Red-leaved ornamentals and dieback

With the sun dipping ever earlier over the horizon, early afternoon is currently the best time to enjoy autumn’s last colours.

Cotinus ‘Grace’, ungraciously floppy in response to the fertility of my clay, is nevertheless looking stunning, magenta-pink to orange-red. Cornus ‘Midwinter Fire’ (a notoriously iffy plant that so far seems quite well) makes the ideal butter-yellow partner, with coral bark that picks up the warm tones of the cotinus.

Sadly, a red-leaved Acer japonica is suffering terribly from dieback. Previously a beautiful specimen, underplanted with cyclamen and ferns, it was a highlight of the pond garden, contrasting with the surrounding greenery, an elegant form in deep bronze, bright crimson in autumn. Shrubs and trees with leaves that are red throughout the growing season, seem to pay in vigour for their attractive colouring, and are especially prone to dieback; oak, ash, maple and birch are susceptible too. The causes are too varied to list, but specimens tend to reach relative maturity and then die back from the twigs down through the limbs, eventually killing the plant. Cutting out affected tissue below the telltale staining inside the wood is said to help, but often the cause is below the soil, and in my experience, there is nothing you can do.

Looking on the bright side, I shall dig out the floppy cotinus, and replant with a new baby red-leaved acer. If it brings as much pleasure as the last one did for a decade, even if it too eventually succumbs to dieback, it will still be well worth the cost and effort.

Biodynamic cow pat pit

Apologies to regulars for the time lapse. Since my last blog a duvet of oak leaves has floated down, a handful at a time, to blanket the ornamental garden, obscuring paths and border edges, making the cottage look as if it had sprouted naturally like a giant, misshapen mushroom.

One of the fortnight’s most memorable afternoons was spent preparing Bertie’s Cottage’s first biodynamic Cow Pat Pit (sometimes known as barrel preparation). My friend Hannah arrived with her son, Charlie, for Sunday lunch, bearing cider, chocolates and three buckets of best quality organic cow muck (Fortunately Charlie bonded instantly with my girls, united by embarrassment at their freakish mothers!)

With lots of news to catch up on, the sky was already darkening by the time we finished coffee. But undaunted, Hannah and I traipsed up to the veg garden, tipped the sloppery muck into a wheelbarrow and, adding the recommended dressings of finely crushed eggshells and basalt flour, we stirred it for an hour. The end result was much lighter in colour and fluffed up like an egg white half way to the peaky stage. The tonic or ‘preparation’ we were making is said to aid the breakdown of organic matter into stable humus (gardener’s treasure) by stimulating the energies of beneficial bacteria and microrganisms. These both require plentiful oxygen, so it felt like whipping up cowpat mousse.

After the hour’s stirring, we poured a third of the mixture into its mould - an enormous, bottomless clay pot, sunk under the soil surface almost to its brim. The six compost preparations Rudolf Steiner prescribed eighty-odd years ago were pushed in like booze-soaked amaretti into a trifle, then the process was repeated with a second layer and then a third. To finish we covered the pit with a hessian sack and a board to repel the rain, and left it to slow cook.

In six weeks time I’ll give it a stir to help maintain good oxygen levels, and by the end of winter, with luck, we’ll dig it up, dilute it extensively and apply it as a tonic to the soil of both Hannah’s new garden and our plot.

Autumn colour and the Green Roof

A still, sunny Sunday raised all our spirits. The children fetched their bikes and skateboards, excited dogs and the cat weaving chaos all around. I made the most of a ‘leaf day’, weeding raised beds of salads and kale, and Jim, anticipating a cool evening, carted logs up from the woodshed.

The green roof that covers that shed is a tapestry of emerald green mosses and heather-purple sedums that take it in turn to predominate according to the season and rainfall. At least seven years old now, the roof receives negligible maintenance, just a sprinkling of the biodynamic preparations and an annual top-dressing of seaweed. Occasionally I tug out an evening primrose or dandelion seedling, but there is so little nutrition available, that weeds can only reach pathetic proportions, and are unable to compete.

Tudor peas

The vegetable garden is feeding us handsomely with salads, roots and kale (the leeks are still rather small, but I don’t want to resign myself to ‘baby leeks’ until I’m certain they have stopped growing). Our dining room is always several degrees cooler than the rest of the house, and it doubles as a vegetable storage area, now well filled with squash, marrow, onions and garlic, cobnuts, apples and medlars.

Back in the summer, rather disappointed by a crop of Pea ‘Wegisser’, recommended as a mangetout variety, we left the pods to fatten and ripen on the haulms and harvested them when the cases were papery. They continued to dry in the dining room, and I just recently shelled them, soaked them overnight and simmered them for a couple of hours. They looked simply disgusting, mottled, muddy brown with little black flecks - if it wasn’t for Jim’s passion for historical recipes, I would have fed them to the geese. However, I persevered and once the peas had finally softened, I drained and mashed them, and added butter, cream, salt and black pepper. The resulting peas pudding was dirty brown and very unappetising to look at, but by common consensus, surprisingly tasty – just the job with strong-flavoured meats such as bacon or venison.

Netting the pond

In our neighbours’ field beyond the woodshed, a possy of young charolais cattle cantered down the hillside, cream against green, then cream against russet, gold and burnt orange as they made for a hedgerow of oak, hazel and bracken. Realising it won’t be long before the ground, rather than branches are strewn with leaves, I cut back the plants that grow in the shallow margins of the pond so I could net over the water surface. (Nutrients released from rotting leaves would feed algae next year, so to keep the water clear, collecting the leaf litter is well worth the effort). Dying iris leaves, withered loosestrife and long-empty primula seedheads were no loss, and the pretty cattails were still tidy enough to bring in for dried flower arrangements, but, as every year, I hated shearing off still fine goblets of carnivorous Sarracenia and the broad glaucous flags of Thalia dealbata. Fortunately I did manage to lift free a pot of Osmunda regalis, the Royal Fern, at the height of its autumnal splendour – it won’t suffer for a few weeks with its feet out of the water at this time of year.

Last outing for the beesuits

Sometimes it is only the fighters who make it through – perhaps that is why Hive 2 at Bertie’s Cottage seems in such fine fettle. The queen’s character and health dictates the temper of her colony, and as the season progressed, Queen 2 was obviously well out of sorts, since her workers resented gardeners on the veg terraces below. Normally this isn’t the case, and, unless the weather is stormy or you are wearing a perfume they dislike, bees will happily work alongside people.

I know they must feel demoralised by a second lousy summer, but this year stroppy bees have been a regular pain. I kept humming and haaing about killing Queen 2 and giving the sisters a new matriarch, but at such a critical time for the species, I couldn’t help projecting into the future, imagining honey bees all dead, and the guilt I would feel at having wilfully annihilated a hardy strain.

However, last week, as I peaceably hoed around the brassicas, a fifth ambassador in a row from that hive shot into view like a miniature missile, emitting the unmistakable high-pitched shriek of kamikaze. Within seconds she netted herself into my hair so, since Jim was away, I fled to my lovely beekeeping neighbours, hoping they’d squash her before I was stung. They parted my hair, just as I felt the poison hit. It was one assault too many – either I’d give the whole colony away with their harridan ruler, or I would kill her and unite my two hives under the other sweeter-tempered queen.

Adam, the local bee inspector is invaluable. He came over, we opened Hive 2, and as I smoked the tops of the frames to subdue the inmates, he chiselled out the frames to look for the queen and check the brood and the larder. Through his veil, his face lit up. He rhapsodised at the fecundity of the laying pattern in the brood chamber – uniform swathes of hexagonal cells, with no ‘pepperpot’ appearance (where uncapped cells amongst sealed brood reveal a dip in fertility or the presence of disease).

He then discovered a vacated queen cell (resembling an overlong acorn, with a hammered pattern as if it were metal). It appears that the old queen has been superseded by young, vigorous successor, carrying a new set of paternal genes. In honeybees, the drone’s character regulates the offspring’s temper. With luck my new queen’s father came from our neighbour David’s hive, another ‘black’, local strain, but more friendly.

We won’t find out what she is like till next spring. The bees, within combs stuffed with ivy honey and sugar syrup, are clustered together, vibrating quietly to ward off the chill. Last job of the year, I must nail up a mouse guard of perforated zinc to ensure the hives are not invaded whilst the bees are inactive.

Fleece tunnels and rust on leeks

Freezing north easterlies and driving rain have put paid to gardening for a few days. I’m just thankful to have missed out on the cloudbursts of hail and snow that have wrecked havoc elsewhere in the country.

At Bertie’s Cottage there are twice as many salad beds as last year, at least ten varieties I grew from seed, plus a winter collection from www.delfland.co.uk. The recently planted plugs are hardy, but growing slowly in the cold, so a bit of protection should help bring them on. However, rows of well-grown butterheads, planned for salads up till Christmas, would hate to be battered by ice. Forewarned by www.metcheck.com, I set off for the industrial estate to equip myself with the materials to erect fleece tunnels.

Iron-grey clouds emptied frequent downpours and the first hail for months made me shiver with its unerring aim inside my collar. A bright spell followed, and with urgency quickening, I begged for help. Iona, in a teenage flop, was not to be persuaded (not even by money), but Lucy and Jim proved stalwart, and within two hours of hammering and wrapping ourselves and the cat in reams of fleece, four sturdy tunnels were erected.

I was torn with indecision over a bed of undersized leeks (planted too late). They won’t grow if it’s cold, but rust threatens if ventilation is not adequate. A horsetail wash (BD508) seventeen days ago had kept them immaculate, but I knew a fleece tunnel would increase the risk of an outbreak. So we covered them, and opened up through the day yesterday, but this morning, after only two nights under fleece, bright orange stains marred two dozen or so blue-green leaves. I cut out the affected tissue, will leave the bed uncovered, and spray again with horsetail (BD508) on the first sunny morning.