Wet weather boosts grass growth
Ducks resting on barley straw sausage.
I was so sure I published this last Friday, sorry guys!
The grass has been slow to grow so far this year, which means less frequent mowing but bare path edges. The rain over the weekend and damp conditions this week sees the grass grow noticeably. We’ve been trying to keep up with mowing, at the same time as continuing the weeding in the landscape after strimming last week. We are also preparing for the Picnic and Fireworks night on Saturday. Penny and Oli are in the bottom walled garden thinning fruit including apples, pears and pruning stone fruit (plums, nectarines and peaches). The busy schedule has postponed other tasks such as adding more barley straw to the lake. Nigel, Martin from the visitor services team and I deployed two straw sausages the other week, but I need a total of 600kg of straw to keep such a large lake from going green. The lake will benefit greatly from the recent rain, both cooling the water and adding oxygen to the surface slowing the rate of algae growth.
When Penny, Toby, Jo and I were out weeding yesterday Penny found a flax flower (Linum perenne) in the landscape. I know flax as a plant with many uses and traditionally grown widely in Sweden. Penny Snowden said northern Ireland was the same when she lived there, flax is used for everything.
Bright blue Linum perenne. © rbge
The seed can be used unprocessed to enrich food like porridge, bread and muesli, or processed into linseed oil. Some seed is kept and stored for the next crop to be sown. The stems are strong and fibrous and used with hemp to produce linoleum (lino) or material (linen). And I’ve just remembered we used to feed horses some pre-soaked linseeds for extra fibre back in Sweden.
Whilst we wait for the rain to clear there is much indoor activity going on. Dormouse boxes are being assembled, chainsaws cleaned and sharpened, cut bamboo is being prepared for use and Penny and I are doing admin. I also have good news about our progress in digital media. Sarah has been collecting material, including photos and co-ordinates of 90 plants around the garden that will be used in an iPhone app. More info to come!
And I fogot to mention that the iron bridge is going to be repaired soon; pedestrians can pass as usual. The garden team are going to help in the garden at Portland House next Wednesday. And the finishing touches have been made to the middle walled garden which is now open for perusal. I’m doing a slide show of path work next week.
Thanks folks, Em.
