June, Comparing the past

June, Comparing the past

A quick look back at the same time of year for the last 4 Junes. Click on photos to enlarge.

June 27th 2013

June 24th 2014

June 30th 2015

June 29th 2016

The Asparagus Pea

The Asparagus Pea

Often you'll hear "alternative" gardeners and Permaculture people either rave or put forward the idea that growing Asparagus Pea is a good way of adding diversity and sustainability to the food we eat. Another good food source that also looks pretty in the garden.

Utter tosh!

We have just grown, harvested, and tried to eat a modest crop.

This one, for the purpose of a photo is about twice the recommended size for eating. Pick them while they are about 1 inch in length I read.

I picked them big and small and tried them raw. A better test would be to cook them but within the same minute that they entered our mouths to try they then hit the bin!

I had known what to expect as I watched a Youtube video of a serious gardener showing a lovely looking crop in a raised bed. He then went on to explain that once grown the best thing to do with Asparagus pea is to rip it up and plant something else.

I concur. Texture similar to cardboard and no taste. What a waste as a food crop. They are quite pretty though. Been there done that, and have learnt by the mistake.

Finally the flowers show

Finally the flowers show

A lot of the self seeded Poppies have come and gone, and the Sweet Williams have been showing for a while, and although the Corn Cockles started flowering a while ago it's only now that they are out in numbers.

June 2016, Old Bonfire site

This is the old bonfire site that I seeded a couple of seasons ago. Most of what is there is now self seeded although when I was walking past this site in the Autumn and early spring I often chucked a few seeds at it. I presume I threw a few Sweet Williams down because I wasn't expecting them. 

This is how I wanted a few other areas of the garden to look but nowhere else has taken as well as the chard, full of ash, didn't expect much site of the old fire.

Pond June 2016

The area around the pond is about to burst into life. The Red Campions have been and gone but the White ones are still going strong (middle of photo). On the right are self seeded Sweet Williams with loads of Daisies about to flower behind them.

The trellis put up to help shelter the poly-tunnel from the wind became another flower bed, with a few mixed packets of flowers plus a few handfuls of Corn Cockles thrown in. Sown in the spring, it's about to burst into life after being ravished by slugs. I also planted a few spare runner beans along the trellis. Because the sun keeps being intermittent, I had missed a few Livingston Daisies that are in flower. They open and close with the sun and I just managed to catch them fully open. 

Trellis bed, June 2016

These were a nice surprise as I don't remember them listed on the packet but when ever I get free seed I often throw them somewhere hoping for a surprise so these may well be a thrown in after thought.

There are a few neglected areas this year where I just haven't had time to sort things out. A few of the small beds next to the green house have self seeded chard and spinach but also a giant poppy which has been in various places around the garden in previous years but I don't know what it is. I like things that just appear, even if I don't know what they are. There was one in the bonfire site last year and in the fruit garden the previous year. No idea where it came from but it could have been from a packet, or the previous owner or, probably, some seed I grabbed walking past somewhere and just through on the floor.

Around the pergola I have runner beans on all 3 sides with sunflowers in the middle of the bed and then some Cosmos and Marigolds on the edge of all sides. I'm hoping for a layered effect. 

Nasturtium have self seeded and one or 2 of last years failed Dahlias have shown themselves. Last year the bed was full of pot started Dahlias which when planted out got 100% eaten by slugs. These were replaced with lots of spare tomato plants, which have also self seeded this year. There is also a self seeded Dog Rose just starting and I'm pleased with the 2 young grape vines which have made it through the winter. I have weeded the bed of thistles on three occasions now and have had to resort to using slug pellets on this bed but, like a few other beds, this one is not far off flowering. The beans got a little stunted with slug damage and a few cold nights a month ago but they are now happily climbing. I've only lost 2 or 3 sunflowers with about a dozen remaining.

I'm rather hoping with the tall beans and their pretty red flowers, tall sun flowers along with the Cosmos and Marigolds and the odd Dahlia that this bed will look fantastic. The Sunflowers are from bird seed. I bought 25kg of sunflower seed for the birds and have half of it left. It is a couple of years old but germination rates have been close to 100%. No idea what type of sunflowers they are, but they look like they will be tall ones.

Pergola bed, June 2016

The photo shows the back side, this arrangement of plants is also on the other 2 sides.

The Greenhouse tomatoes have grown well and are a minimum of twice the size of the outdoor ones although we had to clean the greenhouse windows as I think they have become a bit leggy, reaching for the sky looking for more light. The windows were a tad dirty and hand't been cleaned for 3 years. Anyway, that's another job done that can be crossed off of the list!

Greenhouse June 26th 2016

There are a lot of flowers but the young tomatoes are only 1 or 2mm in size. 

The Tay Berry in it's second year has really come alive. Last year there were a few berries but this year it has really gone for it. Hopefully I'll get to them before the kids do.

The Logan berry is also looking good with plenty of berries.

Tay Berry June 2016

Else where, the Asparagus bed has only half survived so I have let them go to seed and will try and sow these in the Autumn / next Spring because I'm still hopeful of having a nice big Asparagus bed. In the mean time this bed is home to 10 or so Courgette plants inter planted with Sprout....well, it seemed like they would go together! The Courgette plants almost all have Courgettes on with 3 or 4 almost good enough size to harvest. I'm hoping to take a few to sell on the Market just to see if anyone will buy and if not they'll have to be part of Tuesday's dinner.

Asparagus Bed, June 2016

There are thousands of Raspberries but with all the rain they are rather swollen and are breaking apart as we try to pick them. More rain as I write means that my hopes of selling some aren't looking too good. The strawberries are ripening nicely but we may be well down on these since my idea of weeding one of the beds was to cover them with manure. The weeds are mainly gone but obviously so are the strawberries. This wouldn't have been a problem had it not been for the fact that the original strawberry bed was neglected and isn't doing to well after I weeded it and those plants are a bit old. The new Strawberry bed was also neglected and although there are hundreds of plants they are almost totally covered in weeds. I'm going to weed them tomorrow but I think the slugs may have a strong hold under all that vegetation.

Our own market stall

Our own market stall

We have got own market stall. Although we have done a couple of days on a market before, and although I have worked a few hours at a time on a stall for someone else for a few months, and even though we have joined in the local country market held in the church hall in the past, this feels like a big deal.

A couple of 1 off craft market days and 3 hours per week on a small, low key country market, is one thing but the step up to a full market stall each Tuesday seems to be a much bigger proposition. Every thing is now down to us, and a 10ft stall to fill and look professional enough, even though it's a bit early in the year for us is posing problems not previously thought of.

For a start, we don't have many things to sell yet. We are selling home made crafts, home grown fruit and veg, some grown or made by us, some crafts by other similar people, but exactly what we are selling is a loose idea at present and it will evolve. All we know is that we have to try and sell something to do with our lifestyle and something we can keep going.

Week 1
We started by offering some cards and gift tags made by a local artist, some home made cloth zipped bags made from recycled clothes, a decorate your own bag kit on the craft side, some bags of Chard, Spinach, Rocket, Lettuce and Kale of the leaf fresh veg side, with some Globe Artichokes and also some vegetable plants in large pots, such as Tomatoes, Courgette, Cape Gooseberry and Celery.  Also eggs from the garden chickens. The idea is not to compete directly with anyone so the veg side was the Chard and Spinach that you can't buy anywhere else and the potted plants are in large pots so that all the hard work is done for people. Many people like the idea of growing their own food but don't want or don't have the time to do it. The tomatoes for example have canes in and are already tied to the cane by a piece of cloth. Perfect to place in a sunny location, perhaps by the back door. This also made good use of about 50 large pots that I had been given. The eggs are priced at the higher end so not to compete with the very cheap eggs around which allows people to buy into the idea that garden raised chickens are better, not mass produced etc.

The first week saw about 7 or 8 customers and sold 14 items. Something from each section.

I made a decision to listen to what anyone said so that when some one asked if I had a Cucumber plant for example I wrote it down and said I'd bring one next week. People always seem to ask you for things that you haven't got :) Four people asked about Cucumbers, several about Runner beans, one regarding Leeks and I got the general feeling that people liked the idea of growing veg in large pots.

The next most common question that people asked was "are you here next week, or every week?" - it became clear that what people really get annoyed about is turning up on another week to get something only to find the stall isn't there. I see it all the time, the forecast is for rain so one or two stalls don't turn up because they know it'll be a very slow day. People seemed to be impressed when I said that we'd be here come rain or shine every week. One lady commented that she parks, walks past the market on the way to the newsagents and it'd be handy to pick up some eggs once in a while. If I wasn't there, or was unreliable, she'd have to take a different route that she knew would have eggs on that odd occasion. People like that aren't price sensitive, they want convenience. The second week would prove this point.

I also picked up on 2 other points that appeared important. A lot of people either commented directly or I over heard them commenting as they walked past, that they were impressed with the look of the plants. The other point was that a few people will spend a while looking through the water colour painted cards, although they weren't buying. They would quite happily spend 3 or 4 minutes flicking through them without buying. Perhaps there wasn't enough choice. We rectified this for week 2. The point about the plants looking good reminded me that Outside many shops you get shelving of loads of flowers or veg in small pots. There are so many that they don't sell quick enough which leads to the plants becoming too big for the pots, they dry out too quickly and then look shabby. I even saw this outside Tesco the other day. The more you look you'll see that these plants start to look poor. I realised that there is no point just bringing any old plant with a few bad leaves in the hope of selling it. That just leads to us looking like everyone else. Only display the perfect plants. A plant with a slug nibbled leaf can be left at home until it grows more good leaves. Keeping up the quality seems obvious.

Week 2
We contacted another local artist that we new who had many different designs of water colour painted cards, all were pictures of the local area. Landscapes, buildings and cartoons based upon the area. More choice and more people stopped to look through them. We also sold some. It was clear that when people recognised things in the pictures, such as a local landmark they were far more excited.

I had learnt that no one was interested in Globe Artichokes, they are too niche, too different. They have been dropped. No point trying to sell something just because you have them - they take up room that could be better used. Apart from that we stayed consistent - same produce, but added the Cucumbers, Runner beans and Leeks.

Even though the forecast was for rain and I knew the market would be much quieter and had expect to sell less, the opposite happened. The Runner beans in modules sold, the Leeks in modules sold, as did the Cucumber in a large pot as well as the two large pots of Runner beans growing up the canes. All the plants were bigger, with an extra weeks growth. Not only were there more customers, some were repeat customers from the previous week and the number of items sold was up to 30. Money taken was also doubled. And this was on a bad weather day.

There were several customers who clearly wanted veg in large pots but didn't know how they could get them home, but because we pass their houses on our daily routine it made sense to offer them a free delivery service in the Dutch Cargo Bicycle.

I even saw the example of convenience buying when someone parked nearby and was on the way to a shop, uninterested in the market, but caught site of the eggs and quickly bought some.

Markets
Speaking with a couple of other traders they made the point that as long as you keep turning up your business will grow. Markets are well down on their hay day so when a new stall arrives local people talk about it.Word spreads rapidly and people will seek you out.

So far so good
It's obviously very early days but selling the fresh items like Chard that people simply can't buy anywhere else and providing a grow your own veg in large containers service looks like a nice little niche market and I can see that as the plants get bigger and the tomato plants get tomatoes on them then they will attract a higher price and sell even better.

A nice surprise
I have often been told, when I worked on a fruit and veg stall, that Celery doesn't sell, not enough people want it. I took down 10 pots of Celery and sold 8. Again you can't buy young celery plants anywhere that I have seen, but clearly there is a market for them.

We're feeling very positive and all the hours spent in the garden growing our own food is now starting to earn money. We even have a plan that when the plants stop selling they will still be in the garden producing fruit and veg, which can be harvested and sold as fresh veg. 

First Strawberry and ground cover

First Strawberry and ground cover

It'll be interesting to see just how many days the poly-tunnel brings on Strawberries before the outside ones. 

The 28th May saw the first one. I'd had my eye on it for a few days, but I hadn't reckoned on one of the kids being quite so eagle eyed as well! There are now a few more ready.

For the last couple of years I have been using strawberry plants as ground cover, and although they worked well for a year or so, ultimately they have been beaten by grass.

I'd love to find something that can act as a ground cover, suppress specifically grass, and also be a crop. Up until now I've always thought that cover needed to block light but not take too many nutrients or water from the soil so that the main plants could still grow well but I managed to catch the last minute or 2 of Gardeners Question Time the other day and heard that it has been discovered that some plants don't block others in this way but instead they release chemicals into the soil that actively stop other plants from growing and even stop their seeds from germinating. The other way plants reduce competition is by being parasitic or semi-parasitic as in the case of Yellow Rattle. Yellow Rattle feeds on the roots of grasses, but my search is still on to find a plant that provides food and that will have shallow roots so as not to impede fruit bushes for example but at the same time suppress weeds and grass by blocking light. 

There are many examples of other plants doing this, and a few of them are evident just by walking around the garden. Hedge Wound Wort seems to block out competition well,it grows like a Nettle and there are very few other things around it. Even my Fritilary flowers, which are bulbs, grow in the grass but immediately around them the grass is pretty much bare. Garlic Mustard seems to be on it's own as well and although on the edge next to a hedge in semi shade grass is either side of it but not growing through it although I think this is a combination of lack of water, with lack of light making the grass very week, stick a shade loving plant next to it and the grass has no chance. The problem with the examples I can find are that they don't provide food or are too big and spread like a weed and so would just swap one problem for another.

The next thing I'll try is a combination of Lamb's Lettuce and Strawberries, both can be harvested and both spread well. Both will fit under Gooseberry and Currant bushes as well.

Chicken eggs

Chicken Eggs

I've just had an interesting conversation with a friend who wanted to buy some of our eggs. It started because we have some spare eggs and I was saying that he could have some for free while I had too many but any donations were welcome. When I didn't have spare ones then I'd have to charge. He said that he'd prefer to pay the full amount as he didn't like the idea of taken something free from me.

When I told him they would be £1.00 for half a dozen he seemed taken aback. I then said that they normally sell for £1.50 - I have already lowered the price because when some friends ask for things like this they are quietly hoping for a good deal, such as "mates rates". It then transpired that he was expecting to buy them for 50p per half dozen. We settled on a £1 because the price wasn't an issue, he was just surprised that it costs that much for home grown eggs.

Doing some sums shows the real price of having chickens in the back garden. It also shows economies of scale.

The same is true of vegetables or home made jam, but I'll show the costs of chickens.

If you presume the chickens are to be kept for 5 years, and that you want to have the chickens at full production, so you can have you're own eggs but also sell some, and if you presume you have to protect them from foxes etc the sums are as follows:

Chicken house with nesting boxes, 8ft by 6ft and 6ft tall, self build with guttering and water butt to collect water. £400 one off cost

Fencing, 6ft high metal with fence posts etc £300 one of cost

Electric fence £200 (cost is to cover a faulty control unit as well as initial setup - I had one fail after 1 year) - one off cost

20kg of grit (calcium) to keep their shells hard (we had some soft shells to begin with) - £7

Extras, water bottles, trays, feeders etc - £100 one off cost

Hens £5 ea x 20 = £100, but they only lay at full production for 2 to 3 years. x 2 lots = £200. 

Egg boxes, about 10p each

Feed £6.60 per week (not including driving there to pick up the feed)

Water from water butt but in reality some will come from tap.

The price per eggs over 5 years is about 13p+ which is 78p per half dozen.

That's the cost to us but if you want to sell them and factor in time for wages at £7.20 per hour at about 0.5 hours per day plus an extra 0.5 hours for cleaning them out once per week we have an additional £28.80 per week. An average of 100 eggs per week would take the price per egg to almost 42p - £2.50 per half dozen.

If someone wanted to genuinely cover our costs and pay for our time when they bought some eggs then £2.50 is a realistic figure with those wages at the bare minimum of what anyone would accept. Of course most people expect £10 to £15 per hour for their labour although no one would pay that to collect eggs and look after chickens.

The problem with selling eggs is that the price people see in the shops is based upon huge economies of scale and not quality, or animal welfare.

The next time you buy eggs from the side of the road for 70p per half dozen, just remember they don't know what it really costs them to produce from a back garden. Even the Co-Op is selling large eggs for about £1.50 in our local shop per half dozen.

The price of our chickens was cheap (excuse the pun) as they came from a friendly chicken producer but many people will pay £10 to £15 per bird.

The costs above can only be more for smaller flocks than 20, especially considering that many breeds won't produce 250 to 300 eggs per year as ours do. With your own chickens, depending on the breed, you may have one or some that keep going broody and just sit on their eggs. You may also get a disease in your flock or have particularly bad weather one year which will reduce their egg count.

£1.00 per half dozen is very reasonable, but won't earn you any money to talk about. £1.50 per box is about the minimum you would want to charge if it was part of your income but you are certainly not going to become rich any time soon.  

Overdue Maintenance

Overdue Maintenance

We're constantly being told to leave bits of the garden wild for wildlife. I do that, it comes in as a handy excuse for not maintaining parts of the garden. It certainly helps attract and keep wildlife, there's absolutely no doubt, but like all messages given over to the public from organisations, such as the Wildlife Trusts, the message has been simplified so much, that when taken literally it doesn't work as people would expect. This then leads to people giving up on that message and it becomes a fad that no one repeats. 

The problem the Wildlife Trust faces, in my opinion formed over the last 3 to 4 years since I have been volunteering for them one day a week, is that the simple messages they give over suffer from being over simplified when really people need to be given a lot more information and educated properly about conservation. The problem with educating people to the required level is that people don't want to put that much time and effort into it. The simple message put over gets through to many many people and the Trusts can justify their grants and the money they spend by pointing out that their message is working, at a superficial level, and that many people support them and know what the message is. When they want volunteers to help that number drops dramatically, especially in the area of site maintenance that I am in, and when a much more hands on educational day is put on, a day where you can meet and talk to an expert in a particular field, such as insects or pond creation, the number of people that turn up is in single figures. Sometimes 3 or 4. There are many different reasons for this obviously.

The example of making a pond to help wildlife, my pond, is a good example, and I think highlights the gulf between the simple messages that get given over and the realities of putting the messages into practice. Especially the reality of maintaining a good wildlife habitat.

The pond when dug is about 19ft by 11ft, a deep section of about 2.5ft with the rest of the depth varying between 1ft and 3 inches. Margins are shallow and sloped. The mounds around the pond were to be wild flowers with the expected odd bit of grass.

I went on a course for designing and building a pond and the things that were stressed were to leave space around the pond to go wild, which would be good for wildlife and don't routinely clean out the pond, not even in winter, because you'll kill and destroy so many little creatures. It sounded good, I took it all in and to this end tried to let nature to it's bit. It worked fantastically well. Frogs, Toads, Newts, Diving Beetles, Pond Skaters, Dragon Flies, May Flies, Leeches, various segmented water worms, mites, water fleas, Shrimps and of course Mosquitoes and Midge larvae , you name it, it appears to now be there.  

The immediate surrounding area has been planted with Willow, Dogwood, some fruit trees and a lot of wild long grass, piles of wood, piles of rocks, drainage channels and some small banks of earth. Lots of places for lots of things to hide. This is bordered by a big hedge on one side. This wild and semi wild area for wildlife is around 50ft by 30ft, maybe a lot bigger, the size is a pure guess.

I'm actually very pleased with the whole area but the reality of how much time it takes to maintain is starting to hit home. The problem with nature is that everything keeps competing with everything else. It's only a problem because I have an idea in mind as to how I want it to look and how much time I want to spend on it and what species of plants that I want to be there. I want diversity, colour and various heights of plants throughout. It's the same with wildlife conservation. We are trying to conserve, keep, something that isn't natural. Paths aren't natural, the amount of different flowers isn't natural, the hedge isn't natural. Nature is constantly taking what I have done and keeps trying to change it. Wildlife is certainly enjoying what I have done.

The simple message of Wildlife groups is keep a wild area. They don't tell you that you'll need to constantly keep it in check.

Within 1 year I could see succession taking place. The big hedge has Blackthorn within it. Blackthorn spreads via its roots underground and new trees spring up all over the place as it tries to spread. I have had dozens of small trees appear within the grass along that hedge to such an extent that although I kept cutting them all down I missed one that appear next to the pond, 20ft away from the hedge. This small tree, which was hidden by long grass, has punched it's way through the edge of the pond liner and come up next to the pond. Another one has appeared at the other end of the pond. From nowhere one of these is now nearly 3ft tall and the damage to the pond liner can't be fixed. In this case it doesn't matter but how many more of them are trying to punch holes in the liner? If I let this area be wild within one or 2 years the whole area would be small Blackthorn. The hedge isn't natural and Blackthorn is very dominant. These types of hedges need constant maintenance. You can't let it go wild unless you just want Blackthorn to spread.

The grass in between the hedge and pond has been seeded with wild flowers many times but the grass just crowds it out. I've even dug up that grass area, turned the turf over and then seeded but one warm winter is all it took for the grass to out compete the flowers. The only thing that has beaten the grass is Dock, Dandelion and Bristly Ox-Tongue - they are doing fine. I'm OK with the Dandelion but not the other two. You can see how this wild area of grass would look over the next few years. Small Blackthorn bushes with increasing numbers of Thistles, Ox-Tongue and Dock etc slowly crowding out the grass until the Blackthorn finally crowds out and blocks the sun leaving the Dock etc at the margins.

The pond is facing the same problem. Grass is colonising the margins of the pond. The grass has now crept in and is growing in the margins. After 3 years the grass is thick and has shrunk the pond by about 2 feet in all directions. The pond is looking tiny.

In the photo you can see that I've already done a lot of work re-exposing the right hand side of the pond but the left hand side is yet to be done. This is within 3 years from the start of the pond. The bottom right hand corner shows the young Blackthorn bush.

This picture is after clearing both sides. You can now see the pond liner on the side where the grass was. 6 full wheel barrow loads of grass was taken out from the margins of the pond. Had it been left, 5 years from starting the pond I think there would only be 1ft wide of water showing in the centre.

I initially tried clearing out the pond in March but realised frogs were spawning so I stopped. I couldn't wait for next winter for several reasons, one being that the pond was now ugly and not so nice to sit next to, as I had hoped and the other being that it would have been a bigger job with more growth. Another reality that has hit home after spending a couple of hours over the last year dealing with is the introduction of Duckweed and Azolla (a floating water fern). Attracting wildlife also brings in unwanted plants. The first year of the pond saw a Moorhen make the pond it's home. Not only did the bird take almost all the water plants and make a nest with them, it also brought with it, I believe, Duck weed. The Azolla has just appeared this year, presumably from another bird or perhaps even stuck to my canoe after a day's paddle and found it's way into the pond.

It might be hard to see in this photo but it shows Duckweed and Azolla. This photo was taken after I spent half an hour in one sitting removing as much of both of these plants as I could. I made little in road even after that time. The two plants both cover the entire pond and the blanket they produce just gets thicker and thicker. They block the light from reaching the pond plants beneath the surface, stop the exchange of gasses and oxygen from getting in and out of the water and rapidly kill the pond. They also stop diving beetles from being able to break the surface and grab air. Scraping this stuff off of the surface also means that many many snails get caught up in it and removed. Many little tadpoles are also just under this and they too get caught up in the net.

The idea of the simple message I was given on the pond training course, don't try cleaning out your pond as it kills and disturbs lots of creatures, even in winter, over looks the more complicated need for management of a pond. Left to it's own devices this pond would be almost totally dead had I not intervened. I still have a lot more to remove and this will now be a constant battle each year. I had a good example of this the other year while canoeing a local drain (man made drainage river to those outside of Lincolnshire). While canoeing I came across a slow flowing stretch which was so full and covered with Duckweed and Azolla that it was very very difficult to paddle through it. The bow of the boat was pushing it's way through the weed causing it to bunch up many inches thick. Just before entering this stretch I noticed a huge amount of fish and had spent many minutes watching them and wondering why there were so many. These fish had swam away from the weeded area and congregated. They were having to move due to the lack of oxygen in the stretch I was about to enter.

While paddling the weeded stretch the boat was causing hundreds of young eels and other fish that hadn't managed to escape to literally jump as they were disturbed and land on the blanket of weed. They were hanging as close to the surface as possible getting some of the little oxygen that there was left in the water (which was at the surface). When I peered through the blanket of weed I could see that all other plant life under the water was gone. The stretch before this weeded area was full of many different plants. This stretch was a good half mile and had become a dead zone. The Environment Agency came out, within the hour of me calling them. They tested the water for oxygen and confirmed there was almost none within the water. Their action also showed how conservation of wildlife is a fashion guided by how prominent the area is. This stretch can not be seen from a road, doesn't have a path along side and is almost never visited by anyone. I was probably the first and only visitor for a year or two.

Had it been else where they would have either taken a boat up it and dragged/ scraped the weed off allowing oxygen and light back in or they would have added oxygen through a chemical in which produces large amounts of oxygen allowing the creatures to breath. The bloom of weed would have only been a temporary thing and would have died away after the summer but not before killing many creatures. The environment needs maintaining if you want to keep diversity. The drain / river here isn't natural, it's man made surrounded by fields pouring in nutrients and fertilizers which cause the bloom. The drain, just like my pond, is or was an area that had introduced diversity and many different species simply by digging and putting it there as is much of what we see around us.

As our modern life changes and destroys natural ponds, rivers and various different habitats with farming, road building and housing, we need to maintain the man made new habitats if we wish to keep wildlife, because in many or even most cases, the diversity won't be there without us constantly working on it. That's the same as my pond. The simple message of leave areas to go wild, just add a pond to your garden, just sow wild flowers, doesn't work on it's own. Left to it's own devices nature will use succession to remove diversity, allow dominant species to take over and then natural selection over years, hundreds of years, may or may not create diversity in that area.

Nature is only diverse and wonderful and very interesting when taken as a whole, over the whole country, or the whole world. Any one little area will see nature destroying life and diversity and going closer to  a monoculture of the most dominant plants in the short term as succession resets everything. This is why as we constantly destroy the natural world, displace nature and force it into ever decreasingly smaller areas we need to constantly maintain diversity and manage those areas that are left. Diversity can't happen naturally in a small area within the time frame of our lives. If we want to see nature and wildlife we have to make it in the areas which are left and then keep tending to it, just like my pond.

This is what I do at the Wildlife Trust as a volunteer, I constantly pull weeds, cut grass to allow flowers room to develop help moving sheep and cattle around the site so they can graze, tread in seeds and dig up the top soil. Conservation is a fashion, we are trying to maintain the fashion of meadows and farming that used to exist 100 to 1000 years ago. The idyllic idea of wild flower meadows and buzzing bees in the country side with pretty little ponds full of frogs was man made. This country was a big wood with areas of marsh, we changed that and nature's succession was reset.  When modern practises stopped grazing animals in rotation on small fields, stopped hay meadows from being needed, stopped hedges from being used to enclose animals as the norm we needed to start to re-create that. It used to be economical to farm that way which is why those habitats formed. Now that it isn't economical to work and live like that, the habitat, which never was natural, now needs the time, money and effort to make it look like that but it's far from easy and the little simple messages that get put out are but pin pricks as to what is needed. It was easy to maintain that period's environment when it was part of our natural life but now it has become something extra, extra work, extra money and extra time it isn't quite so easy to tame nature and produce an idyllic habitat.

We have always fought nature but now it costs money. Maintenance is now the biggest job for wildlife conservation. Conservation is a fight against nature, the idea of letting nature do it's thing doesn't produce what we understand to be diversity and idyllic habitats when looked at on a small scale such as a few acres or a garden or even an entire county.