Garden update - Summer 2020 - Six on Saturday

1.  Garden Tools

We bought a cordless lawnmower in June, £100 from Lidl without any batteries or charger.  But I bought this model because I've ten (!) other cordless power tools in the same range and which all use the same batteries, so I've already four 4Ah & five 2Ah batteries, plus several chargers.

I'm impressed with this mower so far.  It's lightweight and very easy to handle, and can cut all our three lawn areas twice on a single charge using the 4Ah batteries.   It operates at twice the voltage of the other power tools in the range, and so takes two batteries to power it.

However, the petrol mower is still in the shed for now.  Keeping the lawns tidy every week in the summer is a world away from hacking down long wet grass during the winter and early spring, and I don't yet know how the cordless mower will perform then.

The other garden tools I have in the same cordless range are a chainsaw, a standard hedge trimmer, a long extendable hedge trimmer and a pressure washer.


2.   Composting

The composting seems to be going very well.  Earlier in the year, I was worried that we'll produce far too much garden waste for just two bays to cope, but now I can see how quickly the pile reduces as it breaks down.

The LH bay has been filled to the brim at least twice since it was built last autumn, and now it's only half full of well-rotted material - I expect this compost will be ready to use as a mulch & soil improver in the late autumn.  So in this bay, for the rest of the year we'll add only grass cuttings and light cardboard until we've totally emptied it.  Anything that is expected to take longer to break down will go into the RH bay.

The RH bay has been more strictly controlled in terms of adding alternate layers of green and brown waste.  It's currently around three-quarters full.

quite warm in there today ...

But it always heats up nicely after adding batches of fresh material, so I'm confident it will also reduce in volume quite quickly.

3.   Cherry Tree

I've recently cut down our cherry tree.  We'd planted it in 2013 when we first landscaped the new extension to the garden.  

Cherry Tree Island in 2013 - seems like a very long time ago now !

At the time, I didn't make a note of the variety but I know it was self-fertile and it's clear it was grafted onto a rootstock.  It might have been a 'Colt' rootstock because after seven years in the ground here the tree was well over 4 metres tall, much larger than I'd have expected on a more dwarfing rootstock.

the cherry tree in July 2020 - its final harvest ...

Although it was still quite young and had given us a few decent crops of cherries in that time, it had never been a very healthy-looking specimen.   Over the years, several clumps of solidified sap had formed over disease wounds that had occurred at junctions between branches. 

It wasn't a particularly attractive tree either.   I realise now that it should have been regularly trained during its formative years to control the shape, and also pruned thereafter to encourage better fruiting.   But it's only quite recently that I've taken more control of our fruit trees & bushes etc by regular pruning.   

So I decided a couple of months ago that this tree was for the chop after we'd harvested this year's crop of cherries.

We've already bought another young cherry tree as a replacement, a self-fertile 'Sunburst' variety on a 'Gisela-5' rootstock.   After I pruned it, this new tree is now around 1.2 m tall and currently resides in a large pot, but we haven't yet decided whether to leave it in the pot or plant it out in the ground.

Cherry cropping is unpredictable in our location.  The tree produces its flowers at a time when they can be easily damaged by frosts, and usually before there are plenty of flying insects around to pollinate the blossoms.  We were lucky this year in that late April and early May were warm and totally frost-free.  Although we did have a couple of very late frosts towards the end of May, the blossoms had finished by then and fruit had already set.

in blossom on 21-April ...

Anyway, we cut the old tree down, working from the top.   The leaves and smaller upper branches were shredded for the composter, and the larger lower branches were cut into logs for firewood or for use in a food smoker.

just the trunk to go ...

We cut the main trunk off at the base using the chainsaw, and then dug some earth away to cut it again slightly below soil level before covering it with the decorative slate.   We don't intend to dig the roots out as yet, if ever - it's quite a big job and will damage the lawn.

And we've plans for the tree trunk which we'll cover in a future post ...

4.  Boundaries

We're well on with our annual major hedge trims - July's the best time for this, because they'll only need one more light trim in the early winter months.    The work's mostly done now, but there's still the privet hedge to cut that forms the boundary with the neighbours in the back garden.

Trimming the deciduous part of our double hedge along the western boundary is quite an exercise, being 2.4 m high and more than 30 m long.   The evergreen cotoneaster 'inner' hedge wasn't touched at all, but it will need further tying in to its support framework. 

the cotoneaster lacteus hedge flowering well this year ...

It's better to trim the cotoneaster in very early spring, otherwise we'd lose the summer flowers and subsequent winter berries.

The southern hedge to the east of the sheds was also reduced in height.  This is an evergreen mix of photinia, portugal laurel and a clump of bamboo.

the plastic heron's a throwback from an old pond at this location ...

And the hawthorn along the north-east side was tidied-up where it meets the western boundary.

note the new cherry tree in the pot in the foreground ...

5.  Greenhouse growing

We've six tomato plants which are setting plenty of fruit.

heavy trusses of tomatoes (Ailsa Craig) ...

The first of the sweet peppers are forming.

sweet peppers (D'asti Giallo) ...

And we've three chilli pepper plants all in one large pot, two mild Thai and one hot Naga.

three chillies squeezed into a 10" pot ...

Next to the chilli pot in the photo above, is one of two melon plants on the greenhouse shelving.   These began really well with vigorous growth in late spring but were badly checked by the cool summer weather since.  They're starting to push out more growth again but still haven't yet produced a single female flower, and we're now into the middle of July so I don't hold out much hope for them.

Of the three cucumber plants we planted out in the greenhouse, one is thriving but the other two suffered badly during the very cold nights of late May.   One died and the other has never fully recovered.   I sowed another seed in mid-June as a replacement and this new plant will soon be ready to go out into the greenhouse.

on the one good cucumber plant (Femspot) ...

6.  Other fruit and vegetables

It was a very good year for our white strawberries.

and for the blackcurrants ....

The blueberries are fattening up and there's a few starting to ripen already.   

But no sign of any autumn fruiting raspberries as yet.

The new plum tree we planted in a container in early 2019 has only five fruits on it this year,  but hopefully it will start to produce good crops of plums from next year.   The old plum tree in the ground has still never produced a single blossom since it was planted in 2013.    Next spring really is the last chance for this tree, although I've been saying that for years now ...

Apples are looking very good for later in the year, and I've just given the tree a summer prune.

decent apples again ...

the tree after a summer trim ...

A few years ago, we cut this apple tree back very hard in winter, a mistake we won't make again.  It responded by throwing up dozens of vertical whips in the following spring, and so the summer prune is intended to shorten all this new growth to just a few fruiting spurs, to shape the tree and keep it reasonably compact.   We now know that summer pruning is best to restrict growth, and winter pruning to encourage growth.

There were no pears on either of the two trees this year, despite plenty of blossoms in April.  These trees have been in the garden for five years now and have never really settled in.   Similar to the cherry, they were looking a bit diseased and I've recently chopped one down because it seemed beyond repair.   

But I've given the second pear tree another chance, with a hard pruning to cut away all the diseased wood and I've also inserted timber spreaders to form a more open canopy with the few remaining branches.

a severe haircut of the pear tree ...

We'll wait to see how the tree responds to this pruning, before deciding on its future.

Elsewhere, we've small quantities of several vegetables growing in our new raised beds; dwarf beans, beetroots, kohlrabis, onions, leeks, parsnips, carrots, patissons, marrows and pumpkins.

They took some time to establish in the very dry conditions of spring, but don't need much attention now the weather's back to normal.

Garlic and courgettes in the front garden bed aren't doing badly either.


So that's it for this summer review.   Head over to the Propagator to see what's happening in many other gardens.