April Notes 2000

Plants

Last month I mentioned new growth being spectacular, well the new growth on this yellow hop, Humulus aurea is, if only for the speed of it. This baby can reach the top of a six foot (1.8m) high fence in about three weeks if the weather is mild, and the leaves are a lovely shade of light green contrasting with the wine red stems. All the top growth dies away completely back to ground level each winter, thus the need for the vigorous growth to reclaim lost territory, and boy does it reclaim. Mine does battle with a honeysuckle each year, the honeysuckle gets the upper edge with a much earlier start, then just when you think it's all over the hop spirals up through it and by the end of July the honeysuckle has just about disappeared under a mass of darkening green hop leaves.

Another climber, this time the reputedly tender Eccremocarpus scaber, I say that because I have a plant near the far end of my rear garden which is at the bottom of a North facing slope and in a real cold trap. This particular specimen has been there for about ten years now and although knocked back to ground level in some winters always springs back up at the first sign of  warmth. This is another one of those tremendous value plants which flower and flower. The one shown, which is on my front South facing wall started to flower at the end of March, just, and will probably continue non stop until about November. The other one in the much colder spot will be about a month behind in starting, but will also continue through to about the same time, depending on the weather. One more bonus with this plant is the amount of seed produced, almost every flower produces a large seed pod containing hundreds of seeds, and they germinate easily and grow very quickly. I understand that there is a yellow variety available, but have yet to come across it. If I did I would have to find a space for it, the perennial problem. "Now which bit of wall or bush is least overpowered by climbers already?"

Wildlife

I must confess the comma butterfly (Polygonia c-album) was not photographed in my garden, but adjacent to a path by a stream where I often go for a gentle walk. A great photographer I'm not, but even I can see the beautiful contrast between the hard rusty barbed wire, rough timber post and the delicate insect taking in the warmth of the sun. It was on one of those wonderful spring days when everything felt just right, the stream was clear and running fast, sun kissed celandines and wood anemones carpeted the ground and the first buds were bursting on the trees. I spotted the butterfly, and then saw it alight on the post, now my camera has no zoom, so I had to be within about one foot six inches (45cm) to get the shot, and every second I thought it will take flight, but as you can see it stayed put.

Almost every one of my Japanese maples is swarming with the brown aphids as shown in the photograph to the left. They must have hatched from eggs laid on the dormant buds last year and somehow timed their emergence to coincide exactly with the bud burst, thereby finding a source of food. They are using the branches as a sort of multi-lane highway with traffic constantly flowing in both directions. I know the Acers will suffer a slight check in growth, but long term they will come to no harm, having enough reserves of energy to weather this early attack.

Luckily whatever triggers off the aphids also brings to life their old adversary the ladybird, such as these two seven spot ones (coccinella septempunctata), who, as you can see wasted no time in getting to work on producing their own brand of aphid killers. Probably due to my almost pesticide free garden, there are always plenty of these little characters about at the first sign of warmth, and unlike pesticides they stay around all year to combat the little sap suckers. 

If you thought the aphids were bad just look to the left, now that is a slug!, and still in the first flush of youth, about half grown. If you have been following my notes you will no doubt have noticed my repeated reference to the slime bunch. These animated sacks of goo really do challenge my patience at times, and before you advise me about beer traps, please hear my story. 

We have always had a few of the giant black or brown slugs in the garden, the type that grow to about four inches (10cm) long, but about four years ago for some reason their numbers started to increase dramatically. I don't like to use slug pellets in the garden, as they are poisonous to other creatures so I decided to try the beer traps. 

To give you some idea of the scale of the problem, almost every daffodil in the garden had first, it's flowers stripped, then the leaves. Every plant that was acceptable to them as food started to disappear. When I looked out on my front driveway on a damp morning or evening, flotillas of black and brown battleships were sailing across it in search of new feeding grounds. 

So out came the beer traps, about thirty or so dishes filled with homemade beer (about 8 pints to fill them all). The first night I counted about 300 drowned bodies, second night about the same, but by the end of the first week, and about 40 pints of beer later, there were only a few corpses. 

However the damage to the plants continued unabated. At this point the body count from the slug pubs was in the region of about 1000 and added to that the 800 or so that I collected and removed from the plants in the same week and you begin to get the picture. This was a war that I could not win, I was completely outnumbered and as quickly as I disposed of them others were hatching and growing to take their place. I observed the beer traps and found that the larger slugs were no longer drowning, but were just dipping their heads in for a drink. A few that did fall in were now capable of crawling back out again, yes even in their legless state. Also at about this point a new emotion was beginning to loom, jealousy, not only were they eating my beloved plants, but they were drinking my beer!. 

So I cut my losses and stopped with the traps, at least now I had something to drown my sorrows with. Gradually over the next three years my garden evolved, with only slug resistant plants surviving and of course with their food supply dwindling so did the numbers of slugs. Last year things really took a turn for the better in the form of the first armoured division arriving to support my beleaguered troops. Yes we were fortunate to have a hedgehog adopt our little plot  as her home. She was able to achieve in that one year, something that was beyond me, a balance as nature intended.

Late last year we were given the opportunity to repay our prickly visitor for a job well done. One evening my wife Christine came rushing in, I was on the computer (surprise surprise), carrying this little bundle of spikes, about the size of a tennis ball. "Look what I've found" she announced. It was towards the end of October and no way was the poor little thing heavy enough to hibernate through the winter. I knew it could be fed on cat food, but where could we keep it? So into an old birdcage it went for the night, and next morning I quickly created a pen for it in our chicken house. Ten days later Christine came rushing in again, and yes I was on the puter, carrying little Sonic (what else could we call it?). " What's wrong with it" I asked, concerned that the poor little thing had injured itself. "Nothing" she replied "this is another one." I suddenly got this picture of hundreds of little hedgehogs, all  heading our way for the "free" cat food.

I felt happier now, at least it had some company. We de-fleaed them, and weighed them every few days, and boy did they grow, within about three weeks they had doubled in size. Towards the end of November they both weighed nearly 2lb (just under a kilo), four times the weight of Sonic 1 when we first found him. At about this time they started to hibernate and thankfully the consumption of cat food decreased until they were not eating at all. About the middle of this month they awoke and became very active...time to be saying our farewells. So we dragged them from their nest and into the daylight for a few piccies, before making another nest under the Mahonia bush and placing them in it. Next day Christine went to check on them and they had gone. They were both little boys, and I imagine with the onset of spring had only one thing on their minds. (If you are expecting an explanation of what they do when they find a female, you will be disappointed, I can't figure out how they manage it either).

The pic above shows them in protective mode and the one to the left shows Christine modeling the latest in Paris, hedgehog handling, fashion gloves.

General notes

I think if you have made it this far, you deserve a rest so no more notes this month.

I have added a little more to the pond, frog and newt sections and re-vamped the gallery so you don't have to wait for all the pics to load to see the latest ones.