Spring is nearly here!

[roselanekoi]

Are these photos taken with your new camera?

It's the time of year for the gardening catalogues, I received 6 in the space of two days between Christmas and the New Year, Marshalls and Thompson & Morgan are my current favourites for vegetable seeds, I'm only interested in planting things I can eat.

I've just planted my first seeds of the year, onion, leek and broad bean, all being started off in the propagator. In the past I've tried planting broad beans in the autumn but they never seem to overwinter well for me with early spring sowings catching up by harvest time.

I did pay a visit to RSPB reserve at Burton Mere last Friday but after a heavy overnight frost all the ponds were frozen over. I think most of the birds had migrated over to the nearby Dee estuary and those remaining were not looking too happy about having to walk around on the ice, still it was a nice sharp sunny morning to walk around the reserve.

[pollygog]

New camera? I wish!

No; the pic's were taken on my old Canon Powershot, my new camera is still being appraised, but I'm sure it will be a modest starter DSLR, either Nikon or Canon.
The gardening catalogues are a thing of the past for me as all my veg seeds I've bought over the last few years have been bought online so now all the seed and plant adverts are aimed at my computer and not my post box.
By and large I tend not to use the larger companies anymore like Suttons or Marshalls, instead I shop around on t'internet for best deals.
However one problem there is you get inundated with adverts to the point of overkill for that particular product.
Do agree with you about about spring planted broad beans over autumn sown, mild winters see them plagued with black aphids while severe winters stunts their growth markedly.
Much better to sow them early as possible in Jiffy pots in a cold frame or greenhouse before planting them out, close net cloches are ideal protection for planting them out early, keeps off cold winds, frost, excessive rain and aphids.
Boxing Day was always a traditional time to sow your onion and leek seed (under protection) so you are not far out in your sowing Colin.

[roselanekoi]

Interesting comments about the garden catalogues. I've just received a 1kg bag of sarpo mira potatoes from Thompson & Morgan and was very disappointed to find it contained only 9 tubers, of these 5 were large enough to cut up for chips.

I visited the local garden centre this morning and saw they had 2kg bags of Sarpo Mira on sale for £3.99 supplied by Thomson & Morgan, the catalogue price from Thompson & Morgan is £5.99. I've now removed Thompson & Morgan from my list of online suppliers.

The Sarpo mira are an excellent main crop variety to grow if your garden tends to suffer from potato blight, they are very blight resistant.

[pollygog]

Things have moved on considerably in the spud growing world since the humble 'King Edward' we were brought up on.
Potato blight unfortunately now dictates what we grow and where we grow them, as does the dreaded eelworm and keeled slugs that also ruin our crop when its wet.
I was given a tub of Belle de Fontenay last year from a gardening friend of ours on The Wirral, they are excellent salad spuds or new second early potato variety.
My favourite main crop potato is Rooster but that has now been succeeded by Setanta due to some susceptibility to blight.
The trend is now to grow your potato crop in potato grow bags, this eliminates eelworm and slugs and provided you use certified seed, blight also, you wont get a massive crop but what you get are clean healthy spuds, mine were perfect last year.
According to the Scottish Seed Potato Association you should get between 10 to 16 egg sized seed potatoes per kilo!

[roselanekoi]

Last year I grew all my potatoes in 30 / 35 litre tubs after having poor potato yields for a couple of years in the garden. I've tried using the potato bags in the past but never been a great fan.

I've been very pleased with the results, as you say no problems with with slugs or eelworm or mice for that matter, they seem to like main crop potatoes if you're slow harvesting them.

Some of the Cons are.
1. One off cost outlay for the tubs.
2. Cost of peat to fill the pots. Will experiment this year with mixing more garden soil and compost in with the peat.
3. More watering required

Some of the Pros:
1. Less problems with pests
2. Spent compost can be used to improve the garden soil.
3. Storage - Rather than having to harvest all the potatoes in the Autumn I've moved the remaining tubs into the greenhouse where they will be frost free and I can harvest as they are wanted in the Kitchen.
4. Less space required in the garden for growing potatoes
5. Better cropping, 3 main crop tubers in a 30 litre bucket can yield around 10kg of potatoes

Overall pleased with the results this year and intend to use the same system this coming year.

[pollygog]

It looks like you have followed the popular trend of a lot of veg growers with using tubs for potato growing.
I'm certainly a convert to tubs, black heavy duty 50 litre ones with sturdy handles that are easy to move around, cost me just £22.95 for 5 off t'internet.
A good investment!
I've not grown spuds in the ground for 5 years, 2011 to be exact, the burrowing keeled slugs ruined the late crop, Pentland Crown and Rooster.
Slugs and blight just about ruined that years crop, induced through a dreadful cold wet summer and autumn.

[pollygog]

BIRDS AT WINTER NIGHTFALL

Around the house the flakes fly faster,
And all the berries now are gone
From holly and cotonea-aster
Around the house. The flakes fly!_faster
Shutting indoors that crumb-outcaster
We used to see upon the lawn
Around the house. The flakes fly faster,
And all the berries now are gone!
Thomas Hardy

I thought this Thomas Hardy poem was quite appropriate as there is scarcely a berry left in our garden after the Fieldfares visit.

We missed all the snow again this week so here is a picture of the garden at dusk in January 6 years ago, I remember we had a lot of hen pheasant in feeding that day, also wood pigeon.
We still hear the pheasant call in the woods but not had one in the garden for several months now, our regular cock pheasant visitor with the gammy leg has either been shot or eaten by the foxes or buzzards I expect!

[roselanekoi]

I see next weekend (28 - 30 January) is the date for this years RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. Anyone wishing to take part can get further details on the RSPB website rspb.org.uk/birdwatch

Last year was the first time I'd taken part and I was amazed how many different varieties of birds visited the feeder at the bottom of the garden. I'm obviously not very observant as I'd never noticed some of the birds in the garden before, it'll be interesting to see how many I spot this year.

[pollygog]

The RSPB big garden birdwatch is an excellent way to make people aware of just what frequents (or doesn't frequent their gardens. It also makes people aware of how much they can actually help the birds and wildlife in their gardens in all manner of ways, feeding, providing shelter, cover, nesting habitat, planting berried bushes and shrubs, providing water to drink and bathe in etc.
I think we all inadvertently do that with our ponds!
On the subject of water; this past week I've been watching the river fine down from quite high levels last weekend and also photographed the various birds visiting the river area.
First birds I saw as the river levels dropped was a Heron on Tuesday accompanied by a pair of Mallard in the Elwy at the back of The New Inn pub. Wednesday I saw a male Goosander fishing under the ancient stone road bridge and hurtling past me on a river still in spate, just too fast to get a pic, then Thursday, a Dipper by the Pont Begard bridge.
Friday, another distant funeral to attend so no dog walkies.
Saturday, a cold and very frosty early morning start but turned into a remarkably sunny day.
At the start of our walk I saw a peculiar sight, a Cormorant perched in the top of a tall Ash tree alongside the Pont Begard bridge being attacked by a Crow!
I stopped to watch them and spotted my first Snowdrops out, a small clump on the riverbank right under the Ash tree the birds were fighting in! Never would have seen them if I hadn't stopped.
Cormorant still there an hour later on my way back to car park but sans angry crow!
Difficult to get a decent picture through branches though.
The river was down about two feet from last Tuesday but still quite high and fast but now running clear.
Saw the Buzzard in pic below, sitting in the oak tree on The Common that has the giant wooden bat hanging from it, the bat, which is about four times the size of Buzzard, is just out of sight hanging from the large limb to bottom left of picture.

[pollygog]

This is the Cormorant below that was perched in an Ash tree last Saturday morning, strange behaviour for a web-footed water bird and something I've not seen before here!
Tomorrow is 'Burns Night' for all you Scots out there and may I wish you all: 'Lang may your lumb reek' Translated into English; long may your chimney smoke!
One particularly memorable Burns night for me was back in the early 80's when I did a lot of sailing.
25th January I was in South America in the company of 6 of my West Lanc's sailing club members, we were on a relatively small cruise ship in the town of Ushuaia in the stunningly beautiful Beagle Channel in Tierra del Fuego Argentina.
Ushuaia is the most southerly town in the world and the favoured drop-off zone for Antarctic expeditions. There is a small airport here and also a small local aero club who have a fully restored and flying, WW11 DC 3 (5-T-22) this is the old Dakota workhorse with twin Pratt and Whitney engines, it actually looked brand new, an incredible job.
We celebrated Burns Night in high spirits, quite excited to depart that night to sail south down the Beagle Channel into the Pacific and round Cape Horn from the Pacific Ocean into the South Atlantic. This was to realise a dream for us Northern sailors, to round the dreaded Cape Horn!
The captain was Scottish so the Haggis was ceremoniously piped in with full honours and the scotch flowed, freely!
Very early the next morning we entered the Pacific and right into the teeth of a sleet and hail storm, it gathered momentum as it grew light and we rounded Islas De Los Estados ( the small island which is Cape Horn) in a howling force ten gale with blinding snow flurries and mountainous green seas.
It certainly lived up to its fierce reputation, it was scary but exhilarating.
Very few people came to breakfast that morning, or lunch; so the waiter service was excellent, we had a choice of about five waiters each, and some of these were very decidedly green about the gills!