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Now it’s time for hard work for our friends the worms
Nov 3 2007 By Graham Porter, Huddersfield Daily Examiner
In this week’s questions, there is a follow-on from last week’s story about Wiggly Woo.
Mr William Wood from Dalton has written in about how worms hibernate. He has found some on his allotment as he has been getting on with some autumn digging.
The straight answer is that they don’t hibernate but they go into a temporary resting period in dry weather that is known as a diapause, when they coil up at the bottom of a deep burrow in the soil to sit out the drought.
We have had very little rain since the beginning of August and it is only recently that the worm casts have begun to appear on the lawn again.
Your worms have had a well-earned rest and are now working away on the allotment to support the hard work that you are putting in.
If you are an ex-pupil from Colne Valley High School or have ever taken part in an event organised by the Colne Valley Tree Society, you will know Brian Moriarty.
Well, Brian tackled me at the Meltham Waste Recycling Site last week, as he and I were disposing of various recyclable materials.
Brian’s love of home-grown vegetables has encouraged him, over a number of years, to learn more about the science and practice – you would expect this of an educated man like Brian.
However, he seems to have hit a brick wall when it comes to controlling clubroot and wants to know what my views are on the problem.
The fungal disease, Plasmodiophora brassicae, can last in the soil, without any host plants being present, for up to 20 years and in acidic and water-logged soils will affect a wide range of plants in the Cruciferae family, including wallflowers, candytuft, shepherd’s purse, wild mustard and stocks as well as the full range of normal edible brassicas.
Fast maturing brassicas may be able to continue growing through the disease whereas longer term, over-wintering brassicas will suffer badly in infected ground and will continue to build up the fungal spores in the ground.
There are occasional ‘resistant varieties’ that show up in the seed catalogues but this resistance is not guaranteed to be fully affective because the disease has many different strains.
You may also try using raised beds to improve drainage and try to keep the soil at a pH of around 7-7.5 as well as ensuring the plantlets are raised in clean soil to give them a good start. Alternatively, move house!!
Mr and Mrs Whitely from Bradley have recently moved house and, although the house is generally in good condition, the garden obviously was not one of the top priorities of the previous owners.
It has several large trees, including one old apple tree that are blocking out light into various rooms and are also making access difficult to some parts of the garden.
Their dilemma is whether to have one, some or all of the trees removed before they start to redesign the garden. Assuming that your solicitor, in his or her searches before you exchanged contracts, did not find any reference to Conservation Area Orders or Tree Preservation Orders, there is no legal reason why you should not have as many of the trees removed as you wish.
My own thoughts on the dilemma are that you should take some photographs of the garden from a variety of different places and then paint out the trees that you think should be removed, one by one, to see what effect their removal might have on your property.
This may well show you that, with a little careful pruning or selective removal of one of the trees, the problems can be dealt with easily and without necessarily destroying all of the well established trees.
I would also advise you to double check with the Kirklees Council’s Planning Department about TPOs and CAOs – the fines for contravening these orders can be substantial!!
If you have any questions or queries that you want help with or gardening related subjects that you would like to discuss, why not write to me at Gardening Questions, Features Office, Huddersfield Daily Examiner, PO Box A26, Queen Street South, Huddersfield, HD1 2TD.
