Late flowering Dahlia

Sat.Navs and Dahlias

Dahlia 'Bishop of Llandaff' in November

"Daaaad", my stomach sank as the voice emerged beseechingly from the phone. My daughter Laura: "I'm stuck in mud in a field miles from anywhere and the car is broken"

At least she wasn't dead ( this thought missed the point that ringing me probably wouldn't be an option if she was).

"Where are you and what do you mean, 'the car is broken'?"

"I told you - miles from anywhere. I was going to a course and the stupid sat. nav. sent me down this narrow road which became a farm track full of ruts and now the car won't move. There's a smell of burning rubber and a crashing noise when I try to drive out. The R.A.C. say they won't come out because I'm not on a recognised road. I want you to Google for the number of a local garage, then I'll ring them to come and get me out."

I sighed, aware that if the sat. nav. instructed Laura to drive off Beachy Head she would comply and probably ring me during her descent.

"Okay, where's the nearest town?"

"Ramsbottom". The same thought always comes to me when I hear that name: who originally came up with it? No doubt someone who didn't live there. A name like Giggleswick is acceptable because it has some humour about it but who wants to live in a place likened to a sheep's arse?

I hung up and quickly did some research into local garages then rang her back with the information, wondering how they'd find her. She's very philosophical about these sorts of situation because her next comment was: "you'd like it here",

"What!"

"I can see a kestrel hovering just in front of me and a long, brown, furry animal just ran across the track. A stoat, I think." This reminded me of a conversation we'd had some years earlier when she'd rung to say she'd been in a road accident but she was okay. She'd chatted peaceably for a while about the lovely area she was in  before suddenly terminating with "sorry dad- got to go. The fireman's here to cut me out." I had hair before then.

"That smell of rubber'll be due to the tyre burning because it's not gripping and the crunching is probably stones being thrown up at the bottom of the car," I observed. "Anyway, I'll leave you to ring the garage. You know it'll cost a bomb don't you?"

"What! How much do you think?" The 'isn't nature wonderful' dreaminess had left her voice.

"Well, in the hundreds I should say".

We hung up and then five minutes later she rang back.

"I've managed to back out", she said, "I must have been pressing the accelerator too hard and when I did it gently the car started to move. Anyway, I've got to get to this course now". There was no mention of kestrels or stoats before she hung up.

Large white caterpillar wreaking havoc

Just as Laura had no idea where she was, so I haven't the foggiest where Llandaff is, although the double 'l' probably indicates Wales. What I do know is that they must have a pretty impressive bishop. My Dahlia 'Bishop of Llandaff'' has been flowering for months and now. Into November (and with the benefit of frequent dead-heading), it continues to soldier on. Before embarking on dead-heading, bear in mind that the new flower buds are round, whereas the finished ones are elongated. The corms only need lifting and taken into shelter when the top growth blackens with the first frost and the news that British strawberry growers are hoping to continue cropping until December (admittedly under cover) leads me to think that may be some way off.

The garden usually sinks into a sort of peaceful torpor at this time of year, the various warring factions scurrying for cover from extreme conditions. This time however not only plants seem to be benefitting from warmer conditions, the accompanying pests also continue to do their worst: close scrutiny of the Bishop discloses leaves and flowers damaged by small arms fire by snails; my nasturtiums (Tropaeolum majus) are blitzed by cabbage white caterpillars and a patio rose is being vigorously attacked by some sort of sawfly larvae I've not been able to identify. I'm especially annoyed about the nasturtiums, because they had been devastated earlier in the summer by a slug and snail onslaught which had led to me cutting them back to ground level. I then watched a pristine swathe of new growth emerge from the devastation with the promise of more flowers, until the caterpillars put the kibosh on that.

My solution to these attacks is to pick off the enemy like an efficient sniper, and squash them. The cabbage whites then ooze green blood which I suspect consists mainly of chlorophyll from my nasturtiums.

Just thought you'd like to know that.

On a more cheerful note, my Fatsia japonica is alive with bees - you hear it before you see it. This isn't unusual and the few regularly late flowering subjects, like the closely related ivy (Hedera), always attract these hangers-on.

That said, I'm now off to spill some more green blood.

Fatsia japonica - bee magnet

The Natural Garden

Science with a bang

Burnet moths

      My first job, at the age of sixteen, was working as a laboratory technician at a South Manchester independent boys grammar school. The work entailed setting out experiments for what was then O and A level chemistry, physics and biology, keeping chemicals topped up and being a general odds body for the science teachers. There were three of us and one was a character named Ted. He was one of those blokes who was always one step ahead in terms of achievement or ownership: you'd climbed Kinder and he'd just got back from Ben Nevis (where he'd given the mountain rescue people a few tips); you'd got a new bike and it happens he'd got the more expensive, newer, model - most of us have come across the type, though we've never seen the proof of the ascent of Ben Nevis or witnessed the bike ( he always comes to work on the old one to save the other for best).

      Eventually this characteristic manifested itself in the workplace: one of the 'A' level students  had made some nitrogen triiodide by mixing iodine crystals with ammonia, then filtering and drying the solids. The resulting compound has great attraction to most boys because it's highly unstable and the touch of a feather is enough to cause it to explode. Sprinkled on the floor it has the delightful habit of going off when someone walks on it, often causing an impromptu dance a bit like that often seen in old cowboy films when the bully fires a six-gun at his victim's feet. Obviously, this appealed to us and we occasionally made a bit of the stuff and had a few laughs with it. However, unbeknown to the rest of us, Ted, as usual, was thinking bigger : we were sitting having our tea break one day during school holidays when there was an almighty explosion from upstairs at the far end of the building - the biology lab.

      "Christ!" Yelled Bunny "it's started!". Bunny, named in honour of his ears (we reckoned he'd move like the clappers if the wind was coming from behind), was worried more than most about the Russians and the Cold War situation we were in the middle of. This, to him, was undoubtedly the first attack.

      There was a short stunned silence, then we pulled Bunny from under the table and ran along the corridor and up the stairs to the biology lab.

       At first there was no visible damage but a sort of rustling noise coming from the far end.

      "Ah", said Ted, sheepishly, "I think the problem may be due to my triiodide. I put a bit of it over there", he pointed, "I thought it'd dry out quicker with the bulb under it".

      At the time, dissection of anything that moved was part of the biology curriculum and, for this purpose, locusts, rats and cockroaches were all bred in controlled conditions. Ted had put his nitrogen triiodide on top of the cockroach container which was  heated by a bulb attached to the glass lid. The container was really a large fish tank with bits of varied detritus and food in the bottom to keep the cockroaches happy. We walked over to it and at first I thought the crackling sound our feet were making was Ted's nitrogen triiodide. It wasn't. The noise was made by us standing on live cockroaches - thousands of them. The tank was now an ex cockroach container and pieces of glass were all over the lab. The adjacent locust cage (a large wooden box with a glass front and a small heater) was still mostly intact but a triangle of glass had been blown out. Locusts were pouring out of the hole and heading straight for the windows. Luckily, these were all shut because of the holiday, and the plague we foresaw never hit Manchester.

      "How much of the stuff did you make", I bawled at Ted, while we scrabbled to block the hole in the locust cage (this was eventually achieved in a highly professional way by stuffing it with toilet paper). He made a vague hill-like  indication with his hand, implying that (as expected) the amount we normally made was like an ant hill towards his Everest.

      They were American cockroaches, big, reddish in colour and very fast moving. I'm not sure what the difference is between them and other species but suspect that examination with a magnifying glass will show them to be wearing cowboy hats.

      I'd read somewhere that, should mankind be wiped out in a nuclear holocaust, insects will take over the world. In justification of this theory, it was interesting to see that these cockroaches had survived an explosion of devastating proportions. Reproduced on human scale it would have annihilated South Manchester. Admittedly,some of them were a bit wobbly on their feet, others were running in circles and, if you looked very closely, their eyes were revolving. However, on the whole, they were in pretty good nick and just wondering what the hell that bang had been.

      And so we spent a pleasant afternoon chasing cockroaches through a cloud of locusts intent on repeating their success in Egypt. Eventually, when we'd caught as many of the escapees as could be reasonably expected, we collapsed onto lab stools.

      "Well, that was a laugh, bet the buggers have all gone deaf", joked Ted, before going on to elaborate how his explosion was bigger than any that Bunny and I had managed.

      I expect that isn't the only occasion he's been beaten up.

Birds-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) So called because seed heads look like birds' feet

      While we're on about plagues, we're all familiar with regular explosions of the greenfly population: Stephan Buczacki, in his book 'Pests, Diseases and Disorders of Garden Plants' offers the cheery thought that '.....a single black bean aphid alighting on a broad bean plant in early June could theoretically give rise to a population of 2,000,000,000,000,000 by the end of August'. This doesn't happen simply because of predation on them by bluetits, ladybirds, lacewings, hoverflies and other agencies. It's common sense therefore to present a garden which is wildlife friendly and to use pest controls which target only the pest. In the case of greenfly, a regular spray with a solution of washing-up liquid will deal with any that the natural predators miss.

Six spot burnet moths emerging from chrysalises

      However, not all insects and caterpillars are a problem to the gardener and by encouraging many of them we are adding another dimension of interest to our plot. This can be achieved by growing some of the plants known to host the desirable species (see the blog how to grow wildflowers). The burnet moth feeds on birds-foot trefoil and is day-flying, unlike many moths. It lays its eggs on grass or flower stems and they hatch out in June and July. Their bodies contain cyanide obtained from food plants, so birds will not attack them. The fact that they have bright markings is a warning to their predators in the same way as the colouring of ladybirds which are similarly chemically protected.

Cinnabar moth caterpillar

      An equally poisonous insect (though not to humans unless you happen to eat moths) is the cinnabar moth and this looks similar to the burnet. Its caterpillars are remarkable because their colouring looks a bit like a rugby shirt. They can be seen in large numbers on ragwort, a plant which should not be encouraged as it is poisonous to horses, damaging their livers and causing a painful death. For this reason it is classed as a noxious weed and should be removed and destroyed. However, it is so common that complete eradication would be an impossible task, so it can commonly be seen in the countryside and motorway embankments - probably a good thing for the cinnabar moth which is so reliant on it. It seems that a horse wouldn't eat the plant in its normal growing state - the danger occurs when grass including some ragwort has been cut and left lying, causing the animal to mistake it for hay.

Common blue butterfly

Common blues mating

      The common blue butterfly uses birds foot trefoil (pictured further up the page) as a food plant - further encouragement to introduce some among the crazy paving, where it will attract a number of different insects. The addition of a herb bed is also a magnet for insects, and is to be highly recommended to the gardener who demands more than just a pretty, hygienic display.

      There's a lot more than you may think to be enjoyed in the countryside and the garden - it's just a matter of learning how to look.

Carrot fly problems

Cats

Polly

      Cats are hard to work out: I was in the Lake District last week, staying with a mate who has this murderous sod of a moggy which almost daily brings in corpses of field mice, voles, birds and (amazingly) bats.These are proudly presented on the bedroom floor, rendering a night time trip to the lavatory an unnerving experience when you don't know what your bare feet are going to encounter.

      I'd stroke Polly (my mate must have been expecting a parrot when she appeared on the doorstep) and she'd look away with disdain, giving the impression that she tolerated me because I'm bigger than her but if I wasn't I'd be on the bedroom carpet. Then one day I was reading  at the table, which is situated next to a window with a view of the garden, and she came and sat next to my book, gazing out. Her object, I assumed, was to see what potential murder victims were around and I ignored her. This wasn't part of her plan, because her tail, which was occasionally swished in excitement as she spotted a blue tit, crept across the page I was reading, so that the words were partly blotted out. At first I took this to be an accident and I pushed the tail out of the way, wishing she'd mistake a blue tit for a vulture or something. There followed a bit of a stalemate while I continued reading, keeping the tail at bay with my hand, then she suddenly decided to lie down so that her head completely blotted out the page while she gazed at me in that inscrutable way cats have. Obviously a way to a cat's heart is to ignore it. She wanted my attention but there was no way she'd pay for it by giving any return of affection in the way a dog would I thought, as I gave her a quick stroke.

      Then the bugger licked my hand with a tongue like a nail file and I found myself reassessing my opinion of cats. She obviously reassessed me as well, because that night she appeared on my bed, first lying on top of me so that I couldn't move, then staking claim on the exact centre of the duvet and relegating me to a position of almost falling off the edge. This was all lovingly Disneyish but resulted in me not sleeping properly for the rest of the week, as I half expected a present of  mutilated wildlife making an appearance on my pillow.

Up the pole

      We are what we are. If we're a rat, for example, we find it hard that everyone hates us because we're just reacting to the world in the way our being dictates. I suppose it's fair enough to hate what we do - the inadvertently spreading diseases bit - but to hate us for what we are seems unfair, because we didn't choose to be born a rat. In any case, we're part of nature's recycling system, efficiently dealing with corpses and cleaning up. Same with snakes, I suppose: everyone has a downer on them, probably as a result of the unfair press the bible gives them. It's unreasonable to hate other living things even though, in some cases, we have to control them in our own interests. If you take their point of view, the biggest polluter and destroyer of the planet is mankind.

      And the other thing that cats, similarly trapped in a pre-determined lifestyle, do,  is crap in our new seed beds.

      A story I've told friends to the point of their rigid boredom is something a bloke told me at one of the big flower shows: we were discussing the way in which cats find the freshly broken earth of a seedbed an ideal place to perform their toilet.

      "The thing to do", he said with a wolfish grin, "is to blow a balloon up really hard - a beach ball is even better - then bury it just under the surface of freshly dug soil. When next door's moggy comes along and starts digging, his claws'll go through and cause it to go off like a landmine.  Admittedly", he added thoughtfully, "at this point the cat has a bowel movement, but it'll be the last one it does in your garden".

      Add a couple of r's and an o to cats and you have carrots.This leads me to say that cats aren't the only problem the gardener has to contend with: growing carrots would be pretty straightforward if it wasn't for the attentions of the dreaded carrot fly. This little beauty lays its eggs in the soil near carrots and the resulting maggots eat their way into the vegetable, causing irregular tunnels and rendering them worthless. One school of thought says that they rarely fly higher than 18 inches above the ground, so if you erect a barrier that high all around the carrots, the fly'll clear off onto next door's plot. However, I've spoken to people who grow carrots in tall barrels for show and they still have the problem, so the carrot fly doesn't read the right books. A more reliable method is to grow them between two taller crops, like beans or peas, which act as a much higher barrier.

Carrot fly damage on second from left

      Carrot fly is attracted to scent and the planting of onions immediately adjacent is said to confuse them with a contrasting smell. However this only works before the onions reach the bulb stage, so more effective methods are needed: a lot of scent is released when the gardener thins out the seedlings, so it follows that the thinner the sowing, the better. By watering the crop copiously immediately after thinning also helps, damping down the scent.

      Without wishing to labour the point, the more you know about a pest and its lifestyle, the more likely you are to find an effective way of dealing with it. For example, it's known that the first generation of carrot fly emerge from May to June, so by not sowing until the end of May or early June, these will be avoided, lessening the problem (there is another generation in August and September, so this isn't completely foolproof). A more reliable defence is to cover the seed sowing area with horticultural fleece. This has the added benefit of keeping the soil warm and encouraging growth.
      In the absence of all these methods, perhaps it's worth trying some of the varieties which claim some resistance to the fly, like 'Fly Away' and 'Resistafly' - seed catalogues will give other alternatives.

      Although we tend to think of carrots as an allotment crop, it's worth considering the advantage their attractive foliage offers. Sown in containers, they can give a long season of ornamental value before being introduced to the kitchen. I often grow them as a decoration next to the front door, although they never reach the size attained in the space of a proper bed. Nontheless you can get a couple of meals out of them and anything you've grown yourself can be guaranteed to taste better than the bought equivalent.

Attractive foliage

   

   

   

   

 
   

Rabbit problems

Nothing Fiercer Than a Rabbit

Rabbit resistant Acanthus mollis (bear's paw)

      Although, as a child, we had a budgie, I abhor the principle of keeping an animal in a cage. However, on one occasion, I saw such a prisoner extract some sort of revenge on society: it was a rabbit. How anyone can think it right to restrict an animal born to roam fields and woodlands to the confines of a five foot box with a wire-netting front is beyond me. An aunt and uncle of mine didn't agree and kept a large white rabbit called Bumper as a pet, salving their consciences by saying that 'he's safe from foxes'. I had a theory that they'd have liked to call him 'Humper', but his solitary confinement made this reference to his main pleasure in life meaningless, so the H had surrendered to the more respectable B.

      This particular aunt and uncle were going away on holiday and happened to ask me if I'd look after their rabbit. I agreed, thinking I'd give Bumper a time to remember: a holiday of his own, so I collected the hutch and its resident and took them home in the back of my old G.P.O. van.

      Re-situated in our Timperley back garden, Bumper looked longingly out at my herbaceous border and I devised a cunning plan to give him a bit more freedom. We had a dog's lead and, from somewhere, my wife spirited up a cat collar. The perfect answer: If you can take a dog a walk, why not a rabbit? It didn't seem a good idea to take him to the park or wander along the street - too many dogs with a penchant for bunnies - so we walked round the garden and he happily enriched it with his home-made black marbles. Unfortunately, when it came time for me to carry him back to the hutch, he wasn't too keen (I think he'd imagined the next step was the herbaceous border). Anyway, he illustrated his disgust by giving me a stony look and kicking vigorously before biting me on the hand. I didn't know rabbits could bite but, having read ad nauseum about how Peter decimated Mr McGregor's vegetable plot, I should have known better - you don't suck cabbages.

      There were two spots of blood on the bite and I would have been quite happy to wash and forget. However my wife heroically overlooked the advantage that lockjaw may shut me up for a bit and despatched me to the local A&E to get a tetanus jab. As usual, there was a queue, so I got in it and was waiting my turn at the desk when a bloke in football kit came and stood behind me, tottering a bit on his studs. He was ashen white, gasping and obviously couldn't breathe properly. Then he leaned on the wall and I thought he was going to fall over.

      "I think my rib's gone through the lung", he croaked when he saw me looking.

      Meanwhile the woman behind the desk was going through the rigmarole with the person in front of me, asking  Christian name, surname, address, next of kin, mothers maiden name, great grandfather's DNA profile - the usual stuff essential to a cure, before finally asking what was wrong. The next step was to sit in a crowd of about twenty people and wait for treatment or death - whichever came first.

      "I think you'd better see to this bloke now" I butted in, "he's in a bad way".

      She looked at him, rolled her eyes then finished the rest of the inquisition on the bloke before me, sending him to sit down with the rest of the dying and wounded. Then, with a deep sigh, she came round the desk, borrowed a chair from the main waiting area and plonked perforated lung on it before starting my check list.

      "Christian name?" she began.

      "Don't you think.....", I said worriedly, looking at the footballer

      "Christian name?" she repeated, louder and with a steely look in her eye. A forced bubbling breath, sounding a bit like a last one, came from the David Beckham chair.

      Hurriedly I went through the list with her, lowering my voice when she got to the "what's wrong?" bit.

      "Er, I was bitten by a rabbit", I said.

      "What?", she said, looking interested for the first time.

      "Rabbit", I whispered, I was bitten by a rabb......"

      "BITTEN BY A RABBIT?", she bellowed, much to the enjoyment of the assembled dead and wounded - their day had just got marginally better. I was tempted to change the rabbit to a boa constrictor but it was too late and, in any case, I wasn't sure whether they bite or squeeze you to death.

      Perforated lung slithered off his chair.

Alchemilla mollis flowers (centre right foreground) - rabbit resistant.

      Unfortunately the Disneyish attraction of rabbits wears off a bit when they take to decimating your garden. It's not a problem in my suburb of Manchester but I get a lot of queries from people a bit further into the sticks. Apparently the most effective control method is to put a ring of wire netting around the area you want to protect. It should be 4 to 5 feet high with a further foot flat against the surrounding soil to prevent burrowing.

      Trees and shrubs can also be damaged by rabbits eating the bark. If they strip it off right round the trunk the plant will die, as water won't be able to move up from the roots. Again, ringing the tree with wire netting will prevent damage, as will the tubes sold specially for the purpose.

Alchemilla mollis foliage 

      The R.H.S. have compiled a comprehensive list of plants which tend not to be attacked by rabbits: http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/Profile.aspx?pid=209 , and this may be the easiest answer to the problem, though I've heard that, in extreme conditions, the animals will broaden their menu in desperation. Generally speaking, they don't like aromatic plants (which includes a lot of herbs), spiny plants or those like Euphorbia which ooze milky sap.

The berries of Skimmia japonica - a rabbit resistant shrub

      Grazers is a spray- on product which, the makers claim, lasts six weeks. This makes the plants unpalatable to rabbits and can be safely used on food crops. Intriguingly Garlic Wonder Rabbitoff has a similar effect, though I wonder if this is just because their friends won't go near them after they've eaten some. This is also advertised as giving some fungicidal defense to the plant, as well as deterring deer and pigeons.

Roe deer - deterred with 'Graser'

      A final thought on this: some time ago my wife, displaying remarkably bad taste, bought a farting gnome for a friend with equally bad taste. Anything passing within four feet got a high decibel windbreak. The fact that he was overjoyed with this, leading guests past it in order to embarrass them (two of them thought they must have done it themselves and apologised), is by the by. The point is that, situated near the herbaceous border, it might scare rabbits off.

Dischidia pectinoides (kangaroo pocket, ant plant)

Dancing Daffodils

Dischidia pectinoides with front cut off 'urn' to show roots growing from wall

      A few blogs ago, I was looking at amateur dramatics and some of the pitfalls. This reminded me of a production I was personally involved in. I'm in a choir and we were asked whether anyone was interested in singing in a presentation of Desperate to be Doris which was to be played at the Lowry Theatre in Salford. It was a musical and (luckily) a comedy. I had seen it a year or so previously and loved it, so put my name forward.

      An early musical scene in the play had the choir standing in tiers up to the back of the stage singing Que Sera, Sera. In theory, fluffy clouds billowed gently above and a rainbow moved serenely across the sky as the choir, swaying in unison, dreamily intoned a vision of the future, In reality, this ideal was somewhat challenged by the mind-blowing technology involved: it consisted of clouds on sticks being waved around by choir members in a way which brought to mind the hurricane season in Miami. The piece de resistance though, was a banner depicting a rainbow which slowly and dramatically unfurled as the sticks holding it were passed from singer to singer on the back row. Unfortunately the sticks seemed to be released in a haphazard way so that people became momentarily eclipsed by the rainbow and comments like ‘gerroff me foot, Kev’ and ‘hey, that was my head’ became audible above the lilting harmonies. The unison swaying was disrupted and, quite artistically really, suggested a tsunami subtending the hurricane.

      Something the organisers had overlooked was the fact that the bloke passing the sticks at the beginning of the row was about six foot eight, while the pot of gold receiving it at the other end was pushing five foot four. The result was a rainbow which sloped horizontally across the back of the stage and probably gave the audience the impression of watching the performance from a boat caught up in the hurricane I mentioned. A long discussion took place about how to solve this problem, during which various ways of marking the sticks were suggested, so that each person's height was taken into consideration and some sort of equilibrium attained. These ideas were eventually discarded when someone noticed that they were already marked anyway.

      In another scene, the hero was singing about having a secret love and how he told the daffodils about it. This was visually illustrated by choir members dressed as daffodils mincing in line onto the stage and prancing around him. The audience probably didn't realise it, but the good looking one who trailed along at the back was the only bloke. I got the part on the basis that my career in horticulture was an unassailable qualification. My botanical knowledge led me to be sceptical about the whole dancing daffodil thing though, thinking that plants with more obvious movement, like Venus fly traps, would be more appropriate.  

      And so we turn to Jeff, the choral director, alias the skateboarding nun. His task was to skateboard across the stage dressed as a nun, not because this was part of the story but because, er. well, just because. When he first demonstrated his expertise to the assembled cast, he appeared at speed from the wings, crossed half the stage, then pitched headlong, landing in a position reminiscent to that of the Altrincham goalkeeper when the ball is nestling in the net. I personally saw the fact that Altrincham were relegated that season as an ominous portent. From a horizontal position he leered at the cast with that ‘heh, heh -meant to do that’ expression’ of his which, translated, means: ‘Shit! What happened?’

      ‘I thought you said you could skate’, said an indignant  stage manager.

     He didn’t reply but the ‘heh, heh expression which now occupied his face could this time be translated as ‘I thought a skate was a fish’ or, more likely, ‘I lied through me teeth’.

      By the time of the first show, Jeff had partially mastered the technique by practising in the corridor outside the changing rooms. Unfortunately it seemed the skateboard was the brains of the outfit and Jeff had to go along with what it decided. On the night, he shot across the stage at a speed which meant that he remained unseen by anyone who happened to be blinking or sneezing at the time. This performance brought comparisons with Superman, who can move so fast as to be invisible. In fact, audience comments picked up on the dressing room relay included ‘thought I saw a blur, but may have imagined it’. A more mundane observation, made by someone with quick eyesight was a disparaging: ‘not a patch on Julie Andrews’.

      And so the show rolled on towards an inevitable sad conclusion on the Saturday night, when what was a disparate group of people become a crowd of friends, parted company: the magical world of theatre people faded into the past. We reverted from being daffodils,cowboys, indians and aeronautical nuns back to the workplace or, in my case, to my garden, where I  potter and plant more daffodils.

      So now you're sitting there, both of you, waiting for me to go on about daffodils. Sorry - it's the wrong time of year. Instead, I'm going to look at ants and an unusual plant called Dischidia pectinoides. Calm down. Try to contain the excitement.

      Dischidia pectinoides is a myrmecophilous plant which hitches its way to the light by growing on the branches of other species. 'Myrmecophilous' refers to plants which live with ants to mutual advantage. In this case, the plant produces leaves swollen into urns which the ants choose to live in and have their young. The ants breathe out carbon dioxide, which all plants need in order to produce energy-giving sugar, and the Dischidia makes full use of this. 

      When an urn ages, the ants move their families to a newer one, using the old one as a midden for excreta, bits of soil and the corpses of their dead. The plant then produces roots from the inside of this old pod and they grow into this mixture which has become a compost. Obviously roots need watering, so the plant achieves this by having pores which, in most plants, breathe water outwards into the atmosphere, instead releasing it inwards into the pod. 

      If you were lucky enough to get hold of a Dischidia (and they're pretty thin on the ground), it can be grown in a hanging basket in good light or, as shown in the top picture, up a trellis. An average living room temperature is usually sufficient for good results, with the plant in an epiphytic orchid mix. When we grew one in the glasshouses at work, it seemed to manage reasonably well without the ants but it'd be interesting to compare growth between two plants, one with and one without.

      We probably think of ourselves as being the first species to grow plants in pots. After all, there are five thousand year old Egyptian wall paintings of  pot plants to illustrate this but, in Dischidia, nature got there first, making us look not quite so clever.

      The Dischidia we've been talking about originates in The Phillipines but ants share some interesting relationships much closer to home:

      A greenfly feeds by bunging a proboscis, which is like a starched elephant's trunk, into plant cells. It forces mucus down one nostril which creates a pressure in the cell, pushing plant sugars up the other. I suppose you could say it's blowing its nose and having a good nosh at the same time. However there isn't much protein in plant sugar and, like us, greenfly need it. This means that  they have to take in a great bulk of sugar before the required protein is obtained, and their bodies aren't big enough to retain the excess, which they excrete onto the leaf. This deposit is called honeydew and is what you can experience if you park your car under a tree and return to find it covered with stickiness. Often, a strange blackness appears on leaves and this is usually the result of sooty mould, a fungus which feeds on honeydew.  

Aphids feeding

      Ants come back into the story when you get a couple of them patrolling round a plant, fighting off the greenfly predators, so that they can occasionally nip up the stem and have a few honeydew butties. The ants  farm greenfly, milking them in exactly the same way that we treat cows. Another one where nature got there first.

Ants 'farming' greenfly

Organic Pest Control

Garden Problems

      The sex lives of worms seemed to capture the interest of quite a few people and this has led me to look a bit more closely at the private goings-on of other common garden denizens: top of the list must be slugs. Like worms, slugs are hermaphrodite, meaning that each one has both male and female sexual apparatus. Do-it-yourself however is not on their agenda, and two slugs making out will twine round each other in sexual bliss, exuding slime and  romantically muttering sweet nothings about things like cabbages and sprouts. In the case of the great grey slugs, this can go on for two hours before, in a fervour of excitement they consummate the act, hanging on the end of a length of slime suspended  from a handy shrub: a sort of slug equivalent of position 98 minus the wardrobe. They then both go away, smiling beatifically, and lay a cluster of little pearl-like eggs.

      Now, while all this is perfectly true and explains the frightening proliferation of slugs, it has little to do with the subject of this blog. It did get you reading though, didn't it?

Slug on the prowl

      A lady called Beth contacted me to ask whether I could suggest non-chemical pest controls in the garden, as she is trying to grow vegetables organically. A few things spring immediately to mind: nettles, soaked in water for a couple of weeks, yield an effective, though smelly, mixture good for controlling aphids (greenfly and blackfly), at the same time as acting as a fertiliser; rhubarb leaves (boil 3lbs for half an hour in 6 pints of water with a few soap flakes to aid adherence), provide another useful aphid control - then use the stems to control constipation; the dried, powdered leaves of rue (Ruta graveolens), spread on seedbeds, are said to deter birds and other seed eaters and rubbed through the coats of dogs and cats will get rid of fleas; even the ubiquitous marestail can be used as a tea to protect against blackspot and mildew, while soft soap is used to kill brassica whitefly and cabbage white butterflies. Apparently it acts as an enema so I suppose, like Elvis, they die on the toilet.

      This brings me back to slugs, as they must top everyones' pest list: while pellets containing metaldehyde are effective, there are ongoing concerns about the outcome when natural predators like hedgehogs and birds eat the corpses. On the other hand, slugs drowned in a beer trap (a) die happy - their eyes are still going round the following day - and (b) their corpses do no harm when placed on the bird table, although a blackbird may occasionally fly into a lamp-post. However, Gardening From Which worked out, some years ago, that, to completely eliminate slugs, you need a beer trap every couple of square feet. This means that, unless you have shares in a brewery, it's going to be a pretty expensive project. You should also know that slugs in posh areas prefer gin and it, while milk is popular in the American bible belt.

Slug Eggs

      Nematodes provide an effective alternative to beer: these are microscopic eel worms provided in a pack containing enough to protect a forty square metre plot for about six weeks. They are watered on. Unfortunately the effect on snails is not quite as good, because these slugs-with-caravans tend to move from plant to plant above ground, rather than making contact with the soil. Copper bands, available in garden centres and wrapped tightly round pots, cause an electric current to be created through contact with a slug's slime, resulting in them getting a shock and falling off . This doesn't actually kill them, but it certainly removes Hostas in pots from the menu. A couple of copper wires, used in the same way, can be equally effective. Additionally, a tea made from Artemisia and watered on is also claimed to deter slugs and snails, although I haven't actually tried this one.

Slug pub with inebriated customers

      The more I write on this subject, the more information comes to mind (thanks for the question, Beth), so more blogs will be devoted to garden problems and how to control them. I can even see the sex life of the aphid looming on the horizon.

      Calm down. You'll have to wait.

Snail Problem

Mystery Culprit

     

      Hi, this is my first blog, I hope you find it useful, or at least interesting:

      A Clematis growing next to our front door was getting progressively weaker. There were a few holes in the leaves but this didn't seem to be the real problem and I thought that, in spite of going through a summer of record rainfall, the roof overhang was sheltering the plant and  causing dryness at the roots. So I watered it. This produced no change, so I tried slug control, with an equally dazzling lack of success. It was only by chance that I noticed, on returning home after dark one night, that the wall behind the plant had developed a pebble-dash effect. A closer look revealed the source of my problem: snails - about a quarter of the world population. They had bypassed my slug control by climbing around the wall from a bed at the front of the house and tended to be feeding on the outer parts of stems rather than leaves, preventing the movement of water, sugar and nutrients around the plant.

      This was a graphic example of why measures to control slugs often don't work with snails, because pellets, or the natural control using eelworms (Nemaslug), are used on the ground, while the snails are absailing onto the plants from somewhere else, laughing at the gardener's ignorance.

      Needless to say, this lot didn't laugh, although one did go WHEEEE! as it sailed across the road.