Gardening hints

Where do I start!!! Firstly the weather, I don’t ever remember such a sustained cold and frosty April, with little or no rain. Followed by the wettest coldest May on record. This has turned nature and plants upside down.

I lost a couple of plants in the garden with the minus 10 degree temperature we had one night in February. The Hydrangea and Laurels were burnt on their new shoots during the night frosts of April.

Please don’t be too despondent as nature always has a way of fighting back. They Hydrangea and Laurels have both regrown and are now looking very healthy. Everything in the garden is about 3 weeks to a month behind, but will in due course catch up as the weather hopefully improves.

Lets move on to a settled sunny June hopefully. Don’t forget to feed all your pots, tubs and baskets with tomato feed, miracle grow or any other plant food, there are plenty on the market and make sure you dead head your plants to encourage growth.

In the vegetable garden, make sure your potatoes and runner beans have plenty of water and keep your potatoes earthed up to increase yield and prevent the top potatoes turning green. Thin out carrots and beetroot leaving the strongest looking plants.

It should be safe to put tomato plants out now, keep them well staked and remember to pinch out side shoots.

Spray your roses wit ‘Rose Clear’ to prevent black spot and aphid infestation.

When the sun eventually comes out enjoy your garden, June is a great month with longs days and hopefully warm evenings.

So weather permitting I shall be in my garden and a nice cold beer in my hand.

Source: Nigel, Art Garden Centre

The government roadmap out of lockdown is on track and it is likely that clubs and societies will be able to meet once again later in the year. With this in mind, the OWLS Committee is meeting in June to plan a start in September. All of this is, of course, subject to many factors and only time will tell if we are able to resume. Meanwhile members are able to experience wildlife in the spring on sunny days with extended daylight. When not out and about, there are many nature programmes on television to watch. A favourite of many, for a long time, has been Countryfile on BBC1 on Sunday evenings. In recent weeks the programme has featured many topics that are relevant to people throughout the country, especially OWLS. Among these was an interesting report on wading birds on the sandy beaches of the Gower Peninsula featuring the osprey, known locally as the sea magpie because of its black and white coloration. Litter features in the news regularly with the huge mounds of rubbish left in parks and other beauty spots after people visit to escape lockdown. Countryfile featured a new initiative in Greensand Ridge in Bedfordshire called Trash-free Trails in which a group of litter-pickers on bicycles travel along country paths to remove litter left by the public. They are doing an excellent job, but should not be required if people took their litter home with them and did not act carelessly. Their aim is to encourage groups across the country to clean up their local countryside and pool information of their findings, leading to the first national record of plastic pollution in rural spaces, to discover how much there is and exactly what it is, and to find new solutions. Their ultimate objective is to reduce single-use plastics by 75% by 2025 and to not be talking about this in ten year’s time. Finally, they would like to make Trash-free Trails redundant because litter is no longer a problem in the countryside. A few remarkable facts were revealed in the programme: • Although plastic in the marine environment is highly publicized, • there are 23 times more discarded plastic objects on land than in the sea. Annually 2.2 million tons of plastic packaging are thrown away. North Weald Cricket Club register successive Sunday wins; tough start for Saturday • Every day, more than 2 million pieces of litter, mostly plastic, are league side • dropped in UK which is five times more than 50 years ago. More than 3 million small animals (shrews, mice and voles) become trapped and die in discarded cans and packaging every year. North Weald notched up their first win of the season at home to North Enfield on 2nd May. North Enfield won the toss and elected to bat on a good early season pitch and posted a competitive 191/4 from 40 overs, with 2 wickets each for Ben • The RSPCA receives a call every 2 hours to attend larger ani- Payne and Liam Thrift. North Weald made light work of the mals killed or injured by litter.Micro plastics are found in soil and chase; Ross Haworth and Vince Curren set a solid platform seas and importantly, traces occur in the food that we eat and with an opening partnership of 111, before 41 off 26 balls the water that we drink, from James Ward saw the home side over the line with 8 Keith Snow wickets and more than 5 overs remaining. This was followed on 9th May by a nail-biting 1 run win off the final ball of the match at home to Potter Street. A fifth wicket stand of 164 between Vince Curren (74 not out) and Ben Marks (87 not out) took North Weald to a first innings score of 234/4. Potter Street made a great effort at the run chase, but fell just short, with a run out on the final ball as the batsmen ran a third in an attempt to make the game a tie. Meanwhile the club’s first season in the Premier Division of the Herts and Essex Border League has started with two successive defeats. On 1st May, North Weald posted a below-par score of 162/7 from 45 overs, which was easily chased down by Stansted Hall and Elsenham in just 21.5 overs thanks to 105 not out off 62 balls from Rory McGurk. One week later, on a drizzly day at Thorley, North Weald fell to defeat on the last delivery of the game. After posting a respectable 148/3 from a reduced 30 overs, and a steady start from the bowlers, the game hinged on Ross Haworth’s final over, with the opposition requiring 15 runs to win. Two towering sixes from Thorley’s number 10 from the first two balls of the over were followed by two scampered singles from the next three balls, and a four from the final ball saw Thorley escape with a narrow victory. North Weald now travel to Potter Street seeking their first league win of the season.