Garden Centre

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Garden woes for August

Botanists and phenologists (which is the posh name for people who look at seasonal environmental events like flowering, seeding, migrating etc) have announced that our unseasonably miserable summer hasn’t just been bad news for gardeners – we had already noticed the problem of course, you should see the blight on my tomatoes for a start!

Fungi has gone off like rockets, as I’m sure many people have noticed – there are mushrooms in my garden but also across the grass verges on local roads, areas that usually have too much footfall for the spores to fruit successfully. Wood cranesbill and wisteria have flowered twice within a few months apparently, although not in my garden! The problem is that the strange weather conditions seem to have tricked the plants into believing it is spring again. But whatever it does to us: killing plants or causing infections to spread, raising the prices of certain foods or limiting the flowering or ripening of garden produce, it’s much, much worse for the flora. And where the flora is affected, the fauna suffers too.

Some of the country's best loved animals and birds are already paying the price - moth numbers have been worryingly low and the early berry season also suggests that the crops, which provide vital food for animals and birds in the lead up to the cold winter months, may disappear too early.

So you might want to think about feeding the birds this autumn and winter, and setting up some moth homes and beetle corners, to try and get our rare native wildlife through the starving months ahead.

Labels: august berries, august flowers, august fungi, garden august

The All Seasons Gardener at 3:05 AM

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