full

full
Published on:

13th May 2023

[Roving Episode] It was a day in spring

Malus × domestica and Taraxacum officinale (apple and dandelion) take to May's springy stage in this special on location recording that starts deep in the beach woods and bursts into the orchard.

https://ko-fi.com/bendark

Episode overview:

[00:00:16] Ben talks winter and spring weather and how it affects the growth of plants like apples and bird cherries, and why he decided to record the episode in the woods rather than at his desk. The ground is covered in beach kernels and dry leaves, making a crunching noise when stepped on.

[00:02:48] The winter aconites are blooming staggered, possibly for an advantage. The area will soon be deserted of pollinators, but was once covered in flowers. The author wishes they could experience the beauty forever. They walk past an understory U tree.

[00:05:12] Discussion of spring in the UK and Denmark, including the appearance of dandelions and their potential use in producing rubber for car tires. We also examines the anatomy and function of dandelions, including their papas and role in seed dispersal.

[00:13:59] Blowing dandelion seeds not all bad. Dandelions hard to grow, try not cutting lawn too short. Seed-eating beetles help reduce dandelions. Leave lawn longer for fewer dandelions.

[00:16:20] Apple blossom time is perfect when buds are half open and half closed. The king bud produces the best fruit. Apples need cold for proper formation of flowers and lack of cold causes poor pollination.

[00:24:01] Observations of diverse species in grassy understory with small apples on dwarfing stock, well-pruned for fruit. Seeing a variety of heritage apple trees with grafted and non-grafted roots. Also, discussion of a recent planting project and a classic rose ACA flowering.

[00:30:50] Bee landed in hair, hair wild, no time for vines, thanking supporters.


Transcript
Speaker:

It's a terrible garden for weeds, this is. You know, sir, I am aware

Speaker:

of that tree. They used to keep a boy here in the old days.

Speaker:

Nothing to do all day but pull up weeds.

Speaker:

Hello and welcome to Dear Gardener with

Speaker:

me, Ben Dark. You join me sitting on a tree stump

Speaker:

in the woods, the best sort of place to be on a day like this.

Speaker:

It's hot out there a bright, bright blue sky.

Speaker:

We have no sign of any cloud, so the woods feel

Speaker:

like refuge for the first time this year,

Speaker:

just about opening the beach leaves, which means that the

Speaker:

apples that I'm going to go and see soon will

Speaker:

certainly be out. They're pretty closely tied, I think.

Speaker:

It's all due down to the temperature in the month before.

Speaker:

So it doesn't really matter how cold January is or December is.

Speaker:

What matters is how cold the end of March and April is. That's what

Speaker:

tells us when the beach is going to open, when the apple is going to

Speaker:

open, when the bird cherry opens. Those three are

Speaker:

good indicators all at the same time.

Speaker:

Anyway, I'm here because I had sat down at

Speaker:

my desk to record an episode with some

Speaker:

talk about teasing out napita

Speaker:

and watering pots. And then I looked outside and

Speaker:

it was all so beautiful and

Speaker:

so beckoning, so I thought, well, why not take the mobile

Speaker:

equipment and see what's going on

Speaker:

in the woods and beyond? So here I am. There's going to

Speaker:

be a bit of crunching as I stand up. We had a mast year last

Speaker:

year, huge production of beach kernels and

Speaker:

they are still flapping about

Speaker:

on the floor. Well, not really flapping about, they're spiky little things,

Speaker:

they make a good noise underfoot and I'll be walking on those.

Speaker:

And there's a lot of dry leaves now. A couple of days are dry

Speaker:

and what had seemed a flat centimeter

Speaker:

thick mat has fluffed up into

Speaker:

last year's old leaves, so they'll be crunching about in a second.

Speaker:

What about weed killer for the dandelion?

Speaker:

Would you like me to get some, sir? No, I prefer my own.

Speaker:

I've got the materials. I wouldn't put it down. This dry weather,

Speaker:

sir, tends to lie around, needs to soak in, you see.

Speaker:

Not the way I use it, Jay. Not the way I

Speaker:

use it.

Speaker:

The last winter aconite. Last winter

Speaker:

aconite just poking out there. They seem to have a slightly

Speaker:

staggered flowering. I don't know if it's a particular

Speaker:

population, flowers later, or if

Speaker:

these ones are going for a second flush. Suppose I could go and have a

Speaker:

little look.

Speaker:

I think it's probably their first flowering. They just gone for

Speaker:

a little bit, little bit of a later thing. Probably gives them some sort of

Speaker:

advantage to have a population that doesn't flower all at once.

Speaker:

It's a beautiful, beautiful, very long

Speaker:

antennaed moth or a beetle disappeared

Speaker:

into the woods and litter. Anyway, soon this place

Speaker:

will all be bare and deserted. There's only a few litter pollinators remaining.

Speaker:

Most of them have moved away into the

Speaker:

open fields and gardens. But a month and a half ago, this really

Speaker:

was where it was at in

Speaker:

terms of flowering carpets of

Speaker:

an enemies everywhere. It was one of those moments.

Speaker:

I think it was two weeks ago, I was out in a similar woodland,

Speaker:

looking at the most beautiful galaxy of

Speaker:

anemones from a bud. And it was a moment when

Speaker:

you wish I wish I knew less about plants. I wish I was

Speaker:

seeing this for the very, very first time and could

Speaker:

somehow convince myself that it would go on forever, that it

Speaker:

wouldn't be over in just ten days,

Speaker:

fading away for another year. That's why everyone

Speaker:

gets into mindfulness, isn't it? To make these moments

Speaker:

not extendable. Enjoyable. Enjoyable as we experience

Speaker:

them. There's a bit of crunching here as I make my

Speaker:

way out past a brilliant

Speaker:

understory U for you, who has never seen

Speaker:

the toporous trimmers.

Speaker:

Driving an old file into the ground. Drop one of the tiny packets

Speaker:

into each aperture. Do this in the case of each dandelion,

Speaker:

taking a separate dose to each.

Speaker:

And here we reach the woodland edge with some little

Speaker:

bits of grass.

Speaker:

And the first dandelion.

Speaker:

This is definitely dandelion week.

Speaker:

I was back in the UK a little bit

Speaker:

last week. Lovely living between two

Speaker:

countries like this,

Speaker:

because you experience spring

Speaker:

twice, almost. And if there's something you really, really enjoyed in

Speaker:

a bit of UK spring, you can hot foot it over to

Speaker:

Denmark, where starts are pretty similar,

Speaker:

and you can experience it again two weeks later. So that's

Speaker:

a tip for anyone that really

Speaker:

enjoyed a bit of this spring or really like something they're seeing now.

Speaker:

Book yourself. Train journey, car journey,

Speaker:

not a flight, because you'll ruin my podcast and come out

Speaker:

here and see it again. I suppose you do get

Speaker:

people who behave almost like the

Speaker:

groupies who follow a band around the country and go to every

Speaker:

single one of their shows. You could slowly walk

Speaker:

north with the wooden enemies singularly came out

Speaker:

at wooden enemy pace.

Speaker:

Anyway, coming around the corner now, past these rotted

Speaker:

old stumps, gnarled old trees.

Speaker:

Yes, with the UK. The UK was wet and warm.

Speaker:

We had a couple of days of absolutely torrential rain

Speaker:

and then those blissful evenings where

Speaker:

you get dry under dove

Speaker:

gray sky after a whole day of wet and everything is

Speaker:

glistening and suddenly the worhub is 200%

Speaker:

more alive. Every single hedgerow is

Speaker:

covered in those tiny glass like new

Speaker:

little snails. And little slugs,

Speaker:

so sweet little slugs that you could make a

Speaker:

Disney cartoon out of. They look so charming.

Speaker:

Lots of those eating the garlic mustard.

Speaker:

And in the UK, the main dandelion crop,

Speaker:

the main dandelion flush, had gone to seedhead,

Speaker:

which was a delight for my son, who is a

Speaker:

big dandelion puffing fan puffing.

Speaker:

It incredibly ostentatiously. Gets down to dandelion

Speaker:

level, squatting on his haunches and does that big

Speaker:

toddler blowing out a candle puff that incredibly

Speaker:

inefficient. All noise

Speaker:

and rasp and no actual air

Speaker:

until the seeds go away. So he really

Speaker:

enjoyed that. But here we have our dandelions out

Speaker:

and yellow.

Speaker:

They're really good flowers. I know that I'm not alone in

Speaker:

saying that the RHS this year is doing a big hero plant

Speaker:

campaign. These things are no longer weeds, they are

Speaker:

hero plants, and we should all be appreciating them

Speaker:

in our lawns. And we should. We really should.

Speaker:

I know there's lots of professional gardeners

Speaker:

who listen to this podcast, who tend to nowadays

Speaker:

be in the vanguard of the

Speaker:

embracing weeds and getting rid of all

Speaker:

of those nasty chemicals. Moving didn't used to be so, but now they are,

Speaker:

and more often than not, them trying to convince their clients to go

Speaker:

weed killer free. They can listen to this section of the podcast where I

Speaker:

just pick up a little dandelion and pluck it and marvel

Speaker:

at how amazing it is. I've got a little yellow one in my hand now,

Speaker:

full of ants. I wonder what the ants are doing.

Speaker:

I doubt they're harvesting the latex. You can

Speaker:

make rubber from dandelions,

Speaker:

not from our native dandelion, not from the Taraxicum

Speaker:

aficionale, but from one of its

Speaker:

Kyrgyzstani relatives. I think you're able to

Speaker:

harvest that white SAP that just came out when I plugged that there

Speaker:

and refine it in just the same way you do the

Speaker:

rubber tree. It's the same compound

Speaker:

at latex. Plants tend to use

Speaker:

the same compounds. When a plant is producing

Speaker:

anthrocyanins, it is not reinventing the wheel each time.

Speaker:

It's using the same sort of stuff. And this is the

Speaker:

right stuff to make tires out of. You could drive your car

Speaker:

on dandelion tires one day.

Speaker:

They know what those little creatures were doing. There's lots of

Speaker:

life that lives inside a dandelion flower

Speaker:

because it's such a rich

Speaker:

bit of nutrient there when

Speaker:

you're pumping the energy up to produce

Speaker:

those petals. But particularly when the fertilizers

Speaker:

have come and you

Speaker:

have this race to develop seeds and get them

Speaker:

away quickly before all of the little

Speaker:

field grubs and beaters and things can get in there and lay

Speaker:

little white worms at the bottom and start devouring them. Or you

Speaker:

sometimes tear open a dandelion and

Speaker:

you can see little black bits at the bottom. And that's where a

Speaker:

little weevil has been in there eating

Speaker:

and fallen out and pupating.

Speaker:

I'm just opening another one up now. This is a dandelion

Speaker:

that has been pollinated. The flowers are quite interesting.

Speaker:

It's asterisfier, so it's all sort of

Speaker:

disc and ray florets dandelion. The vast majority of them are

Speaker:

ray florets, those fused petals

Speaker:

in a tube that go out to create a great big pom pom.

Speaker:

Looking at now, you can see the anthers

Speaker:

rising in between the maturing from the

Speaker:

outside and then pushing them on later. Anyway,

Speaker:

the one that's pollinated is at the stage where it's developing

Speaker:

the great pappas, the umbrella

Speaker:

thing on the top, that will carry them away. I was reading

Speaker:

once the role of the pappas,

Speaker:

the papas. It's got a couple

Speaker:

of things that it obviously carries. It it obviously is the parachute,

Speaker:

but it's also a sort of protection.

Speaker:

So if you are a snuffily sort

Speaker:

of creature who's wandering around looking for a snack, a little

Speaker:

ball of seeds presented to you on the long dandelions

Speaker:

stem would be very tempting indeed. But you don't

Speaker:

really want a mouthful of furry pappas

Speaker:

on there. And the third one,

Speaker:

they are incredibly good wicks,

Speaker:

so they take up ambient moisture and this doesn't

Speaker:

help them, particularly in flying, but what it does help is when they

Speaker:

land on the ground, the papas

Speaker:

can turn sideways and sort of suck moisture

Speaker:

up to the seed from the air,

Speaker:

which really helps that initial germination bit.

Speaker:

It's a marvel of a marvel of

Speaker:

evolution, really. The papas, the parachute, is dead cells.

Speaker:

It is an equivalent of our hair and things,

Speaker:

but they can open

Speaker:

and close, draw themselves in and open up again and

Speaker:

close up again, depending on whether it's a nice day for

Speaker:

flying. That all depends on that little pad

Speaker:

at the bottom, that little apical thing.

Speaker:

It's.

Speaker:

Hello, Martin. Hello. Martin armstrong

Speaker:

here. Look, I'm sorry about all this kerfuffle about the Velanoeth estate.

Speaker:

Why, why don't you pop over to Mayfield for

Speaker:

tea? We can chat about the whole thing informally and I'll

Speaker:

show you around the garden. I'm rather proud of it, actually.

Speaker:

When my son was doing all the blowing, we got all sorts of people saying,

Speaker:

oh, he's not going to be very popular, the dandelion seeds

Speaker:

flying off in the area, but they would have all come off anyway. And he

Speaker:

probably actually did them a favor because the way

Speaker:

he had to huff at them probably means they weren't

Speaker:

mature seeds he was sending out anyway. So he's probably

Speaker:

done some sterilization efforts for

Speaker:

those of the world who hate dandelions in their lawn.

Speaker:

If you do hate dandelions, if you do hate dandelions in your lawn,

Speaker:

my advice would be not to cut it. So, sure,

Speaker:

dandelion seedlings, well, their germination

Speaker:

rate is tiny and generally what happens is a lot

Speaker:

of them get eaten by seed eating beetles. There's a whole,

Speaker:

whole host of generative seed

Speaker:

eating species, but there's a particular one,

Speaker:

I can't remember what it is. It's amos, something like that.

Speaker:

Amethyst. The sun beetles.

Speaker:

Amora. Amora might be the sun

Speaker:

beetles, and some of them specialize in just

Speaker:

eating dandelion seeds.

Speaker:

So a couple of matchbox full of those and

Speaker:

then just don't cut your lawn so short because they're tap root species.

Speaker:

The dandelion wants to develop a really big root

Speaker:

system and that's what it really focuses on first so they're very vulnerable

Speaker:

to getting outgrown by surrounding

Speaker:

grasses, even by surrounding clothes in that very,

Speaker:

very early stage. So leave it a little bit longer and you have

Speaker:

far fewer.

Speaker:

As I was saying, my dear Martin, all would be fine if it wasn't for

Speaker:

these deuced weeds. Yes, measure about

Speaker:

a martyr to weeds. Now, my gardener was saying it's because we

Speaker:

are surrounded by fields here. My clients are adamant.

Speaker:

I see the majors left the tea thing. Sit you down. Sit you down.

Speaker:

One lump or two, please. I'm afraid I am a little and

Speaker:

you must have one of these buttered stones. Excuse my

Speaker:

fingers.

Speaker:

We're in an orchard right now. You probably heard the Gate

Speaker:

Creek open just walking up to

Speaker:

one of the apples here. It's perfect. Perfect apple

Speaker:

blossom time. You don't want to catch an apple blossom tree too late because

Speaker:

you lose the pink. The pink in an apple is concentrated on

Speaker:

the backside of the petal and strongest

Speaker:

when they are tightly, tightly furled. And you get a suggestion

Speaker:

of pink in the veining and a blush on

Speaker:

the back later on, but you see far less of it. So you

Speaker:

want to find a tree like the one I'm looking at now that has half

Speaker:

buds open and half buds closed. They're funny

Speaker:

little things, these apertures.

Speaker:

This one, the king bud, is just over. So I don't know if you've ever

Speaker:

looked at your aperture. Go and go and look at them. You'll find that

Speaker:

generally they are all clusters

Speaker:

of five or sometimes six flowers,

Speaker:

sometimes seven as well on each tip

Speaker:

bearing or spur bearing bit. And there'll be one bud,

Speaker:

the king bud, that opens before the others.

Speaker:

And that's the bud that apparently produces

Speaker:

the best fruit. It opens first, it'll be open on its own for a few

Speaker:

days and then these lateral buds start doing their business.

Speaker:

So if you are there for a day where you have the king buds open

Speaker:

and maybe one lateral bud and three lateral

Speaker:

buds still to come, one in pink tight furl, one in

Speaker:

just opening and the other in

Speaker:

almost ready to if you squeezed it,

Speaker:

it would be open stage. That's the best time, I think, to look at apple

Speaker:

trees. They are my favorite

Speaker:

blossom tree, I think. I don't like them.

Speaker:

Too heavy with blossom. You know, when you see a really heavily

Speaker:

blossomed ornamental crab apple species

Speaker:

and you can't see through it, I think that loses a little bit of the

Speaker:

magic and romance. You want to have a little bit of a

Speaker:

little bit of gap and green behind. The green also

Speaker:

helps because they do flower with the new leaves.

Speaker:

I think they work really well together. That pink and white and green and that

Speaker:

special, that special gray green,

Speaker:

that special velvet green that covers

Speaker:

the calyx and the flower stalk.

Speaker:

It's something that you probably don't even notice when you

Speaker:

see an apple tree. But I think it does. I think that tone, that gray

Speaker:

green is such a good offsetter,

Speaker:

as anyone who has painted their door in

Speaker:

that color recently will no doubt know.

Speaker:

It almost tends towards powdery mildew color.

Speaker:

I suppose that's beautiful in a way as well.

Speaker:

Anyway, yes, those things that block Prunes Canzan, which I

Speaker:

was talking about last week, is a key example of that, that completely block

Speaker:

the sky are lovely, but they haven't got the joy

Speaker:

of the blue or the gray or whatever

Speaker:

else is going on in the environment behind them. I've been

Speaker:

reading a lot of Priest recently,

Speaker:

as I like to do, and I'm

Speaker:

a great proust advocate. And don't worry about being

Speaker:

regarded as pretentious because you'll end up enjoying it and you can't be pretentious

Speaker:

if you actually do enjoy it. I'm reading

Speaker:

Sodom and Gamora or The Cities of the Plain, which had his fourth

Speaker:

book in that Remembrances of

Speaker:

Things Past series. And there's a wonderful bit

Speaker:

just after the period of

Speaker:

horrible self indulgent mourning for

Speaker:

his grandmother when

Speaker:

he realizes how horrible he was all

Speaker:

the time and he snapped out of it, the narrator by the

Speaker:

apple trees in blossom and

Speaker:

the sight of the blue sky between them. There's a great passage

Speaker:

and he's talking about seeing them with this blue behind it

Speaker:

as if they had been painted by the best sort of amateur painter.

Speaker:

And then suddenly the sky turns and it grays and turns

Speaker:

to slashing rain and it's after these

Speaker:

two solid pages of proper bruce and

Speaker:

text where you don't get a paragraph break, you suddenly get

Speaker:

a little semicolon. It was a day in

Speaker:

spring. I think about that a lot this spring. It was a day

Speaker:

in spring when I'm missing my wooden enemies

Speaker:

and mourning that they're gone for another year. It was a

Speaker:

day in the spring. Anyway, those are the apples.

Speaker:

Those are my thoughts on them. They're good plants for Denmark. They do

Speaker:

well here, the apples. Apples need cold.

Speaker:

It's essential to their flowering

Speaker:

and producing. They start all the flower buds,

Speaker:

flowers and plants and trees, they start working well in advance of what we

Speaker:

think. All of these buds that I'm looking at now and getting such

Speaker:

great pleasure from probably started developing around harvest

Speaker:

time last year. But they

Speaker:

kind of develop as just do anything.

Speaker:

Like, here's a bud, we'll decide what to do with it later. And then

Speaker:

it's the temperatures which trigger the chemical symbols and the hormonal

Speaker:

symbols that let's put this one into a branch, let's put

Speaker:

this one into a flower. And not having cold winters, messes that

Speaker:

all up. And also messes up the

Speaker:

late winter, early spring, messes up the

Speaker:

actual formation of the individual flowers. Just letting these

Speaker:

bunch of Hollywood makers go off to wherever they're

Speaker:

going. Messes up the formation of

Speaker:

the flowers. So the late January,

Speaker:

February, March time is when all of those cells are

Speaker:

differentiating themselves inside the buds I'm looking at now,

Speaker:

when they say I'll be an ovary, you be a pistol,

Speaker:

you be an anthro and you be a bit of pollen. And it's pollen

Speaker:

is always the last one to come. So if you don't get any cold

Speaker:

in late spring, you get plants without pestiles and without pollen,

Speaker:

which are useless for producing any apples.

Speaker:

So next time, if you find yourself cursing, as I

Speaker:

frequently did in this very, very long

Speaker:

lingering winter, you find yourself cursing that.

Speaker:

Think of the apples, think of the cider,

Speaker:

think of the blossom that you will see in the spring.

Speaker:

It's all going to be worth it.

Speaker:

My father in law is a chemist and he had some of them analyzed.

Speaker:

If you look here, you'll see a small hole has been punched in

Speaker:

the bottom of some of them and then covered over. Yes, I see. And these

Speaker:

ones contained arsenic. Yes. Well, it's a ticklish business,

Speaker:

gentleman. I'll see what I can do.

Speaker:

I'll need the urine sample and these chocolates for analysis by

Speaker:

our people. In the meantime, Mr martin don't

Speaker:

accept any more tea invitations from the Major. That's just the trouble.

Speaker:

He keeps on inviting. Mr Martin, whatever you do, don't go.

Speaker:

Very nice. There's lots of understory

Speaker:

things. You really can see the difference that leaving grass

Speaker:

makes. The mowing here is obviously

Speaker:

done by machine. You can see that because they have quite

Speaker:

large turning circle around the tree where

Speaker:

they can't get close enough. If you had a pedestrian mower, you'd be able to

Speaker:

get closer and they haven't left it long deliberately,

Speaker:

but they're not able to reach under each tree. And the

Speaker:

diversity of species under the trees is fantastic.

Speaker:

I guess partially it's because these are small apples on

Speaker:

dwarfing stock, well pruned for fruit, which means well pruned

Speaker:

to get light through, which means they're never casting a dense shade, but they

Speaker:

are able to provide a little bit of shelter

Speaker:

and protection. They're not baking like

Speaker:

you get in a large flat lawn. Under this one,

Speaker:

we've got little speed wells looking absolutely gorgeous

Speaker:

there. Lovely little plant,

Speaker:

just two anthers. And then

Speaker:

you've got great collection of daisies. You've got

Speaker:

the fading remnants of something ornamental,

Speaker:

something from a lily family.

Speaker:

And you've got celendine over

Speaker:

here. We've got a dock. Over here.

Speaker:

We've got cancer mum growing underneath

Speaker:

this one, which is very exciting to see this

Speaker:

cardamom protensus, which is the cuckoo

Speaker:

flower. Now this seems right, seeing this on

Speaker:

a sunny day. It always seems to me to be

Speaker:

a plant that you should be seeing in the wet.

Speaker:

Apparently it strikes very easily

Speaker:

from leaf cuttings. Watching a video, I can't

Speaker:

remember who put it on the internet of how to strike that from

Speaker:

leaf cuttings. It's quite good. Pink is a bit pinker than

Speaker:

the so it's not pinker. It's a bit more mauve

Speaker:

than the apple blossom above. Got a bit more of that

Speaker:

brassica Ethernet. It's got a classic brassica

Speaker:

shaped the flower very cruciform.

Speaker:

Anyway, in terms of my gardening, this has

Speaker:

been a fairly shy old week with

Speaker:

a trip back to the UK and a lot of looking after.

Speaker:

The young boy, I haven't done so much. I did do some

Speaker:

planting with him at his nursery on Grandparents

Speaker:

Day. I pretended to be the youngest grandparent there because he doesn't have

Speaker:

grandparents in this country. Grandparents Day is a big thing going

Speaker:

and plant plants. We put in some of my seedlings,

Speaker:

which I've grown myself, which is pleasant, and some of

Speaker:

that supermarket salvia, and hopefully

Speaker:

there'll be the best plants there, beat all the other grandparents

Speaker:

and I can be the youngest and the best garden out of all

Speaker:

the grandparents. That would be very satisfying. Now, this is a proper tree,

Speaker:

I think, that here they're growing

Speaker:

a huge variety of apples and they're almost doing it as

Speaker:

a demonstration of different heritage varieties.

Speaker:

But they're all grafts, all grafted onto

Speaker:

extremely dwarfing root stock, so they never get particularly

Speaker:

big. And all grafted at the same height,

Speaker:

at sort of well above

Speaker:

hip height, between sort of hip and nipple height,

Speaker:

they branch out. And so you don't get the wonderful forms that apples grown

Speaker:

on their own root stock do, nor the wonderful size.

Speaker:

And here we see an ancient for apple trips which

Speaker:

aren't particularly long lived species, an ancient apple that is obviously on its

Speaker:

own rootstock. So branches, low branches at

Speaker:

knee height and splits off into three

Speaker:

directions, twisting each one like a leg,

Speaker:

like the symbol for the Isle of man.

Speaker:

And it's glorious to see and it's big and it

Speaker:

looks noble as a tree.

Speaker:

I was reading that even extremely vigorous

Speaker:

root stock will never grow a bigger plant than a plant on its own

Speaker:

root stock, as it were.

Speaker:

This one, I think, is definitely I can't see any sign of historic

Speaker:

grafting, so it's on its own root stock. And there's a little egg here.

Speaker:

Can't see any nest up there. Maybe someone robbed that

Speaker:

from a nest deeper in the forest and put it there.

Speaker:

There's a great deal of bees looking up

Speaker:

into the canopy of this tree. You can see some bumblebees and some honeybees fluffing

Speaker:

around in there. Apple trees have a good

Speaker:

combination. A classic. This is such a classic flower.

Speaker:

Classic. I'll do a bit of looking pretty with pink and white and I'll do

Speaker:

a bit of smelling nice with a few

Speaker:

benzene compounds in linear smelling it now actually,

Speaker:

these are the ones I can't smell. Maybe that's maybe

Speaker:

I've been by damaged by the various

Speaker:

illnesses that have swept through the global population.

Speaker:

But you can here we go. This one's just got king Bud.

Speaker:

Just open this one king. But yes, there we go. And that's that sort of

Speaker:

cleany, fresh heat, benzoid alcohol kind of

Speaker:

fragrance. So the bees are going for that and they're going for the looks.

Speaker:

And it's just a good bit of classic rose

Speaker:

ACA flowering. I love to see it.

Speaker:

Anyway, probably time to head back to my

Speaker:

bicycle now. I got to get back to the nursery and

Speaker:

pick up the boy. I might take a bottle of water with me

Speaker:

and water my plant, because I bet

Speaker:

none of the other grandparents would do that. Bet they'll all forget.

Speaker:

Then. I'm guaranteed to win.

Speaker:

Just going to pass this little hoppy blackbird out

Speaker:

onto the gravel path and down through an avenue

Speaker:

of malice. Proper ornamental

Speaker:

crab apple here, doing exactly what I said it shouldn't.

Speaker:

Creating a dense wall of blossom.

Speaker:

Yes, come across and have a cup of tea. I've got some cakes

Speaker:

and things in. Kettles boiling. What about it?

Speaker:

I don't know if you heard that bee landed in my hair.

Speaker:

My hair looking quite wild at the moment. Maybe it thought that it was

Speaker:

a good place to find a hole to nest

Speaker:

in. Maybe some of the curls looked

Speaker:

like old wounds on a tree trunk.

Speaker:

Anyway, I had a little buzz around in my hair and it was gone.

Speaker:

Now I'm

Speaker:

not going to go. I'm not going to go down there. I don't have time

Speaker:

to go and look at the vines. We'll have to do it another time.

Speaker:

Anyway, thank you very much for joining me on this little walk

Speaker:

through the woods and out into

Speaker:

the orchard. Before I go, I must say a

Speaker:

very quick thank you to Martha, who supported the podcast on

Speaker:

COFI after last week's episode. It really does

Speaker:

help me to do this and to not have to

Speaker:

put Adverts through the middle of it and all that sort of

Speaker:

stuff. So thank you very much to you and thank you

Speaker:

to everyone else for listening to this.

Speaker:

See you again very soon. Thank you and bye bye.

Speaker:

Times are getting tough and the folks are cutting down. They even decide

Speaker:

to do their own gardening. They're all gardening.

Speaker:

Take my advice and knock off for a while. The Happiness Boys are on

Speaker:

a rampage. Fred has helped

Show artwork for Dear Gardener

About the Podcast

Dear Gardener
Gardening walks and green thoughts from award winning writer Ben Dark and guests.

About your host

Profile picture for Ben  Dark

Ben Dark