Surprises

Biggest surprise of all.... where did that strange blue thing, which is usually accompanied by a big yellow ball in the sky, come from? It's been around quite a lot this last week.... :-)

Honeysuckle looking extra stunning against the blue sky

Of course, it then became 'too hot' as we are so unused to it, and then we had to have thunderstorms because the heat had built up so much (haha). But I'm not complaining. It's been a great week outside getting lots done in the garden, and I'm feeling fine again after a really nasty cold which lasted two weeks, until I ended up going to the doctor for a load of drugs which got rid of it!

So, surprises. First of all, a couple of those 'where did that plant come from?' surprises. Both just amazing that they self seeded in just the right place. This first one I noticed back in the late winter and thought it was an Ox-eye Daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare), but now that it is flowering I'm not so sure, as it seems quite a thick lush plant instead of the individually flowered spindly wild ones. Or maybe the richer soil and fertiliser in the bed has caused it to become quite a large bushy plant? Whatever, it's fabulous and in just the perfect spot in my front sunny bed.

A 'weed' becomes a beautiful plant in just the right place

Ox-eye Daisy?

As for the other one, I still can't believe I never noticed it until a few days ago. I was looking out of the living room window and thought, eh? What's that tall purple flower behind the Euphorbia? On closer inspection it turns out to be a Salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius) flower! Now some years back I grew Salsify, which is a root veg, but we didn't like it very much so I left some in place to flower the next year. They were pretty, and have very attractive seed heads, but alas, they are just like Dandelions in that respect, so for several years I've been weeding Salsify out from all over the veg patch. But this is the first time I've found one in a flower bed, and how I never noticed until now, I have no idea! I do weed sometimes, honestly!

It's about 3 foot tall now!

Salsify. Looks a lot better than it tastes.

Another surprise that started as disappointment was wondering why one of my Bronze Fennels was looking so stunted compared to the others, and on closer inspection finding it was riddled with aphids. Coming back to it about a week later, I then found it was full of little grubs as well. My heart sank as I thought it was yet another thing munching the Fennel, and I tried googling for larvae of moths that might eat this plant. Eventually my poor cold-ridden brain started to work and it was a little while later that the penny dropped - perhaps these larvae were good guys, perhaps they were actually eating the aphids, not the plant! A bit more googling and yes, hooray - these are the larvae of Syrphid hoverflies and they are as good to have in the garden as native ladybirds and their larvae for hoovering up aphids! In no time the vast majority of aphids had been munched, and whilst the hoverfly larvae have disappeared now to pupate and there are still a few aphids, the plant is looking a lot healthier and is growing again.

Bronze Fennel being munched by greenfly/aphids

Hoverfly larvae getting rid of the pesky aphids

Whilst on the subject of ladybirds and identification, I posted a photo of some ladybirds mating on facebook, without having thought much about them, other than it was a fun snap. It was thanks to a nice lady called Blu who asked why they were so pale looking, that I googled to see if I could find out more about them. For once I got an immediate ID - this is the Bryony Ladybird (Henosepilachna argus), which lives on a plant called White Bryony (Bryonia alba). I didn't know that plant until I googled it too, and imagine my surprise to find it was probably one of my most hated weeds in the garden, after bindweed! It's a fast growing vine which can grow about 6" a day and in summer I find it swamping my veg patch fence, coming up through the hedges and conifer trees, and I have to rip out metres of the darn stuff. 

However, it's interesting to note that this ladybird is not native to our northern climes, but have been spreading northwards over recent decades. Also, they don't eat aphids but neither do they harm our native ladybirds, like the invasive Asian/Harlequin ladybirds do. They just eat this plant, and possibly other plants of the Curcurbit family. So if I find them on my cucumbers and squash.... well they'd better watch out. But forewarned is forearmed and I guess I'll have to leave some of this hated vine in place for them now to keep them away! 

Bryony Ladybird and White Bryony

One more thing about identification. I've had problems trying to ID some of the wildflowers I saw in Spain so imagine my surprise to find one plant, that I saw absolutely everywhere there, in the botanical section of my favourite park, the Parc Thabor in Rennes! I love that place as it has just as many labelled 'weeds' and wild plants as cultivated plants, so is brilliant for ID!!

Hoorah, I have an ID!

In pond news I thought the moorhen/s had disappeared yet again, so was pleased to see one start regularly appearing up by the duck shed to help itself to duck food. This must be one that was originally raised here, back again. I don't know that we'll get nesting moorhens again whilst we have four ducks as they seem to put them off, but just to see them makes me happy.

Moorhen taken through the kitchen window

Damselflies have started appearing and I was happy to see this red one several times already, as last year didn't seem a very good year for either Damsels or Dragonflies. I don't recall seeing any red ones at all, so another nice surprise.

Large Red Damselfly (Pyrrhosoma nymphula)

A little somebody who I surprised was this Blue Tit (Parus caeruleus), who has a nest under the roof tiles right near my potting shed/boiler room. I was hoping to get a photo but he/she was somewhat put out by my presence lurking in the doorway, so I had to retreat further in as it wouldn't go into the nest to feed the babies. I just managed to get a capture of it going in before it was out again in a matter of seconds, to search for some more little green caterpillars for the babies. I think they'll be fledging soon as there's quite a racket coming from this nest and they sound quite grown up already.

Blue Tit with caterpillars to feed to its young

Squeezing into the nest under the tiles

I hadn't had a good look around my orchard since coming back from holiday. Whilst I can see that as far as peaches and plums go, the harvest will be iffy, I was very pleased to see lots of pears forming on all three trees, and amazed by just how absolutely loaded all the apple trees are with fruit forming! Looks like it'll be a bumper year for apples.

Apples forming on one of the trees

A final surprise. Guess who got her first ever bee sting? A tiny bumble bee somehow got up my jeans and stung me on my knee, twice! After a lot of hopping about and squealing, when I eventually managed to get out of my jeans, a poor little bee fell onto the floor. It did come back to life after a while, probably a bit shocked and battered, so I put it into a flower bed to crawl off to safety. Well, for someone who encourages bees of all sorts into the garden, it had to happen at some point! :-)

(I know this is a long post, but whilst I'm doing my holiday blog posts there's tons going on in the garden!)

My 'Wildflowers for Pollinators' meadow - October update

I wrote a posting about this back in August with my findings and conclusions. I feel I may have been a bit hasty with regards to one particular plant which up until late summer didn't seem to have many insects interested in it at all. Those were the tall orange French marigolds which were a part of the seed mix. However since late summer, and particularly this last six weeks or so, this plant has been the star of the show, not just for aesthetic reasons but because suddenly all the pollinators have gone crazy over it!

Orange Marigold

I'd also mentioned that very few butterflies seemed interested in this meadow. That also changed since September, and whilst I've only taken one photo of a butterfly in the meadow, there were plenty more interested (I have hundreds of butterfly photos taken all over the garden so that's why I haven't any more in this little meadow).

Here are some photos taken a week or so back. Since it rained many of the plants have had a new lease of life, and although they still look rather tatty, they have managed to produce new flowers here and there, such as the blue cornflowers, viper's bugloss, phacelia and the various cosmos and corn marigolds.

The marigolds on the other hand have never once looked scruffy and are still a blaze of orange colour, really brightening up the veg patch as nearly all the marigolds seem to be up one end of this patch, which is total coincidence.

Orange Marigolds swamping the strawberry plants!

The less sunny side. I have now weeded and pulled up the beetroot
that you can barely see here!

The tall pink and white cosmos have continued to flower but they
were later flowering than some of the other flowers.
Birds love their seed heads.

Phacelia is already self seeding all around,
but that's fine as it is grown as a
green manure anyway

So here is a selection of insects taken in the meadow over the last month, starting from yesterday and going back to mid September. I was still photographing bees and hoverflies in it yesterday, despite the fact that the temps have dropped from warm and wet with temps of about 20/21C to extremely chilly daytime highs of about 13/14C, even with sunshine! Brrrrrrrr!

A new hoverfly that I haven't seen before, taken yesterday.
I think it is one of the Eristalis genus but can't find one just like this.

Obviously other flowers are still attracting pollinators like this Eristalis (a different one)
on a Corn Marigold, and what I think is a plant bug of the family Miridae.

Bicoloured Cosmos with a little bee (not entirely sure!) on it.

I didn't get a really clear shot of this cute little bee, but inside a pink Cosmos
the light reflected and in all the shots I took it appeared to have purple eyes!

Here it is again on a Marigold. No purple eyes this time!
I believe it is a Colletes which are known as Plasterer Bees.

There have been cute fluffy bees on the marigolds every day.

More orange, but this time it's an Orange Cosmos
with a Ladybird hiding under the petals

Yet another Eristalis, on a Corn Marigold

Finally, the only butterfly which I did actually take on the Marigolds.
A Peacock (Inachis io).

I have made a decision about this patch. I'm leaving it in situ for next year, as the seed mix contains biennial and perennial plants too, and I'm interested in what they may be. I'm sure I'll have to do some serious weeding here as I know these annuals will want to germinate and take over, but they can grow elsewhere as I want to know what else is growing here, and give them space! I don't need this patch as this would be my bean and pea bed next year, and I have other plans for next spring, so won't be growing any of these veg, other than some French beans (haricot vert) which can be sown later on.

Ignoring the obvious Dandelion, up the shadier end where the annuals were less dense,
I see many of the biennials and perennials which were also in this mix of flowers.

So, all in all even more of a success than I had originally thought! And much as I love veggies, this has proven far more interesting..... :-)
 

Buggy photos 2

Some more of the insect photos I've taken recently.

The first two are the Speckled Wood butterfly, which as its name suggests is to be found flitting about and sunning itself in sunny clearings in my little woodland. I'm not seeing that many other butterflies at the moment which is a bit sad.

Speckled Wood showing underside of wing

Speckled Wood with wings open, sunning itself amongst the brambles and bracken

Ladybird on a broad bean plant

Absolutely no idea, but this little guy was tiny, about 2mm long
and sheer fluke that I managed to focus on it at all! On the edge of
a Zantedeschia (Arum Lily) flower.

The above insect is Anthrenus verbasci, the Varied Carpet Beetle, which isn't good news if it comes inside the house as their larvae eat your furnishings! With huge thanks to Thijs de Graaf for the identifications of this and the others that I have mentioned in italics.

This is a Bee Fly, possibly Bombylius major, which was identified for me on G+.
I'd never even heard of bee flies before! It has long legs and a very long proboscis which you
can't see here as it's up inside a catmint flower.

A fly of some sort posing nicely on a bracken frond

Another unknown fly on Wood Spurge (Euphorbia amygdaloides)

Flies are an even more complicated family than bees, as there are many which resemble
other insects such as wasps and bees. This isn't a bee although it looks like one.
But is it a hoverfly? It's all very confusing!

Yes it's a hoverfly, Merodon equestris, or Narcissus Bulb Fly. However unlike many other hoverflies whose larvae eat aphids, this one's larvae eat your daffodil bulbs!

Now this is a Hoverfly!

Yay I got one right! This is Scaeva pyrastri and its larvae eat aphids.

This I cannot tell as I can't see the antennae. But bee or fly, it is very pretty and
was taken on a rose in the rose garden at the Parc du Thabor, Rennes.

I also have some public photos on a Picasaweb album of ladybirds, ladybird eggs, ants and aphids in my broad bean patch. You can view the photos here.

I took them about 5 days ago and the good news is that after checking yesterday there are hardly any aphids left - just a few left on the underside of some of the top leaves. I could only see one ladybird and far fewer ants. If you read my veg patch update from a few posts back I mentioned that I had put down strawberry jam on some saucers in amongst the plants in an effort to entice the ants away from the aphids, so that the ladybirds and other predators could move in for the kill. I also observed a lacewing on the plants a few days ago - another aphid muncher. I can't be sure that the jam did the trick or not as although there was some ant interest in the jam it may be that the ladybirds just managed to get in anyway. Who knows but it's a good way to use up old strawberry jam as I have a whole new 2012 batch in progress right now...... :-)

And now as I type this up it's absolutely tipping down outside which is great for the garden but less so for the peonies and roses which are looking stunning at the moment. However so long as it keeps my stream running into the pond I will not complain! If you ever saw the pics of how low the pond can get once the stream stops flowing you'll understand why this is very important to me! Pics of it from December here - you may need to click on them as I didn't post them large size - it was right when I first started using Blogger and didn't really know what I was doing.

Veg patch 2nd June

I keep on taking photos and never getting round to posting them, and then everything's gone and grown again! Right, so here are some pics of the veg patch taken during the last week!

First one is an overview, this was taken a couple of days ago as I'd just thinned out the lettuce. For Mr (Annony) Mouse who was asking about my wildflower bed - it's the strip in this first bed marked with pegs (you may have to click on the photo and look on your giant mac screen). I sowed the seed in diagonal lines so I could tell what was a wildflower rather than my usual weeds. It should be interesting as it's a mix especially for pollinators. This by the way is the space that would have been sweetcorn but I decided not to grow any this year as it's so hit and miss (explanation here).

Overview May 31st

I forgot I'd taken another photo of it! By the way the space above on the right (and below top right) is the frame for my cucumbers for when they are finally big enough to plant out! I grow them upwards which they do very well so they don't take up too much ground space.

'Wildflower meadow'

Spuds taken about a week ago, but I wanted a photo after earthing them up, when there were no weeds, so everyone would think what a neat and tidy gardener I am! The first two rows on the left are Belle de Fontenay which is a lovely early potato and the other smaller ones are Desiree, a red maincrop which stores really well. We were still eating last year's until about a month ago.

Beautiful weed free rows of spuds

Next one was taken about a week ago as the kale and PSB are still in place. My peas are flowering away merrily but I'm still waiting for the mange tout to start flowering and getting very impatient.

Sure enough blackfly has appeared on the broad beans but there are at least 4 red ladybirds and one of those tiny yellow and black ones on the plants. I have put down two saucers of old strawberry jam in the hope of enticing the ants to take more interest in that than protecting their aphids (blackfly), which they farm for the honeydew that the aphids secrete. If the ants are off the plants then the ladybirds can get in for the kill. That's the theory anyway; one year it worked and another I had a swarm of honeybees eating the jam so quickly I kept having to give them more!

Pea flowers, with broad beans in foreground

The peas are starting to swell up now and I have three successive sowings. I don't even really like peas very much, except raw! I am such a lovely wife, I am growing them for my OH, who adores them.

A pea pod

Just another view of peas, strawbs and spuds. My OH put a small bench in the veg patch for me so I can just sit and survey my domain! It's a bit hot sitting here though and there are stinging nettles right behind coming through the fence from the field!

Back of house from the potager

Little Gem lettuce which I sowed early into a pot protected in a cold frame then pricked out and later planted into this funny plasticky cold frame from Lidl. I'm so glad I did as this is miles ahead of the April sowing of various lettuces direct into the ground, so we have finally had our first harvest of something grown this year!

Little Gem lettuce

The best thing that's happening right now though are the strawberries. I have tons of Gariguette, which are an early non remontant variety. That means they only flower and fruit once. I also have a remontant called Charlotte (not to be confused with the spud of the same name!) which is incredibly sweet and that's already ripening up too and will continue to produce fruit until the autumn. I've just planted out a new row of Charlottes so between these two varieties I have 6 rows of strawbs! Maybe a bit OTT but they are on rotation and one row of Gariguette is on year 3 and will be taken out after fruiting.

Gariguette strawberries, netted against the birds

First strawberry harvest about a week ago. Since then they have gone bananas (haha) with the warm weather we've been having and last night I picked two plastic tubs worth and the fruit is bigger now. I guess I'll be making jam again (to feed to the ants!) and I really need to remember to get that darn ice cream maker bowl into the freezer!!!

YUM!

What I haven't bothered to show yet is the onion plot as it's got some pink Roscoff onions doing nicely in it and some very small leeks and spring onions, so not a lot to show really. I'm currently in the process of planting out my pathetically small chillies into the space where the winter brassicas were. Cross fingers they will start to grow now they are in the soil!

Swallows zooming over the veg patch and perching on the cane tops

One last piccy which won't win any awards but just to show another use for cane tops. I noticed the swallows as I was taking buggy pics so shot (that sounds so wrong!) them from afar with the macro lens, which effectively zooms in on them. One was perching on the tomato canes. I love these birds!

Ladybirds - real ones and my mum's stories

They are everywhere at the moment! Just like this time last year, they are hampering my progress with tidying up the flower beds and clearing all of last year's dead growth. I'm finding them hiding under fallen leaves and in dead leaves still in place on stalks and as soon as I disturb them, which I can't help but do, they're coming to life and crawling around all over the place. I'm having to fish them out of my bucket of stuff to compost and I keep moving the little darlings so I can weed and have a bit of a dig over the flower beds. Coupled with stopping to take photos of them .... I may finish this task come summer!

They have taken a liking to my ornamental allium stems

All the more reason to not tidy up too much in the garden before winter; as well as seed heads for birds to eat and just purely looking more decorative than a barren, flat garden (and attractive seedheads and colourful stems can be used for Xmas decs), some of those dead stalks and leaves can help provide cover not just for the plant itself against the elements, but for all sorts of critters to overwinter amongst. Not to mention that the more robust stalks I am cutting back are being saved to add to my bee hotel, which I mentioned a while back in THIS posting.

These three were inside a dead leaf as I was cutting back the dead peony stalks!

I had high hopes last year that they would stick around until broad bean time so they could munch up all the aphids but for some reason the majority decided to go elsewhere. There were still a few about though and the aphid problem wasn't anywhere near as bad as usual, so I managed fine with a bit of a squidge and wash with soapy water (mostly for my fingers actually!).

I also found last spring that they took a liking to sitting around on euphorbia flowers - I've no idea why as there were no aphids on these plants but maybe they were attracted by the greeny yellow colour of the blooms? I'll never know but it was amusing; half the time I didn't really notice until I'd uploaded the photos and zoomed in on them!

Up until a couple of years ago I'd never seen more than a few here and there all through the summer. Then one day they came to the rescue in what I can only describe as a miracle, gardening wise.

I have a peach tree in the veg patch that two summers previously had been seriously attacked by blackfly, so much so that it lost half of its leaves and the fruit developed sooty mould as a result of the honeydew all over it (secreted by aphids) so they all dropped off. The poor tree suffered so badly it didn't have a single blossom the following year. So, the next year when it was finally covered in fruit I was really ****** off (I'm trying not to swear on my blog but I can't think of a suitable alternative expression! 'Annoyed' does not quite sum it up) to see it suddenly totally covered in greenfly.

I tried blasting them off several times with the hosepipe to no avail, I mean really, you just can't physically wash off thousands of leaves each covered in dozens of aphids, nor squidge them either. I was at the end of my tether and practically on the verge of giving up and going to buy some horrible chemical because it was one of those times when it had become beyond a joke.......

Then this happened.

Ladybirds appeared. They covered the tree, along with hoverflies, wasps and bees. The latter I believe were drinking the honeydew secreted by the aphids but those ladybirds were just gobbling up the aphids like there was no tomorrow. In less than a week the whole tree was clear! I picked off the fruit that looked like it had too much sticky honeydew on it to recover but was still left with a fair amount, the tree recovered and we had a good harvest of peaches after all.

I can see 9 in this pic

I have truly never experienced anything like it before and felt that at last this was the proof that if you garden with nature, not against it, that eventually there will come about a balance between the good guys and the bad guys and that everybody/thing will be happy and benefit (me included!).

I think these two got a bit carried away after dinner!!!

As an aside, watching ladybirds has reminded me that my mother recently gave me her manuscript of a story she wrote for my brother and I when we were nippers, back in the mid 60s. It was about a family of ladybirds and the adventures that the children got up to in their school holidays. Because it was set in Fiji (which is where we were born) it was a bit unusual but I loved it and mum did all the illustrations herself. It never got published of course and I have some of the rejection letters here - some were polite but some were quite rude, describing mum's illustrations as amateur! Of course they were, but what more would a 5 or 6 year old want?! To have a mini book written and illustrated by your own mother is a great gift, even at the ripe old age of ** (I'm not saying but you can probably guess). Home made rocks!

Here are a few photos of the pics she drew and painted which I hope you like almost as much as I do.