One of our favourite walks along the Pembrokeshire national park coastal paths is from Manorbier to Swanlake Bay.
Seldom do we get to see the tide as low as this to reveal areas rarely seen and rocks to explore. Seen from the vantage point above the bay, shows the full sweep.
The Cleddau estuary stretches deep into the Pembrokeshire countryside. The upper reaches becoming the Cleddau river where deliciously moody areas await discovery.
Porthgain is a small port over on the West coast of Pembrokeshire. Well worth a visit if you love the feel of small coastal villages and walks along rugged coastline.
The harbour at Porthgain
Rugged coastline at Porthgain
The Bishop of LLandaff is a lovely dahlia with intense red flowers and dark purple leaves.
Bishop of Llandaff
Stacking wood in the shed and I have to say it made me jump. At around 2" or 50mm long it has quite an imposing look.
Harmless and though it looks as if it sports a really large sting the Horntail or Giant Wood Wasp is only interested in wood.
This is a female the large sting is actually an ovipositor. It's used to drill into the wood of pine trees where it lays its eggs. They take around five years to develop. Split a pine log and immediately you know if a Horntail larvae has been in it. The tunnels look as if a huge wood worm has burrowed through, which I suppose is the case.
Horntail or Gant Wood Wasp
It's all too easy to cut down an old tree and replace it with a younger specimen. But so much is missed if the old is simply cleared away and new replanted.
Apart from the fact that older trees have built vast colonies of life over the decades or centuries they have been around. Complete exospheres in themselves, many animals, birds and insects depending on them.
But David Milarch an American tree conservationist recognises them as true Super Trees. His scheme is to clone from some of Britain's oldest trees and make them available to schools, cities and landowners.
Trees such as these have proved their resilience by living through extremes of climate and into the Industrial age. So we need old trees not only for their beauty, but also to keep our stock of true survivors.
The compost bin warms up really nicely inside. Perfect for this visitor.
Grass snake (Natrix natrix)
Too fast for me even though I lifted the lid on the bin as quickly as I could, I still only caught the back end of the snake.
When it comes to the weather this year, things are looking up compared to last year. It seems a long time since we had a decent Summer. 2012 was terrible, many things in the garden suffered and did not achieve their best with the continuous wet.
It has not been exactly ideal this year, but it is looking up to be reasonable Summer.
Sun through Chive Flowers.
Many plants that were suppressed last year are looking decidedly perkier than last year. The garlic in the garden promises to be very good, no sign of rust on the leaves that had already shown itself by this time last year.
The continuous wet without much in the way of drying out periods encouraged the rust fungus to thrive. It does depress the size of the heads, but at least garlic is tough enough to produce something of worth even with rust on the leaves.
The weather men are promising even warmer weather ahead, and sunshine! Welcome.
It is notoriously difficult to get children to eat healthy vegetables, all they want is sweet and fatty foods.
Okay all kids love sweet foods, but not eating vegetables is learned taste as much as eating them influenced by the Mother!
Controversial?
Research has shown that babies can acquire the taste of varied vegetables while still in the womb. What the Mother eats during this time has a great influence on the tastebuds of the unborn child. It learns from the flavours through the amniotic fluid surrounding it. Then once it is born further taste influencing is done through the Mothers milk and what she eats within her own diet.
Strongly flavoured Mustard Green mix.
Eat strong flavours during pregnancy and whilst feeding from the breast helps a child to acquire a more sophisticated taste preference, and with it a much healthier diet during it's life time.
The cry is we need GMO's to grow more food in the world. Yet the startling statistic is we waste anything like 30-50% of all food produced.
Estimated that around 1.2-2 billion tons do not even reach the human stomach. What with overproduction, food ploughed back into the ground and the vast amount simply thrown away by households and industry. Where is the need for even greater amounts, as the GMO supporters would have us believe would be produced.
Lets not have the old chestnut that it could be supplied to developing countries, because it is not being distributed now!
Food waste acquired from a household food recycling bin.*
Further food production by GMO's is also aimed squarely at grain crops, looking to increase production not for human nutrition but animal feeds. Trying to keep the status quo running where obscene amounts of quality food grain is fed to animals to fatten up for meat production.
Reduction in meat eating not only would free up more grain food, it would lead to better health amongst the population as research shows time and again. Eating large quantities of animal flesh, as many people do beyond their requirements for protein to live, causes degenerative diseases such as cancer, heart disease and possibly contributes to Alzheimers.
The need for GMO's is completely overstated and unnecessary.
*This is a typical mix of foods that are thrown away by many ordinary households each week. It is not from our household, firstly we do not eat refined bread of this type, or eat chicken. Any household waste we have IS waste, inedible parts. Everything is composted, as was this sample. Another thing that is beyond me why anyone would thrown away valuable composting materials when they have a reasonable sized garden!
Be proud, you have a rich bio diversity of worms, in your garden that is.
Unlike large tracts of agricultural land where soil conditions are pretty much the same over a large area. Gardens are rich in their habitat.
Lawns, flower beds, vegetable plots, compost heaps and even pots of plants create so many different kind of places for various types of worm life to live. From acid soil to dried near arid areas, some kind of worm is likely to thrive in it.
Brandlings, compost or manure worms thrive in the moist conditions of a compost bin.
Gardens a repository of worm life and all we have to do is create a healthy garden to achieve it.
I think it is time to delve into making Terra Preta in our garden. Last year prompted me into pushing forward with this. It was a year of nigh on continuous rainfall. Many of our vegetables suffered for it much of which was due to the washing out of some nutrients due to the high rainfall. Most noticeable was my garlic crop which suffered from Potassium loss, showing up as rust in the leaves.
I had been thinking of following Terra Preta growing for a while, if your not sure what Terra Preta is visit Wikipedia for a concise description.
Although our soil has masses of organic matter added to it each year, the bottom garden especially is a voracious light soil that suffered the most from the continuous rain last year.
My research has shown that Terra Preta soil making centred around the Amazon Basin, was developed by the indigenous people to overcome the poor thin soils of the Amazon that are subjected to very high rainfall.
If they could counter the effects of high rainfall leaching nutrients from the soil by creating Terra Preta soil, it sounded like a solution to my problem.
The method also seems to work at its best on acid soils, which ours is, although it is possible some benefits will occur on alkaline soils. The most obvious benefit for any soil is the Carbon storage that will occur. Basically adding the charcoal to any soil will mean locking up Co2 for possibly many thousands of years, hopefully.
So I had to find a source of charcoal to make a start. You need to start ahead of the time it is needed as the charcoal needs to be conditioned before it is added to the soil. That is if you want to plant up immediately. If the charcoal is not conditioned it can hold back growth on plants or seedlings. This is down to the charcoal needing bacterial and fungal cultures to move in to the spaces present in the charcoal itself.
Magnified image of charcoal showing the spaces within.
This is one of the secrets of adding charcoal to soil, the effects are being studied to see why it is so effective. So far though it is surmised that the bacteria present and the mycorrhizal fungi that take up residence in these microscopic holes enhance the bio activity and nutrient holding capacity of the soil.
The conditioning method can be done in two ways. Either soak the charcoal in an active solution such as compost tea to allow the bacteria to colonise as the charcoal takes up the moisture. A fairly quick method that can be effective in two weeks. But it means the charcoal will be fairly wet and messy to try and spread on the soil and even harder to add between already growing plants.
So I opted for the compost charcoal mixture. Adding either well rotted compost or worm compost to charcoal as a 50/50 mix. Then allowing to condition for a month before use. This I thought a better option as the charcoal itself added to worm compost that I have would make it into a nice spreading mixture.
This time of year though there is no charcoal to be had from anywhere. It's too early for barbeques and all the paraphernalia to be stocked by garden centres etc. If you are going to buy your charcoal in, try and get locally grown and processed charcoal rather than imported. Also make sure it is untreated charcoal as some contain combustion agents to making the lighting of it easier. These are pollutants that most probably damage plants and bacterial life.
So I had to make some of my own. We get quite a bit of very small wood chips from the duck bedding, which I normally rot down for mulching. But it is also ideal for making into charcoal. The small size also means it does not need further crushing before use as would be the case if lump charcoal is bought in.
Duck bedding waste
The bedding is not too wet after they have been cleaned out so it would not be too difficult to process with heat.
To experiment I have started small and in fact found it quite an effective method that produces reasonable quantities of charcoal without much effort. Although a wood stove is needed for the heat to make the charcoal. But if you have one and want to have a go here are my tips.
Basically I fill an old tin, such as a cat food tin. They are made easier by the tops being able to be removed without a tin opener. Pack the wood chips, shavings or sawdust into the tin, even small twigs can be used. Then just place the lid back onto the contents. The lid sits perfectly and stops the contents igniting and burning down. A simple and effective way I have found.
The tin then needs to be placed within the stove for the heat to pyrolise the contents, producing charcoal. In the heat the tin gives off water vapour as steam, then gradually the steam stops and a flame appears on the top of the tin as flammable gases are driven off by the heat.
After about an hour the process is finished. The tin should not be giving off any smoke or burning smell, it should just smell hot, just don't burn your nose if you do smell it! I can usually process three tins each time which produces a surprising amount of charcoal during an evenings fire burning.
Once cool enough the charcoal can be tipped out ready for mixing.
The charcoal bits.
Next the charcoal gets mixed with worm compost.
Worm compost.
You need to hold your breath for the initial mixing or if you cannot wear a mask as quite a bit of dust flies up first thing, make sure your upwind as the dust is black.
Worm casts and charcoal.
Once mixed its stored in an old compost sack for a month, ready for use in the garden.
I am already thinking out ways to increase my production of charcoal in the garden, but in the meantime this is an easy small production method anyone who has a wood stove can follow.
