The Garden Still Thinks It's Spring

It has been so warm and dry in the UK in September and October that a load of plants think it is Spring rather than Autumn. In September the temperatures were regularly hovering at or above 20 degrees celsius. Things have cooled down in October but we are still getting 18 degrees during the day, on occasion, although the nights are considerably cooler. We almost had a frost out at Ealing but only on the parked cars ;-)

The hollyhocks in our garden are all sprouting as if it's Spring. The picture above shows the new growth. Also the hedging plant in the front of the house is also starting to flower again, as seen below. They are in for a rude shock I think as summer time ends this weekend!



Not only has it been warm it has also been super dry in London. The only serious rain I can remember was last Wednesday early morning where we had 14mm of rain. Apart from that almost nothing. My water tanks are empty now. The fact I have to water at all seems very odd at this stage of the year. My pot plants would have been long gone dead and bloated if I hadn't kept up the watering regime. As it stands last years Christmas tree is still going strong ;-)

Due to the lack of rain the ground is simply too hard to complete the Autumn lawn care. No chance for me to aerate the lawn as it is almost impossible to get a pitch fork in the ground! It's a hard job when the ground is moist so forget it when it's dry!

Still a manic Saturday morning of gardening saw various shrubs cut back and the Chilean Potato Tree and the Climbing Roses on the back fence cut back. Not sure this is an Autumn task. It should probably have been done earlier in autumn at least, but again the Spring like weather has them growing manically. The results below.



The results for the council are four bags of garden cuttings to take away when the garbage is picked up ;-)



Maybe if it rains in the next week or so I will get to finish aerating the lawn but if I don't get it done soon I won't be using any Autumn fertiliser. Deadline for this is apparently mid November! Ah well can always aerate in the new year ;-)

Cheers

M

How Can You Save 20% Off Your Diesel Costs?

OK so Diesel in the UK is pretty much well at the highest cost it has ever been. Seems to hover around the 139 - 140 pence per liter where I fill up. That equates to about $2.20 a liter in US dollars and (this is where I would usually make a joke about the Australian Peso. Unfortunately the Australian Peso has soared ahead against the UK pound, making working for pounds effectively meaningless ;-) ) roughly $2.15 AUD. So quite a bit per liter.

I have to drive to work. Well that is not entirely true. I could get public transport which would take 90 minutes at minimum each way, or drive which takes 30 minutes of a morning and about 45 on the way home. It's a no brainer, I drive. Guess I could get a job that was accessible by public transport or move to Hatfield. The latter is not an option ;-).

So due to diesel costs driving is seriously costing a fortune. It's basically £70 a tank, give or take, to fill a VW Golf. Yes a hatchback. Cripes knows what it costs to fill a real car! So to cut down on driving costs I decided to drive incredibly conservatively, e.g. like a big girls blouse ;-), to see what the difference in fuel consumption would be.

Conservative driving for me means:

• driving the speed limit or just under
• keeping the engine revs incredibly low. I try not to rev the engine what so ever and change gears incredibly early. Basically until I reach higher gears the engine barely gets above 1000 RPM
• thats it.

This doesn't really significantly increase driving time so much. Sure it does a little but in the overall scheme of things do you really need to rush to work? Yeah rushing home sure but the other way ;-). However in a one tank test it has dramatically decreased fuel consumption. Or should that be increased? Not sure ;-). What I mean is that I get more MPG and therefore spend less. Got that?

So since having my car I have averaged about 45 MPG. Not to shabby from a combination of both urban and rural driving. Not exactly what the VW Golf TDI 1.9 spec claims but all in all not too shabby. This past tank however, with the conservative driving approach adopted above, I averaged 55 MPG. Thats a 22% increase in MPG.

OK its a one tank test, but that tank did cover both rural and urban driving as I pretty much well always do. It's not quite a scientific study yet, but it clearly demonstrates that conservative driving will save you a bomb. For simplicity lets say I am 20% better off. Thats roughly £14 per tank thank you very much. With this kind of saving I could almost afford to take up smoking! ;-)

Anyways, if your car fuel bills are soaring, it might just be worth chilling out behind the wheel. You will still get to where you are going and you will probably be richer off karmically as well. It's difficult to get road raged up if you hover at the speed limit. Try it out, it's guaranteed to make you feel better! ;-)

Cheers

m

Time For Autumn Lawn Scarifying

As with last Autumn, it's time to scarify the lawn again. It's a time consuming, and arduous, job if done manually. I tried to complete this evening, but didn't quite make it due to the lack of rain making the ground too hard. Steps are:

1. Mow the lawn and rake up the cuttings
2. Then with a spring tine rake, rake again length wise and cross wise. Give this some real wellie as well. The more effort you put in the more thatch you get out. As can be seen from the picture above I actually got more thatch out of the lawn than grass from cutting
3. After this aerate the lawn. Take your pitch fork and every ten centimetres dig in and slightly lift the turf. This is the real hard piece of the work. If it hasn't rained properly for two months, as it hasn't in London, simply do not do this. The ground is simply too hard to make much ground work. I didn't manage this today. Will wait until after it rains a little.
4.  Sprinkle on some Autumn lawn food and water in. I also didn't complete this step as will wait until the aeration done.
5. If suffering from bare patches sprinkle with lawn seed and rake in. It should still be warm enough for these to take hold. Don't let this go for too much longer though. 

Looking at the lawn this year below, and comparing it to last year, following, it looks as though the lawn has stood up a little better this year

and from last year

Last year when I scarified for the first time the lawn looked so bad I thought I had done permanent damage to it! I was cursing the folks at Gardeners' World ;-)! Having gone a full year though and seen how good the lawn was this year I am hoping to be happy with the results next Spring as I was this one just past.

Below are the results of this Autumn's scarifying. It really is surprising how much dead grass you have in your lawn!

A shame that I am only half done though. As mentioned it is a rather arduous task and to be honest I have only done the easy bit! The aeration using the pitch fork is always fun!

That's all for now.

Cheers

m

Peter's Thoughts On David Cameron And The Conservative Party Conference

Hot on the heals of Peter's solution to save the euro, he provides his frank assessment of David Cameron, the Conservative Party in the UK and the current Conservative Party Conference in Manchester.

Please view the video above for his assessment. I asked him for further comment but he was so mad he was not prepared to comment further after ripping the Economist to bits.

More assessment of the economy and politics in general once Peter is ready to comment further ;-)

Cheers

m