A little birdhouse in my soul...

Normally I have a big project over the Easter weekend, but this year with a baby and an election, I have only really managed to repair and reposition our birdbox which had been battered by the weather (or a trespassing tree climber). I've never been that sure how much birdboxes help given the number of perfectly decent trees around, but we'll see if anyone takes up the offer.

I was devastated to hear that long tailed tits had a hard winter and their numbers are down - they're my all-time favourite bird and bring joy to my heart with their cheeky antics. So I was delighted when four flitted through the garden on Saturday. I like to think that our feeders gave them the edge over the crushing winter we had this year*.

So apart from that, I've redosed our lawn with organic food, but I haven't managed to get a full crop of compost for mulching having emptied all the heaps/containers last year. I may turn the "hedge heap" but I'm not expecting much quality compost there.

*btw not only was Jan the warmest globally on the satellite record, but Feb was second warmest on record. We just got someone else's weather.

Don't forget the birds...

If you're in this strange snow-bound world that we call the UK, don't forget our little feathered friends. Fresh water, fatty foods, seeds etc etc will all help them through. Don't bother with bread and you're better losing the plastic nets that peanuts and fatballs come in - they can damage birds' feet.

The snow seems to have brought a few new visitors to our garden. We had a woodpecker at the nuts yesterday and as I type there are three redwings up in a tree, eating snow. I've never seen either in the garden in the ten years we've lived here.

One thing I have noticed about the snow is a resurgence in walking. People are wrapping up and trudging their way around the city - maybe the habits will stick for a while.

Turning over a new leaf...

My New Year's Resolution every year is exactly the same - to live life properly. This gives me a kick up the backside every January to stop cutting corners and take the time and effort on every task. That's very fulfilling in itself - I don't buy into this "modern life is so hectic" nonsense in the meeja. If you want the time to do something then you will find the time.

So, a bit early this year, I've decided to do my composting properly. Normally I just chuck leaves into the general compost heap, but this year they're going into a dumpy bag of their own to make leaf mould. Most of the work in a compost heap is done by bacteria who need heat and oxygen through turning. Tree leaves however are broken down by fungi who work in a cooler environment and don't like being disturbed. I'm paraphrasing Carol Klein here, but, unlike her, I'm leaving some leaves to decompose in situ which should improve the ecological value of the garden by encouraging microfauna.

On my main food composter, I'm not only adding shredded brown envelopes this year, but I'm using a small pitchfork (which was in the house when we moved in) to mix the material as I go along. Already the composting is happening faster and better. I've also just insulated the worm bin to help them through the frosts.

All this compost will be used to top-dress the flower beds next year. We did this earlier this year and we've had the best display that we've had in the nine and a half years we've lived here.

Chop chop!

My arms are aching today from chopping the four large logs I've had in the back yard for about three years - they were 'rescued' from some local tree surgery. Well, I got a neighbour with a chainsaw to cut them, then I split them in four with a large axe, so they're not quite a carbon neutral fuel. If they were recently felled green wood I would leave them for a year to 'season', but these seemed to have dried out well during their wait, so I'll try them out in the new year. I should have enough wood from previous years to last until then - we only use our wood burner on really cold nights.

Also yesterday I did the final hedge trim of the year which filled up much of the compost heap. The problem now will be getting enough high nitrogen material to help the woody stems to rot - not much grass from now on in, so it will mainly be the odd widdle... I made sure that I left some parts of the hedge rough and left some leaves for the micro-fauna.

I also fixed my wormery whose tap I had managed to knock off some time ago - so little or no liquid worm food this year, although we'll still get the lovely wormcast to top dress the flower beds in the winter. Once I've made sure they've got enough food for the winter, I'll bubble wrap the container to keep the frost off.

Just another Sunday in the life of an eco-liver (or lifer!)... by the way, is it just me or are the leaves staying on the trees much longer this year?

Blooming obvious

A little obsession of mine this year has been keeping colour in the garden all year round to support a healthy insect population and, in turn, birds too. The easy way to do this is any time the garden is looking a little green, go to the garden centre. They tend to sell whatever's in bloom at the time as it looks nice and you tend to buy it. Obvious, isn't it, but it took me long enough to work out!

The apples of my eye...

Went down to the allotment yesterday for the first time since our holiday and was astonished by the crop of apples from our tree. Actually the tree looked ill-prepared for it too as a major branch had split under the weight. So I picked a month's supply (at least!) for us and left the rest on, but a lot of people are going to get a bag of apples as a pressie in the next few weeks. This is both a nice thing and a pain about growing your own - you get too much of one food in a short period of time. Pain as it makes playing at being Tom & Barbara Goode impossible, but nice as you get to share. Got some onions and tomatoes in more sensible quantities and I'm still plucking the odd strawberry off some plants in the garden too.

As I mentioned earlier in the year, I'm trying my best to keep some blooms all year around. In the garden it's all gone a bit green, but our huge buddleia and a couple of other stalwarts are keeping the insects happy, and the sedums (seda?) are on their way. In the allotment we have some beautiful Dahlias which were crawling in bees yesterday, the sunflowers are about to open, but despite its beautiful white trumpets, the bindweed is mercilessly ripped out.

Speaking of insects, I got nature's full spectrum of beauty and the beast when I went for a run on Wednesday. A raptor of some sort took off up through the trees at my approach, a kingfisher flitted along the river and a wasp went out of its way to sting me on the elbow, all within 2 minutes. They seem to be going for me this week, don't know why...

Flowers all year around!

Just watching the brilliant Springwatch on the Beeb. Chris Packham (a worthy successor to Bill Oddy) is explaining that to support birdlife at this time of year (nesting), you need plenty of nectar to attract insects - the young birds need the protein to survive.

BTW - leaving some scruffy corners in your garden will help too.

The greener, greener grass...

Lawns are great for allowing water to soak away (important given potential flooding of rivers in a warmer climate), but traditional lawn maintenance can be quite resource intensive in terms of energy for mowing, water and fertiliser. For the first, we've got a push mower and the second hasn't been a problem yet - that wet August last year watered it in without intervention from us and the garden is reasonably shaded.

For the last one we got some organic lawn food (see above). This is not one for the veggies - it seems to mainly consist of by-products from the meat industry (blood, hoof and feathers) and it does have a faint whiff the day you put it down. But a week later and the grass really is looking thicker and greener. Nice one.

Compost frenzy part 1

Easter weekend is the biggest gardening/DIY weekend of the year and I decided to spend it this year sorting out my composting arrangements.

First I had to empty the various containers - worm bin, food waste bin and garden waste bay. Chucking food scraps, envelopes and cardboard into heaps and bins and waiting for nature to do its thing is the easy bit - it is back breaking work shovelling the resulting compost out, sieving it to take out bits of plastic, and then carting it to where you need it.

You can buy sieves for compost but, before I found my proper one, I found that an old wire shopping basket does the trick nicely. This is my food waste compost - the worm bin produces much darker, richer compost (and liquid plant food), but it works on much smaller volumes. My garden waste compost was, frankly, rubbish - too much privet, not enough moisture - more on that in part 2.



I used the compost as a mulch on our front flower bed. It sets off the plants a treat and will also release nutrients into the soil, suppress weeds and retain moisture. Some say it also protects against disease.



More on the new arrangements in Part 2...

Birds Again: Sparras

OK, so I'm posting a lot about birds at the minute...

Anyway, when we moved into our house eight years ago there were plenty of sparrows, now they are scarce. According to the Guardian, this decline is because gardens are too tidy to support enough insects. As a result, baby sparrows starve in the nest in their first four days. All my bird seed won't help either - they need those insects.

So, spare a thought for those poor little chicks and don't tidy your garden this winter. And, obviously, lay off the pesticide.

The Green, Green Grass...

After 5 years of resembling a building site, we finally got our garden in shape this summer. This was a good opportunity to flex some green muscle.

We broke up a lot of concrete and replaced it with grass - a permeable surface which absorbs rain. You may think this is insignificant, but, as I write, half of Newcastle is under water and people are being evacuated from their homes. Our drainage and rivers cannot cope with the rapid run-off from hard surfaces, and this is our small contribution to reversing the trend of concreting over front gardens.

The benefit of all this rain is we haven't had to water the lawn and I'm going to try and feed it with homemade fertiliser next year. The grass cuttings will also balance the hedge clippings in our very dry compost heap - I've bought a push mower for when it dries out enough to cut.

Other green features include reclaimed flag stones, a retractable double washing line (we never have owned a drier anyway) and several bird feeding stations. We'll be stocking it up with more wildlife friendly plants in the next year.

The eco-bandit in all this greenery is the pressure treated wood deck. We would have preferred a stone patio, but the cost was prohibitive.

Weekly Tip #13: Grow Your Own

Now spring has sprung - why not plant some food plants in your allotment, garden, yard or windowbox. Zero food miles, organic and tasty (your own food always tastes better).

Weekly Tip #11: Nematodes

Slugs will soon be decimating your garden if you don't act to stop'em. Don't use the horrible toxic blue pellets, use nematodes instead - we use Nemaslug and it works great.

Spring is in the air...

... the solar panel occasionally kicking into life seems to have replaced the buds on the trees as the first sign that winter is coming to an end!

I do need it to heat up as my compost bin is almost completely full. This will only be a temporary problem as I have five pallets in my garden from the drystone wall, and I'm going to replace my single bay garden heap with a double bay model (which it originally was but the builders needed to cut it down to get scaffolding in some years ago, but that's another story).

The next big job in our garden is to lift the old concrete drive and replace it with a lawn. This is going against the current trend of concreting over front gardens to provide off street parking. This has been blamed for flooding problems as the water shoots off the surface into the drain and thus into rivers, rather than soaking into the soil and percolating through slowly.

Dry Stone Walling

Over the last, erm, 15 months, I've been building this dry stone retaining wall in the garden. I didn't think of it as an eco-option at first as stone is non-renewable, but then I compared it to its brick equivalent and realised:

1. stone has a lower embodied energy than brick

2. no mortar = less energy intensive cement manufacture

3. the gaps provide refuge for wildlife

The bonus is the source of the stone - Ladycross Quarry near Hexham. The stone is quarried by hand and the already quarried areas are converted into a nature reserve as they go along. It is a truly beautiful development - I have never heard or seen so many birds in one place in this country.

Slugs and Snails...

OK, I'm a bit of a lazy gardener, but I have spent a disproportionate amount of timefighting my pseudo-footed nemeses, the gastropods that munch through my herbaceous perennials every year. Obviously the pernicious little blue pellets are out. We've tried all the barrier methods - egg shells, vaseline and WD40 (the last two on pots), which seem to deter the beggars until they find some inventive (and surprisingly acrobatic) way through.

So for many years we've relied on the beer trap - including these rather nifty snail shaped traps from the National Trust (except they seem to have stopped making them and most of ours got smashed during the installation of our solar panel). However they do need topping up quite frequently so going on holiday becomes a real problem.

However this year we've had more joy using nematodes from Just Green. Nematodes are microscopic worms that use slugs as nurseries/food for their offspring. And they have worked really well, and one dose lasts for 6 weeks. They only do in slugs, but snails are easier to find and get chucked in the river.