite variety) with copper fungicide because they are bound to get blighted otherwise. Now they are blue, and I have to wash the tomatoes before eating them if I don’t want to exceed my recommended copper intake, but this is a lot better than them being brown. I will spray them again tomorrow, and keep going until the first frosts. They are in pots, but I think the pots will be too heavy for me to move them into the greenhouse.

(2) I decimated the bay tree. Although I think that the bay tree is so lovely it should be as big as possible, I also realised that if I let it grow any bigger I wouldn’t be able to prune it myself safely any more, so I got on my biggest step ladder and pruned off the top bits.

The remaining nine-tenths of the bay tree after pruning

(3) I moved one of my logs from the Leylandii that I removed about a year ago and found two little baby newts, which I think must be from this year’s crop. I don’t know whether they are breeding in my temporary pond (see the foreground of the bay tree picture) or whether they are using someone else’s pond, but the main thing is that they obviously like visiting my garden.

Little baby newt sheltering under a Leylandii log

(4) I levelled the ground under the three compost bins next to the greenhouse so they can stand upright. I didn’t go as far as getting the bins all at the same height.

New compost bins

I now need to move the compost from the old bins to the new ones. I am planning to sieve the compost and dig into the ground any bits that fall through the sieve, because they’ve probably rotted enough, and move to the new compost bins the bits that don’t fall through the sieve, because they could do with being eaten by fruit flies and woodlice for a bit longer. I have pumped up the wheelbarrow tyre in preparation (suggested maximum pressure = 30 PSI. Actual pressure at time of checking = about 7 PSI).

Old compost bins. Contents to be rehomed to new compost bins.

(5) I had time to admire some of the planting we did for our residents’ communal areas in April 2008. The best section is the smallest bit just next to my house. It’s the best because it gets the most sun and also the most water, since I am the most conscientious waterer and my hosepipe won’t reach to any other areas. The purple-leaved job is a Cotinus ‘Grace’ and the big bright pink flowers are sedum spectabile ‘Brilliant’, which certainly is. The smaller-flowered plant at the front is Persicaria affine and at the back there are two Spirea ‘Goldflame’.

Border with Cotinus, Sedum, Spirea and Persicaria

All credit to my mum for thinking of the cotinus, and to Susie Bower for letting me have the cotinus and thinking of the other plants that look so good with it. (Sadly, after the picture was taken, a unknown creature stood on some of the sedums so it doesn’t look so good now).