Gardening Tips
Your fortnightly gardening tips for indoors and outdoors |
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DISCARDING SURPLUS PLANTS. Most
gardeners have quite a limited area in which to create their garden, and there is no point
in continuing to grow plants that are time-consuming to look after and are not pulling
their weight. A diseased or worn-out shrub can be a constant reproach, do something about
it. You can make better use of the space, even if it is only to dig over, enrich the soil
and replant with a decent specimen of the same plant. It is as easy to grow the best form
of a species or genus as it is one of the also-rans. In fact, new improved kinds can have
better constitutions and hence be easier to grow, as well as having better flowers and
overall appearance. There are plenty of good old kinds, but do keep an open mind and look
at the newer things. You might as well make the most of every square inch.
PRUNING. Fruit trees and bushes can be left to their own devices
and look highly decorative, but they are more productive if kept in some sort of order.
This means pruning away weak, diseased and crowded wood to encourage healthy growth and
the formation of plenty of fruiting buds. Pruning should be completed before any spraying
programme is undertaken. The easy gardener may decide that it is simpler and more economic
to purchase fruit from the greengrocer than to try to grow your own. If so, it is
pointless spending money on sprays to kill insects, clean the bark of moss and algae, and
to protect against fungus diseases.
WILDLIFE REST AREAS. It can be easiest to work with nature and we
might as well encourage the wildlife that helps us to keep down pests and enjoy their
company. This means being constructively untidy. For the obsessively tidy-minded, winter
is an opportunity to get every last leaf picked up and making the garden look ready for a
regimental inspection. If you feel the need to resist the temptation of making winter work
for yourself why not allow certain areas for various ‘’wild ‘’
friends? Choose out of the way spots and leave them undisturbed. This is a good compromise
and can be done without affecting the overall appearance of the garden. Hedge bottoms
provide shelter for field mice, hedgehogs and insects; a pile of wood logs does not need
to be very massive to make an even more attractive home for these creatures. A few drain
pipes or a pile of rocks left from year to year may become home to frogs, toads or slow
worms. Behind the compost heap or hidden by shrubs leave loose leaves, straw and twigs.
These areas will become tenanted by insects and so provide food for foraging birds as well
as maybe housing the odd field mouse or shrew. Leave the area behind the garden shed,
summerhouse or other building. It is not really looked upon as part of the garden scheme
and is probably well away from the living house and so provides less temptation for
tidying. |
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| Embarrassing
Stories |
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| My friend's dog was taking longer than
expected on a loo break one Christmas morning when it finally returned with a whole cooked
turkey in its mouth, probably pinched from a neighbour's kitchen! It was fortunate they
didn't see the culprit |
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LAMB TO ASSESS LOCAL
CONCERNS OVER ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR IN NORTH NORFOLK
Norman Lamb, Liberal Democrat MP for North Norfolk, will be spending a Friday night with
police to assess the concerns of local people over issues such as anti social behaviour.
Norman Lamb who has been out with the police previously says that it is important that he
sees the situation at first hand. Mr Lamb said: "I hope to be able to do
this very soon. I get a lot of people contacting me about various sorts of anti social
behaviour. A lot of it seems to be related to under age drinking.
I have discussed the situation with the Chief Constable who assures me that the police
are focusing their attention on all crime hotspots." |
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