Humph's Happy Horti-cult: harvesting, preserving, mulching, leaf-gathering, bulb-dibbing, seed catalogue-surfing and hunkering down for winter

[Lexilicious]

Following on from the original March to August thread. For all - whether still gardening through the winter or planning to sweep the shed, hibernate, sharpen the tools and get started again in the spring.

Happy gardening again!

Wondering when Humphrey's stately home and garden will be open to the carriage trade ...

yes, I think I'll start getting the NGS yellow book from this year and stalk her look for interesting places to visit...!

I think she should do it - the garden sounds magnificent and then there's the animals for added interest.

I could bring the picnic and we could throw the crusts to the pigs.

Marvellous! A plan is evolving here. We can simply present Humphrey with a fait accompli.

::evil cackle::

It is a humble cottage with a garden above its station

You can't throw crusts to the pigs but I will feed you some of the pig instead, will that do?

Ooops! We've been rumbled.

::scarpers::

Today I am trying to decide how I feel about magpies. I am working at home and looking out of my lovely wide French windows at my garden. I put out fresh seeds and fat ball s this morning but the magpies are scaring off the songbirds. Or are they, though? Right now there is a magpie near the house where seed has fallen off the saucer-shaped feeder, and a great tit on the fat ball feeder about 7m away on the rockery.

And is it really just a bit indulgent to want pretty little birds in the garden (who eat some but not by any means all of the grubs and pests) while wanting to shoo away the noisy corvidae?

They eat baby birds in the summer and frogs I think. If they'd only develop a taste for slugs they'd be my new best friends.

Shhhhh. Don't tell anyone but I'm slightly excited by the fact that there's an hour of GW on later...

It was bliss, wasn't it?

I am ambivalent about magpies. I love the look of them - and am almost prepared to excuse their thievery and mugging of other birds as part of the ecological cycle - and yet ....

I only realised about GW by accident, just in time!

Did anyone else think that Monty was nervous showing his garden to the others?

I realised in time but DH. had other plans involving The Mentalist which we didn't realise had been going for the past month

still, now I have it started on iplayer, ah bliss.

GW last night and an afternoon in Wisley (freezing cold and sunny; just beautiful); christmas tree shopping tomorrow. Aside from the fact that we have the DNs this weekend - 4 children is just not that manageable and I am being forced to watch Merlin and drink beer to cope - this would be a perfect weekend

Also, meant to say, I thought about the magpie thing this morning when I looked out of the bedroom window first thing. This is what I saw: frosty orchard in morning sunshine containing two deer, five pheasant and one magpie. Decided I'm quite ok with magpies.

Ooooh, Wisley. I can imagine it was ver ver lovely. We need to drag our Christmas tree in from the garden. I think it's rather fine but The Girl is complaining it's not large enough (she wants the sort of Christmas tree you see in Trafalgar Square).

We just bought a 6ft "Argos Spruce" today...! we're hardly here over the Christmas period so we wouldn't get the enjoyment out of a proper tree.

pretty hard frost here on Saturday morning. lasted well into daylight hours (although my back garden gets no direct sunlight at ground level at all for about eight weeks either side of the solstice) and the pea/bean shoots went all limp but they've recovered now. The only other thing that seems to have noticeably responded to the weather is three astilbe plants which have died back and left rather nice dried out flower spikes. I suppose I should mulch them.

I am trying to do the "don't be too tidy" thing to provide cover and food for wildlife but can't remember if it's ok to leave fallen leaves on borders. Speaking of leaves I should go and rake the lawn while I still have light.

I'm just trying to psych myself up to go out and plant a few things -but it's cold, nearly dark and I'm too comfortable on the sofa!

I think leaves on the borders are fine - in fact they're good mulch - as long as they're not sitting on and rotting into the crowns of plants.

::Staggers back in, leaving a trail of muddy footprints::

That was amazingly therapeutic. I think several of my GW free plants may have died because they've been left in the bags for far too long, but we shall see.

I hope your weather was better than ours at that time Maud - pretty horrible and wet here! Would've required quite some commitment to be out in the garden this afternoon.

I've been purposefully leaving the leaves on the borders and adding a few more where the bulbs are coming up to add a bit of a natural thermal blanket. Not sure if this will help but I felt better doing it.

Christmas tree up and lights on; now the kids are in bed and I am back in control I can add the sparkly bits .

Hmm. It was cold, especially when the wind gusted, but it was bearable and the fact that I haven't been out in the garden for weeks made it all the better. I raked lots of leaves off the lawn - I should have done it weeks ago but was too ill to go outdoors - and, of course, the lawn is in a pretty tatty state because of being smothered. It had begin to look a lot better last year and now we're back to square one. Ho hum.

DH was about to go out to pick up leaves this afternoon (although he was going to cheat and use the ride-on mower) and then the ILs turned up 2 hours early! We haven't seen the lawn by the wood for a few weeks now and we're getting a little concerned what it's going to look like when we do eventually get it clear.

You and I garden on very different scales, Bertha! (Still loving the name, by the way)

Ah Maud don't worry, I've been raking the lawn each weekend and it still looks bad! However we laid it from seed this year and even with a ton of new topsoil replacing old clay soil it is really soggy now. I have an aerating spike thing but can't get it into the soil, it's so claggy. I put feed/weed granules on it twice this autumn and an extra handful of grass seed in some patches too.

I have two identical sized burrows in the soil going under the deck and am intrigued what it/they might be. Fairly sure it's nocturnal. about 10cm across and can't find any pawprints. Really hoping it's hedgehogs as I think these burrows appeared after we took the fence down at the back which would have been preventing small ground-based animals including my garden in their territory.

Have therefore asked for a day/night vision wireless camera thingy for Christmas!

Ooh! You can do Springwatch from your own back garden!

I'm not unduly worried - the fact that it got so much better during the course of this year (I meant this year rather than last) makes me confident it will do the same next year - but it's frustrating that after having made two steps forward we've just taken one huge leap back!

Mmmm. Do rats burrow? Just kidding, obviously it's very cute, snuffly little hedgehogs who are going to make perfect film stars.

A wireless camera thingy sounds great (and slightly addictive I'd imagine) although we probably would get rats here so maybe I'm best off not knowing...