Clean air, lichen and early spring jobs
Post categories: organic gardening
| 08:37 UK time, Thursday, 10 February 2011
It's only February yet signs of spring are all around. Down in nut corner hazel catkins are dangling and extending, dancing in the breeze now giving off clouds of pollen while the tiny carmine female flowers opening like sea urchins are extended to catch it. Underneath the hazels the crocus are a sea of purple - I never sowed or planted these; they came in from the neighbour's border and liking the situation have multiplied prodigiously.
The Cornelian cherry is now blooming heavily - it's wonderful how nature arranges her palette with this in primrose yellow, mirrored by winter jasmine, wintersweet and winter aconites, even winter honeysuckle is another pale yellow copy.
The strong winds have re-arranged the last of the autumn leaves and dried out my top soil sufficiently for me to hoe the fruit cage and a quarter of my vegetable beds. Indeed it was most satisfying getting going on the plot again. I also had some apple pruning to finish and some unruly brambles to disentangle, all lovely jobs for bright windy weather.
I looked at the old apple branches with closer interest - it's lichen. I've never taken much notice but the recent Gardeners' Question Time from Lavenham really got my curiosity fired. I was amazed when I learnt that blotches on an old asphalt pavement were really lichens and not blobs of chewing gum. Apparently the churchyard there had over a hundred different lichens, that's about twenty more than when last inspected twenty five years ago - all due to our cleaner air.
Looking up close at crusty and leafy growths all over my old apples I now realise what clean air I must enjoy. Apparently they're an essential food for larvae of several butterflies and moths so here's hoping we'll see more. I must say there have been scant few visitors to my butterfly bushes () these last summers and I'd love to have many there again. Still, back to the present, the garlic in pots have just stuck their noses up so I'll be planting them out soon, probably the first thing to go in most years.
The earliest tomatoes have been pricked out and potted up - Matina, and Gardener's Delight, and sweet peppers as well, though the cucumbers and melons do not yet need moving as they were sown in small pots.
The onion seed has not shown yet but some pak-choi and salad leaves are all emerging nicely. It's great to have a big plastic tunnel as even when it's grim outdoors I can still find plenty to do in comfort. I'm halfway through bringing in the tub grown fruits - the peaches, cherries, apricots and half the grapevines are now ensconced in the warm. However the strong winds have made me spend too much time, not only picking up debris but sticking tape over a myriad holes in the plastic skin before they tear further, thanks a million once again to Spot and Smokey the cats and their mountaineering.
Comment number 1.
At 21st Feb 2011, Liz wrote:Hi Bob, I have been growing organic for the last 30yr+ even before it was properly accepted. I started off just knowing that I did not want to use chemicals, but then later my mother bought me a copy of one of Roy Lacey's organic books (there is a picture of you in it). I still have that book and three of yours, which are my bibles. I actively encourage people who want to be organic through the gardening website I am with (Gardenersclick)and often recommend your books. Thanks for being my hero.
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