Whether you are looking for Berkshire automated garage doors or any other style, we will be only too happy to help you in the process. Our team are helpful and friendly and happy to assist with any questions you have. They all have expert knowledge regarding garage doors, so let them help you make the process of choosing your new door easier.
For this weeks #wildflowerhour challenge we are asking you to find a member of the Brassicaceae or cabbage family. Many members of this large family such as mustard, cress, water-cress, cabbage, turnip and horse-radish are very familiar to us.
Happily the flowers of the cabbage family are easily recognisable owing to their distinctive cross-shaped arrangement.
Each flower is usually made up of four green sepals, four equally sized petals and six stamens. The stamens are arranged around a central ovary, usually the inner four are longer and the two outer stamens are shorter. An exception to this Hairy Bitter-cress, Cardamine hirsuta pictured below, is readily identifiable by having only four stamens.
As usual with #wildflowerhour you don’t have to be able to identify plants, just be able to find them.
So be brave! Go out and look for the distinctive four petalled, cross-shape flowers. If you can’t work out what they are, take a picture of the leaves and also look for fruits. As you may have heard on the latest podcast, the fruits in this family are very variable and are important in identification.
Then post your pics on Twitter, Instagram or in our Facebook group using #cabbagechallenge for #wildflowerhour on Sunday 18th March 8-9pm. Our lovely friendly wildflower hour community will then do the rest and help you identify them.
In the latest episode of the #wildflowerhour podcast, Isabel Hardman finds out about our most important network of nature reserves: roadside verges.
Mark Schofield works for the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust and waxes lyrical about the importance of these scraps of land in saving wild flowers. We also learn about the Brassicaceae, or cabbage, family, which is the topic of this week’s challenge, with some tips from expert botanist Tim Rich. You can buy his handbook on identifying this plant family here.
Thank you all so much for taking part in this week’s challenge #pavementplants. We asked you to look closely at the plants growing in the pavement cracks and you did not disappoint! Here are some highlights.
A stunning image of Erophila verna from @granthamecology
This lovely image of Sweet Violet from @StephenLoweWatson
Often overlooked a lovely image of the humble Daisy from @KateGold24
You can see the rest of your wonderful pavement finds below. Thanks for joining in!
Thank you all so much for taking part in this week’s challenge #pavementplants. Here are some of your highlights.
One of my favourite #pavementplants which always brighten up the concrete and tarmac in March – just when you need it most – these beautiful little Whitlow grass found in #Grantham this week #wildflowerhour
The best of this week’s #pavementplants: Daisies colonising the gaps in the tarmac at Plumpton village hall. Almost enough for a daisy chain! #wildflowerhour
Sweet violets by a roadside in Lewes, Sussex #pavementplants #wildflowerhour
Cochlearia danica (Danish Scurvygrass) is a common street weed in many of the towns in Pembrokeshire this year. @BSBIbotany
I’ve seen other people make natural plant supports from clippings. But not being a very handy person, I hadn’t thought of actually trying it myself.
However, I can now reveal – it is really easy. Even if you’re someone who can barely change a light bulb, then you can make natural plant supports out of birch, hazel or willow twigs.
The border in summer – I have a selection of metal supports, but it does look cluttered until all the plants are in bloom. Natural plant supports seem to ‘disappear’ more.
We recently had our silver birch tree pruned, so we had lots of wood clippings. And even if you don’t have a birch tree, there are lots of silver birch in most parts of Britain. They shed their twiggy branches regularly, so keep an eye out.
Cutting the clippings
I cut most of the clippings to approximately the length of a garden fork. Choose – or cut – small branches that have at least 6″-9″ of fairly firm wood that you can jam into the soil.
It’s not very easy to see twigs in gardens – which is why twig plant supports are so great. But if you peer at this picture, you can just see what I mean by 6″-9″ of wood, and then the bendy, twiggy bits…
The rest of the birch cutting needs to be bendy and flexible.
I cut a neat pile of silver birch clippings so I could make plant supports. When my back was turned, Mr Middlesize took them away to burn them. I got them back just in time…sense of humour failure all round.
Next steps…
Most gardeners make their plant supports in late April or early May, when the perennials have begun to spring out of the ground. However, I know where my dahlias are because I protect them over winter with a pile of mulch, marked with a stick.
Jam the sticks around the plant in a circle, wedging them firmly into the ground. Then bend some of the twigs over the top of the plant, weaving them together.
The starting position – around 6 silver birch clippings wedged into the soil in a circle around the plant.
Then gently twist, poke and ease the twiggy ends around each other, fixing each branch by weaving it into the next one (or the opposite one when you’re going over the top).
Wind, bend, ease, tease…until all the tendrils are wrapped around each other, locking it all into place.
Carry on until you have a birch twig cage over where your plant will be.
I added some extra twigs lower down as my first plant support cage looked a bit high. Plant supports should be about three quarters of the eventual height of the plant.
It’s quick, easy and free…
What more can I say? Except that you can see more about how it’s done in this video:
These were literally the first natural plant supports I’d ever made. They’re not perfect, but they’ll do the job of supporting the plants, and I’ll get better at it.
My first ever home-made natural plant support – and it only took about 20 minutes to do.
I’ve always envied the well supported borders of professional gardens. Now I’m cautiously hopeful that there will be fewer flattened blooms in the Middlesized Garden next summer.
I’ll report back, so do subscribe (enter your email address in the box top right). We publish every Sunday morning.
After a slight delay, we’re so pleased to have our March #herbologyhunt spotter sheets live!
You can download the sheet for free here, or if you want your child to join the Wild Flower Society as a #HerbologyHunt member, then they’ll get printed copies of the spotter sheets, along with a free hand lens. More details on how to join here.
Click on the image below to download the spotter sheet.
One of the reasons for the delay is that our team of volunteers working on #herbologyhunt is still very small, and a holiday or an illness means everything gets thrown up in the air. We would really love some more help: if you think you might be able to give a couple of hours here and there, please get in touch.
from #wildflowerhour http://www.wildflowerhour.co.uk/blog/2018/03/09/march-spotter-sheets/
