Common Hill Nature Reserve

Common Hill Nature Reserve is a collection of small fields/meadows containing old orchard trees located near Fownhope, Herefordshire and managed by the Herefordshire Wildlife Trust (HWT). The Voluntary Warden is a friend of ours and we help out on an ad hoc basis. My job is to spot things...

The Weir Garden, Herefordshire

 A riverside garden bordered by the River Wye and with spectacular displays of spring bulbs.The Weir Garden (National Trust) is only a short drive away and we are regular visitors. Today (January 29) was the first open day of 2022 and just in time to see the first flush of snowdrops.Several...

2021 Potato Harvest

It is 26 January 2022: a dry sunny day with just a little bit of winter warmth (9 oC at midday). Time to dig up the final row of potatoes from the Spring 2021 planting. These are Sarpo Blue Danube, an early maincrop variety. Sarpo Blue Danube PotatoesIn 2020, I planted two varieties of...

Corn Starch Peanuts and Compostable Bags

In the past, polystyrene packing peanuts were popular as padding material for protecting delicate paraphernalia transported via parcel post. While cheap, convenient, and cost-effective for commercial companies, they were considered an anachronistic annoyance to anyone else.Sustainable...

Hotbin and Robin

The weather has been dry & cold for a few days now which has meant brief and sporadic visits to the kitchen garden doing only the essentials: tending the hot composting bin, digging up parsnips & beetroot, and picking chard, spinach & kale.An additional task at this time of year is surface-spreading...

Frosty Nights

 January 2022 started with three warm days and nights where even the night minimum temperatures were ≥ 8oC, well above the average day/night temperature (4.3 oC) for Hereford in the month of January.As I write this post (18/1/22), we have had a week of subzero night temperatures and average...

The First Snowdrop of 2022

This is our wood-in-the-garden. Small in size (less than 3 square metres) but containing two Oaks, two Hazels, two Hollies, and one each of Birch and Rowan. Not sure what constitutes a wood but the generally accepted definition of an orchard is 5 trees. There are other trees dotted about the garden:...

Pears Pared to the Final Pair

 Pears (noun) - a yellowish- or brownish-green edible fruit that is typically narrow at the stalk and wider towards the base, with sweet, slightly gritty fleshPare (verb) - reduce (something) in size, extent, or quantity in a number of small successive stagesPair (noun) - put together...

PV Generation - 16 Years and Still Going

A photo from the newly installed CCTV camera showing part of the roof-mounted solar PV array.Time for an update on the performance of my PV panels. A nominal 4.92 kW of panels installed as two separate arrays and 'activated' on 9th December 2005 has been in operation for more than 16 years. The original...