Bye bye Elder tree

We have an old Elder tree in the garden that's been ill for some time now. Lots of dead branches fall when the wind gets up and it's encrusted with Moss and Lichens. In the autumn it drops its berries and because it's near the house causes a real mess, especially when the dogs bring the berry juice in on their feet. The other problem is that it overhangs the greenhouse and we've had a few near misses with the falling branches in the last year.

So with the new year approaching and an increasing itch to use my new shedder we decided to give the old tree a bit of a trim. It's taken us 2 full days (and not to mention personal risk) but we've cut it right back so that there are no longer any side branches, just the shoot producing trunk. Hopefully that will reinvigorate some new growth next year. Whatever happens I don't have to worry about getting bonked on the head by any falling branches anymore. It's all been cut into logs for the fire or put through the shredder and onto the compost heap (I hope you can put Lichens on the heap) so all the bits we cut off will go to good use.

We've now set our sights on trimming back the giant apple tree in the middle of the garden to let some light through to the grass below. It's really struggling and needs some attention. Again it has a lot of dead branches and is currently only producing apples high up in the tree with no action happening nearer the bottom. After all the sawing of the last two days I can hardly move my arm so that's one for another weekend I think.

Oh and I shredded the Christmas tree too...

Bosch AXT 2000 XP shredder

I haven't written any product reviews here on Lavendon Garden before but given how much garden stuff I buy I thought that I would start to share some of my purchase highs and lows with readers of my blog. I should make it clear that these reviews will be unbiased and that the products I review have been bought by me with my own money (but if people want to send me stuff that's great too hee hee).

With that out of the way, I've just bought myself a new shredder, the Bosch AXT 2000 XP silent shredder to be precise and it's great. I bought it to help me improve the quality of the material that I'm putting into my compost bays as historically I've found it difficult to dice the cutting up enough. Out of the box it needs a little assembly but the instructions on how to do so are clear and easy. I was up and running in about ten minutes. It has a fairly long power cord (these things are important) and a set of wheels for moving it around the garden however these aren't really a luxury, more a necessity as the machine itself is fairly heavy.

Unlike many shedders the AXT 2000 uses a corkscrew like cutting blade as opposed to a spinning (lawnmower-like) cutter. This makes for much quieter operation and in my opinion better quality shredding. Size wise the shedder can easily handle branches up to 38mm diameter. I'm not sure if it's the corkscrew mechanism or not but it does clog with softer garden material but thanks to it's reverse mode it's normally pretty easy to clear any blockages and if the cutter does become stuck there's an effective cut out circuit.

If I have one complaint, and it's a small one - it's that the shredder doesn't come with a bag to catch the shredded material although you can buy one as an optional extra. The man pictured on the box has one so it came as a bit of a surprise that there was not one inside.

On the maintenance side you need to make sure you clean out any remaining material and run the cutters clean. If used regularly then that's it. If you're storing it then a little oil on the cutters is all that's required.

So all in all it's a solid bit of kit - A good all round shedder and I'd certainly recommend it to a friend.

(Note: Sorry about the photo size. It was the best I could find. Sigh...)

Wishing you happy holidays

I have a busy time over the next week or so and won't be posting again until after Christmas. So with that in mind the only thing left to do is wish everyone a very happy Christmas and a fantastic new year!

Vegetable gardening for people who don't like vegetables

I'll admit it, I'm a typical child when it comes to eating my greens. There's not many that I eat and there's even fewer that I actually like. Coming from someone who grows vegetables this might sound strange, but one of the funny things to come out of creating the garden and it's veggie patch is that I am finding that I'm not only growing types of veg that I would never normally have come across in the local supermarket, but because I've actually grown it myself I'm eating more of the stuff too. I think a lot of it comes down to the patch to plate miles of home grown produce. For example, Broccoli no longer tastes bland but instead it's rich in the natural sugars present when it's cut. It tastes wonderful! (especially with a cheese dip). The natural sugars just haven't had a chance to turn to starch on a multi thousand mile journey from wherever to the shop shelf.

As a result I'm eating much more. For example I had sweet potato for the first time last week and it tasted lovely, not to mention the squashes etc that I have tried in recent months! In all honesty, I'm still not great with salads - last time I ate only a salad made of leaves etc I felt light headed all afternoon as it didn't really give me what I needed (or it did and my body craved things that I didn't need) as a result my usual salad combo normally only features the odd green and tomato representing more of a trip to the carvary than a salad. I'm also yet to find a salad dressing that I actually like but I plan to persevere in the hope one day it'll click.

For 2008 - Bee keeping

I haven't been able to persuade my wife to let me buy some Pigs or even Chickens but she has compromised somewhat and agreed to let me try my hand at Bee keeping (the words why would you want to do that and mad cropped up in the conversation but still...). I'm not sure why I'm driven to want to keep Bees but it's something I've wanted to try for as long as I can remember. It's also a topic that I know nothing about so I am feverishly scouring the web for more information. From what I can gather you need a quiet place to put the hive, a swarm to seed it and of course a good quality place for the bees to live. Then you leave them to it.

We live in the middle of some wonderful countryside with a good mix of flowers and farmed crops so hopefully they'll find rich nectar pickings in the local area but like I say I need to read up a bit more about what I am about to undertake. If there's anyone out there with some sage advice for the novice been keeper then I would love to hear it.

Expired Hedgehogs

I found my second expired hedgehog in the garden this weekend. Well I said found, more accurately smelt as I think it had been there for a little while and there was this weird pong near where I was digging. For an animal that's supposed to be on the decline in Britain we get loads of the prickly creatures passing through. So much so that after the great hedgehog massacre of September 2007 we have to keep the dogs gated up near the house after dark. It's always very sad to find a dead animal in the garden. So far apart from hedgehogs I've only found the odd bird that's popped off it's mortal coil but we always make sure we give them a good burial. I'm not sure if I should be encouraging them but I thought that for next winter I would knock together a couple of hedgehog houses just in case.

Tagged

Hmmm - Phil from Landscape Juice has tagged me with one of these internet meme things. I'm not sure what to do - no offense Phil but like you, I hate these. Mainly because they show I have little imagination and no friends because I can't tag forward. Oh go on then I'll do a little quickkie. I'm thankful for the fact that my blog is getting a little traction on the world wide web and I'm thankful for having such a wonderful space to call my own in the form of my garden, my own little oasis away from the world. I'd also better mention that I'm thankful for my wonderful wife as she still reads this. It's not quite eight things but hey at least I had a quick go.

Pot recipes on Gardensworld.com

I always struggle to decide what to plant up into pots, often getting the mix of plants wrong. The fine folks at the Gardeners World website have put up some handy recipes for all year round pottage, from winter interest to summer colour you'll be sorted now.

Winter is here!

I awoke this morning to ice on the car and a distinct drop in temperature, in other words it was flipping freezing - proper hat and gloves weather. Fortunately I moved all my remaining tender plants into the greenhouse at the weekend and turned off the hose pipe tap. I wasn't quick enough for my Fuchsia's though. The frost had already got them. For some reason I thought they were hardy but as my Dad explained to me only some of them are. Mine weren't and I've just got some shriveled sticks now. The one I'm training to become a standard fuchsia in the greenhouse is ok, except I picked out the main shoot by mistake (don't ask) so it's going to be a little stumpy next year. Oh well you live and learn, not a good year this for Fuchsias in the garden.

Grow little Rhubarb, grow!!

I got a new Rhubarb seedling at the weekend to plant in the Garden. It's no secret that I love Rhubarb and would eat it every day if I could. We used to have a huge plant and all summer it's been supplying us with stalks. That is until my wife decided to split it. I'm not sure what we did wrong but it never recovered and the weekend gone we admitted to ourselves that we had killed it. I'm not sure how we managed it as they're pretty hardy plants and normally bounce back no problem. Oh well hopefully this little fella is going to come up trumps and keep me in supply next year.

Garden update

How embarrassing, I've been called out for not updating my blog in a while. To tell you the truth I've been very busy with other stuff. Work has been stupidly busy and a switch from full time employment to contract work has has left my head spinning. So to answer the question, what's been going on in the garden - truthfully, I guess not much!

The sale of the extra land has gone through and the new house that went with it is rented out Having spent some time taking down fences and pulling up decking and patios I now find myself looking out over a rather intimidating expanse of land that I have no idea what to do with. So far the only real progress I have made is mowing the grass (if you can call it that as it has so much moss in it), raking up some leaves and sowing some grass seed. The new plot really is in a bad state and the whole garden is looking decidedly shabby - I have a dead chamomile lawn, disgusting grass and garden waste dumping ground and a really weird garden layout that really does need a serious amount of attention.

What I have done so far is make two large compost bays to replace my plastic bins and cleaned the greenhouse plus added new staging. On the food front, Julia and I have created a much bigger plot for growing vegetables. In fact it's so big it feels like we might be able to feed the whole village with what we could potentially grow. I've also started drawing up some plans for the rest of the garden that I will post up here soon - nothing too fancy at first. Finally, I have also made a return to my RHS studies that have recently gone neglected, there's so much to learn!

So in a nutshell that's it, I'm really looking forward to getting stuck back in and making the space beautiful for next summer. Oh and my new seed and plant catalogues are coming through thick and fast so I'm very happy.