Mystery plant

It appeared in pots filled with fresh compost this year, so I’m assuming the seed was in the compost. It started growing as soon as I filled the pots, in March, so it seems to be pretty hardy. I left it there, because the leaves look pretty, and I wasn’t ready to plant anything else there, but now the time has come to decide it’s fate, so I’d like to know what it is!

Here are a couple more close-up views. The leaves have no scent, even when crushed. If anyone has an idea what it might be, I’d love to know!

close-up

another close-up

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my garden in 2009

That’s actually a rather complex question. A garden is a place where we meet nature face to face, where we try to grow things and so does nature. Nature has had a lot of practice at this, and for us to impose our will may take some considerable effort. Alternatively, we could give nature a helping hand, working with it, instead of against it. That way, we can have a beautiful garden which is good for the environment, and which may even take less effort to maintain than we would otherwise expend.

We maintain our gardens with lawn-mowers, hedge-trimmers, fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides. Machinery requires energy (electricity or petrol) to run, and the chemicals we use have to be refined, bottled, and shipped to us. Herbicides and pesticides are obviously not environmentally friendly, they’re designed to kill things after all. Many of them are also harmful to humans, so careless use can have serious consequences for you or your neighbours.

We might think that fertilisers can’t be bad for the environment, after all, they’re supposed to make things grow. But many fertilisers rely on minerals mined somewhere in the world being processed and transported during their manufacture, much like many of the things we buy these days. Fertilisers that wash off the land and into rivers and lakes can upset those ecosystems by causing excess growth of algae, which can in turn kill fish and other aquatic animals. So even fertilisers come with an environmental cost.

cricket on beetroot

One easy way to keep weeds under control is with a plastic ground-sheet. This is a sheet that covers the ground, you cut holes in it to plant the things you want. The sheet prevents weeds from growing, and your plants have no competition. You may have seen them at the side of motorways, where they are often used. If your plants are low and spreading, they will soon hide the sheet from view. Otherwise, you can cover the sheet with bark or gravel to hide it.

Another good way to control weeds is with mulch. Mulching means putting garden waste onto the surface of the soil. There it forms a dense mat as it decays, which helps protect the soil from drying out and makes it hard for weeds to grow. Grass-cuttings are ideal for mulch, but you can also use autumn leaves, straw, vegetable peelings from the kitchen, or anything that will pack down densely over time. Mulching also feeds the soil, as the mulch decays and releases its nutrients, just like it would in a compost heap. If you use enough mulch on your garden, you may never need to add fertiliser to your plants, the mulch will provide everything they need. That’s easier (and less smelly) than managing a real compost heap!

Alternatively, if you choose your plants carefully you can get the same effect from the plants themselves. There are many low-growing, fast-spreading plants that are very effective at preventing weeds from getting established. If you have only a small area to cover, hardy alpines will do the job nicely. Your local garden centre can help you choose some that are good for your situation. Once they have covered the ground they need very little maintenance. Plants which are taller than the cover-plants will not be affected, so you can have your roses growing quite happily surrounded by living weed-control.

You can also use plants such as clover and alfalfa, which serve double-duty as green manures. This means that they actually enrich the soil as they grow, so you will need less fertiliser to encourage your plants. Either grow them all year round, or just scatter the seeds on the ground towards the end of summer and let them grow through the winter, then dig them in in spring when you prepare to plant for the coming summer.

orange butterfly

Actually, that’s one reason why pesticides are a bad idea. They kill all species of insect, not just the ones you want them to. But the ones we want to kill will bounce back first, and multiply rapidly. That’s because they have no competition for their food (i.e. your plants) and nothing to keep them in check.

Birds are very easy to attract, just keep putting out food for them. They will still take the insects from your plants, especially in the breeding season, because they feed them to their young. Raising chicks is hard work for the parents, so if they can get a quick snack from your bird feeders and then find a juicy fat caterpillar for their young all in one place, they will appreciate it. We’re not the only ones to appreciate one-stop shopping. If you put up some nest boxes too, you can have resident pest-control working for you, all day long.

Frogs and hedgehogs will eat slugs, and they and lizards eat insects, so they can also be very beneficial to your garden. You don’t need a pond to attract frogs, they will be happy with any permanently damp and overgrown area. A shaded spot covered in weeds might well do the job. They can travel quite a distance too, so you may find them even if the nearest pond or stream is some way away. You can attract lizards and hedgehogs by creating spaces where they can hide from predators, such as piles of stones or branches, or leaving part of your garden overgrown. If you leave such shelters available in the winter, they may hibernate there, so they are ready to go to work for you as soon as the spring sun stirs everything into life. Hedgehogs will come regularly if you put out food to attract them, so why not spread some peanuts around your lettuce instead of slug-pellets?

sunflower

verbascum thapsus

You can also choose plants that are less susceptible to pests in the first place. Maybe a honeysuckle will go nicely on that wall instead of a climbing rose, which is likely to suffer from aphids. Need tall flowers for the back of the garden? How about collecting seed from Common Mullein (Verbascum Thapsus) and planting that. They look just as good as any expensive hybrid you’ll find in the garden centre, and being a native species, they’re probably more tolerant to pests.

great tit and goldfinch on sunflower

If you really want to go green with your garden, and can invest some effort to do so, growing your own vegetables is a great idea. By growing your own you can really cut down your carbon footprint by reducing your ‘food miles‘. That means that, instead of someone in the next country growing the stuff, packing it in plastic, and driving it to your local supermarket, you just get it from the garden, and all that plastic and fuel is not needed.

So, making our garden environmentally friendly is not difficult, it only takes a little planning and foresight. Our own environmental footprint, and the quality of wildlife in and around our garden, can vary a lot depending on the approach that we take. You might even save yourself time, money, and effort, and end up with a more satisfying garden as a result.

field of flowers

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organic seeds

I was well satisfied with my crops last year, having managed to keep myself, Dweezeljazz, and the local birds well supplied. That said, I kept my sights somewhat low, sticking with plants that had a high chance of success and growing lots of them. This year, I’m going to be more ambitious. I’ve got a lot more tubs, a lot more seed varieties, and even a couple of cheap and cheerful coldframes to help things along.

You can see some of the seeds I bought in the photo at the top. Simple plain packets, these all came from the Organic Catalogue site, based in England. They specialise in organic seeds, which I think is just great. Not everything they offer is organic, but they have a wide selection that is, and it’s all clearly labelled, so you don’t get confused. Ordering from them was easy, and everything arrived promptly.

window-mounted bird-feeder

Looking around on their site, I see they work with the Ferme de Sainte Marthe in France. They also sell organic seeds online, so for my francophone visitors, you may find that a more convenient place to shop. You can download their catalogue directly from their site. The Organic Catalogue site doesn’t have a downloadable catalogue (shame on them!), but you can order one delivered free by post if you’re interested.

organic tomato seeds

I’m also going to try my hand at growing aubergines. I’ve never grown them before, so I picked a small variety, ‘mini Bambino‘. Hopefully there’s less that can go wrong with them, though I gather they can be quite tricky. I’ve got two varieties of peppers, ‘Golden California Wonder’ (a sweet pepper) and ‘Early Jalapeno’, nice and hot. I’ve grown cayenne and other hot peppers before, and I know that a few plants can yield enough peppers to freeze and keep for the year, so I have high hopes for the jalapenos.

Parsley, spinach, coriander and radish should be easy enough to grow. I’m going to try celery, though from what I have read on the web that can be quite difficult. The few peas I grew last year worked well, so I’ll be growing a lot more this year. Rather than staking them up, I’ll let them trail over the side of the tubs, so they don’t compete with other plants for vertical space.

The other new vegetable for me will be parsnips. I’ve no idea how they will grow in tubs, but thanks to the guide to parnips by Veg Plotting, I have a few pointers. My compost may be too fresh for them, having only had one season of growth, so I’m anticipating a few split roots. As long as they taste OK, I don’t mind.

'Silvery Fir Tree' tomato seedlings

I don’t intend to do much in the flower department, my garden is primarily for eating. Sunflowers and marigolds again, yes, definitely. This year I will add sweet peas, having – err – found some seeds on a plant hanging over a garden wall last year. They would have fallen onto the road and been washed down the drain, so I’m sure the owner wouldn’t mind me rescuing them.

I’m also diversifying into fruit. I’ve grown ‘normal’ strawberries before, but this year I’m going to try ‘alpine strawberries‘. I know how readily strawberries get damaged, or eaten by almost anything that finds them, hence the choice of something that will, I expect, mature quicker due to its smaller fruit. I don’t mind sharing with the birds, but I do want to make sure I get enough for myself.

tubs waiting for plants

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dead sunflower

sunflower in full bloom

Yesterday, I finally dug up my dead sunflowers. Even though there are still a few seeds in them, as you can see in the photo, the birds have stopped visiting them, so it’s time for them to go. I had intended to save the dead flowers to put out later in the winter for the birds, but they found them before I harvested them so I let them have them. I’ll put out other food for them later.

Sunflowers are one of my favourite flowers, I first grew them when I was a kid. I’ve taken a number of photos of this years crop during the summer, here are a few of the best. Hope you like them!

sunflower petals close-up

one of my first sunflowers this year

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plant tubs, covered for the winter

Today I ‘officially’ closed the garden by covering the big plant tubs with their water-trays, to avoid having the winter rains leech out all the nutrients before the next growing season. I’d never really paid much attention to how soil in pots gets depleted of its nutrients before, but that was brought home to me this year. The white tub that I have had for many years grew tiny sunflowers compared to those with new soil, which were three or four times bigger. Shame on me, I should have known better.

I don’t want to use chemical fertilisers, I don’t want to replace the soil in the pots, and I don’t think I can realistically put a compost heap on my terrace, so I’m trying something different. I’m digging small, deep holes in the soil, and burying vegetable peelings in them. Hopefully, over winter, they will rot down enough to feed the soil without also rotting next years plants. Maybe it will work, maybe not, we’ll see!

Our garden has been quite productive, and we’ve enjoyed the produce from it. A recent study claims that organic food is no healthier than normal food, but that study completely ignored the use of pesticides in conventional agriculture. I’ve read enough to convince me that pesticide-free veggies are a good thing. Of course, there are other benefits to growing your own vegetables, such as reducing food-miles.

Food-miles are a measure of the amount of fuel needed to transport food from the farm to your plate. That fuel all contributes to climate-change by emitting greenhouse-gasses, so getting your food locally means less global warming. You can’t get more local than your own garden, so growing your own food is good for the planet too!

On a larger scale, organic farming is also beneficial in the fight against climate change in other ways. Organic farming feeds the soil, not the plant, and doing so means that the soil will absorb and hold more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than chemical-intensive methods. The Carbon Farmers of America have taken this one step further, deliberately adopting farming techniques to optimise carbon sequestration, and making farms more productive in the process. The story of the farms of “Yobarnie” and “Nevallan”, in Australia, is quite an eye-opening account of how well such techniques work.

So your organic garden may be good for the climate, as well as providing good food. I could have squeezed a few more vegetables out of our garden this year, but I’m glad I left some space for sunflowers instead. Apart from being pretty in their own right, they’ve been feeding the bees all summer, and now feed the birds, long after nearly everything else out there has finished. If you look closely at the photo below you’ll see there are 6 goldfinches, quite a sight!

goldfinches galore

great tit and goldfinch on sunflower

Other birds have benefited from both the goldfinches and the great tits dropping seeds on the ground. Black Redstarts and sparrows often forage around the pots while the other birds are doing their stuff. Sparrows may be plain compared to other birds, but they’re still fun to watch. Here’s 3 of them looking on while a fourth is dipping into the bowl of water we put out for them. You can’t easily tell, but he was taking a bath at the time.

sparrow bathtime

Finally, although the garden outdoors is finished for the year, we’re still growing something! Dweezeljazz has got the bug now, and is growing fresh shoots of all sorts for our salads. They’re very easy to grow, using a neat little gadget from Satoriz, and make a welcome addition to our meals. Thank you, Dweezeljazz.

salad shoots

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lacewing

There are lots of places on the web where you can get good information about the type of home that you can provide for insects for the winter. They range from simple things like a pile of leaves in a wire cage to more elaborate and attractive DIY projects like the one at Herbs and Dragonflies. Other sites have more detailed information, such as the Paignton Home Garden & Allotment Society, or the Cheshire Wildlife Trust. For the ultimate in accomodation for garden wildlife, take a look at the invertebrate habitat they designed as part of their exhibit at the 2005 RHS Tatton Park Flower Show.

bamboo pieces

assembled ladybird house

I threaded two pieces of string, one in and out of the top pair of holes, one in and out of the bottom. Then I stacked the bamboo in the container, with the closed ends inside of course! Pack the bamboo in tight, so that it holds itself firmly.

I made sure that the string was looped around the bamboo inside the container, so that when I pull it tight it will hold the bamboo tighter together. Otherwise, the string might just tear through the plastic over time, and that would not be good.

ladybird house mounted on fence

My only question is, how will I know if there’s anyone living in there? Any ideas?

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beetroot leaf eaten by leaf miners

One common form of damage has been beetroot leaves eaten out from the inside by leaf-miners. There was a lot of this in early summer in particular, and I had little choice but to remove the affected parts of the leaves and throw them away. Otherwise I would have had very few leaves left on some of my plants! Apparently, some plants have evolved patterns of markings that look similar to the damage caused by leaf-miners, which protects them because the leaf-miners prefer unoccupied leaves in which to lay their eggs. Maybe I’ll ask Dweezeljazz to go out and paint the leaves for me next year, that sounds like a job for an artist!

There have been any number of butterflies hovering around the garden, even well before there were any flowers in evidence. They must have had something else in mind and yes, sure enough, I have found lots of eggs hidden on the leaves. Some were quite hard to spot, among the beetroot in particular. Some were easier, like the yellow eggs on the nasturtium leaves.

eggs on nasturtiums

eggs on beetroot leaves

Butterfly eggs, of course, hatch into caterpillars, and I have found quite a number through the summer. On the left is a ‘Small White’ (Pieris rapae), this one was just running around the rim of the pot like he was desperate to find the end of it. I don’t know what the one on the right is called. Below them is, I think, the caterpillar of a Garden Tiger moth (Arctia caja). Apparently, Tiger Moth numbers have been decimated in the last 30 years, due largely to excessive use of pesticides. Like many other small creatures, they are now in need of protection in the UK. This one was running across our living room floor at high speed, heading for the stairs, looking for a place to pupate. He was safely redirected to the great outdoors!

caterpillar of the Small White (Pieris rapae)

caterpillar on lettuce

caterpillar of the Garden Tiger moth (Arctia caja)

beetle on sunflower

There have been a number of other insects, such as this bright green beetle (probably a Chrysolina species), and the two crickets below.

The one on the right is Roesel’s bush cricket, (Metrioptera roeselii), and this poor specimen has lost one of his hind legs. Despite this, he was quite agile, climbing easily, and was able to manage a decent hop when I picked him up and released him in the nearby bushes.

cricket on beetroot

Roesel’s bush cricket (Metrioptera roeselii)

goldfinch on sunflower

It’s not just insects that visit our garden. After being absent this summer, the goldfinches are back, this one investigating the sunflower heads for seeds. Well, that’s why I planted them! I know it’s not a good photograph, but it’s the only one of a goldfinch that I have at the moment, so it will have to do. Hopefully I’ll get better photos later.

Although not closely related to the American goldfinch, it does share its taste for sunflower seeds!

hedgehog

Finally, late one night a few weeks ago, we found this hedgehog doing the rounds on our terrace. I don’t think he found anything edible, but he’s welcome to come back anytime. Again, not a perfect photo, but we don’t like to use flash on animals, especially nocturnal ones. He wasn’t hanging around for us to get many shots, this is the only one we got of him too!

I haven’t any photos of all the bees, butterflies and wasps that have visited my garden too. Maybe next year. It’s amazing how much variety you can get visiting just a few pots of plants.

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rain

pot-grown beetroot

beetroot and chard leaves

lettuce and chard overflowing their pots

plucked seedlings

I also had an attack of powdery mildew on the beetroot leaves. Looking around, it seems that one way to deal with that is to spray the plants with milk! Incidentally, if you go looking for the article referenced on that page, the link they give is incorrect. The original paper was in the journal of Crop Protection, not Crop Science. If your Portugese is any good, you can also take a look at a technical note by the same author, which you can get without paying for it!

I’ve mentioned the ants on my sunflowers, they were farming aphids. I read in several places that mint deters ants. Not having any mint to hand at the time, I put down the contents of a few mint tea-bags, and that seemed to do the trick! That same link actually advocates planting sunflowers so the ants will herd aphids onto them, taking them away from other plants. I didn’t read that bit first time round, it seems there’s more to companion-planting than meets the eye!

peas

We have 6 large tubs for our terrace garden, plus a number of smaller pots, which provide a good deal of growing space. We shall add more tubs next year. We paid more for the pots and soil than we have saved on the food we have grown so far, but I think that it will only take 3 or 4 years to pay back the initial investment. Meanwhile, we’ve been able to go shopping less often, saving us time, and money on petrol, and we have been able to supplement our table regularly, with good-tasting, pesticide-free produce. All things considered, our first summer of organic terrace gardening has gone very well so far, and it’s not over yet!

(part of) my garden

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field of flowers

daisies

I have written about my vegetable garden before, but I have another garden, a secret garden. It’s not secret because it’s hidden, on the contrary, it’s in full sight of everyone. No, it’s secret because I do nothing to make it grow, nothing to make it flower. My secret garden is the wild flowers around me, which I find as beautiful as any domestic garden I have seen.

wild flower

There are lots of different sorts of flowers in my garden. Even the dandelions of spring are a part of it, fields of yellow that are just lovely to see, and which provide the emerging bees with some of their early-season food. For the most part, I don’t know the names of these plants. If anyone does, please, let me know!

There are lots of these daisy-like flowers, simple yellow-and-white things. I have no idea what the blue flowers below them are called, but the bees love them. So do I, the way the pink buds open to reveal blue flowers is quite something. They’re not quite as common as some of the other plants, and the flowers are a little more hidden below the upper leaves, so they’re a bit harder to find. But they’re worth it.

verbascum thapsus

beetles on verbascum thapsus

Then there’s one that I can name, Verbascum Thapsus, above. I learned their name quite by chance when my good friend Shannon mentioned them in her “Wildlife in Summer” blog-post recently. She has a photo of some of them flowering on a rooftop, having somehow found room to put out roots. According to Wikipedia, Verbascum Thapsus is a biennial, so those plants had been there for a while! They flower tall and bright, and they flower for a long time. I bet that if they were annuals instead of biennials, they would be popular with gardeners.

thistles

trichodes nuttalli on thistle

I found this ‘Checkered beetle’ (Trichodes Nuttalli) on a thistle very close to my home. I’d never seen a beetle quite like this before, he’s really very colourful. Thanks to “The Marvellous in Nature” for a post just a week or two ago which identifies this critter!

spiky flowering plant

pink flower

yellow flower

Then there are some more familiar plants, like the poppies that come up everywhere in spring and the pale blue cornflowers that follow them in summer. The flowers change with the seasons, but there are always so many to see, all through the spring and summer. I’ve only mentioned a few in this post, maybe I’ll show you some more of my secret garden later on. Stay tuned!

poppy at edge of cornfield

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path cleared of grass

orange butterfly

The country lanes in the Pays de Gex need to be cleared of grass and wild plants from time to time, or they would rapidly become overgrown. I guess it’s necessary, but it always makes me sad to see all that lush green growth cut back in its prime. The photo above was taken one week after the one of the orange butterfly on the right, and in the same place. All those flowers gone in a moment, and the insects that relied on them for food and shelter now have to go elsewhere. Spiders, lizards, frogs, and other creatures that feed on the insects all get disturbed too, of course. It seems such a shame to harm all those plants and animals in the process, but is there really any alternative?

Even if it is necessary to cut back the growth to keep the paths open, there are ways that it could be done that are less harmful to both the plants and the animals that depend on them. For example, don’t cut back all the growth in one area at the same time, leave some as a refuge for insects. Not all insects can easily move on to new grounds. Some bees, for example, nest in banks along paths like this one, and are more exposed if their cover is removed. Other insects may have already laid their eggs on these plants, and the eggs will not survive when the plants are cut back. Even those insects that can move on can’t always move far or fast, so may not survive if the nearest intact stand of plants is too far away. They may not be able to feed on the crops in the fields, so the nearest food plants may be a long way off down the lane. I’ve no idea how far a caterpillar can walk, but with that many legs, sore feet can’t be fun! If a patch of plants every few metres or so could be left alone all season, instead of mowing down an entire area, these insects would have a chance to complete their lifecycle in a more natural manner.

It’s not just the insects and other animals that will benefit from a stay of execution, the plants need it too. They need to be allowed to flower and set seed, and for those seeds to be dispersed, or the next generation of flowers will have to come from somewhere else. For some flowers, this might not seem to matter, dandelions and daisies can probably survive the worst that the lawn-mower can throw at them. But sometimes, it really is important. Near to where I work in Geneva, there are grassy areas among office buildings that have been found to harbour orchids. There are at least two orchid species there, in fact, and one (Ophrys Apifera) is rare enough that it is on the CITES list of endangered species. The other (Anacamptis Pyramidalis)is more common, especially so since the grass it grows in is now left alone until late in the summer, so the orchids are allowed to flower and set seed in peace. A simple act of not cutting the grass is enough to help these orchids to thrive.

floral reserve

Anacamptis Pyramidalis, an orchid

So before you cut your grass again, or dig over that plot of land at the bottom of the garden, why not pause to take a good look at what’s living there. Even if you don’t have rare orchids, you might find some pretty wild flowers that you have overlooked in the past, or maybe a small frog or two, as I have found in my Mums garden in recent years. If so, maybe you can leave a patch of ground undisturbed for a while longer, and let nature do its stuff. You can help it to survive, by simply doing nothing to it.

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