BS: Hedgerows and Verges

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Rain Dog
Date: 18 Aug 17 - 09:41 AM

If her father had been doing his job properly then maybe someone would have been able to make it to her place.

Silly Sisters

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Raggytash
Date: 17 Aug 17 - 03:25 PM

I was given 10lbs of plums this morning, plum Jam is now setting in the kitchen ..................

and brownie points have been accumulated as plum jam is my good ladys' favourite.

BINGO!

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 16 Aug 17 - 02:57 PM

Blackbirds do like them, don't they?

I think mum at one time had a set of 3 varieties that she bought from one of the many (Marshalls, etc.) catalogues she gets in the post... I think the later fruit were the best, bigger and more productive.

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 16 Aug 17 - 02:48 PM

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Aug 17 - 11:43 AM

I haven't grown summer raspberries, but autumn-fruiting ones are called primocanes because they fruit on this year's new wood. Just cut them right down to the ground after Christmas, the whole shebang. Mine have gone a bit mad this summer and I think the blackbirds are having a feast.

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 16 Aug 17 - 10:29 AM

Really not sure what do make of that Dave. I can't think of an example of hand but one of my own failings is that I'm quite capable of seeing one bit eg. in a paper, on one line and another elsewhere and look for the intriguing story. Things can also happen to me these days with hearing if (as is mum's habbit) someone tries to "shout" to me from another room - I'm not saying this has been one but over distance like that, things can come out as puzzling as "the cat's inside the television".

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Raggytash
Date: 16 Aug 17 - 10:20 AM

Well the song says that Hedgehogs can't be buggered.

Hedgehog Song

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 16 Aug 17 - 10:02 AM

For some reason or another I have been seeing this thread as Hedgehogs and Virgins all day.

Freudian do you think?

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 16 Aug 17 - 09:32 AM

(canes going up and the wires accross)

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 16 Aug 17 - 09:29 AM

Opps had confused myself and meant to ask about currants. What you describe sounds very similar to what hopefully we will restart next year for raspberries which mum did grow on wires. Did at one time have a nice mix of raspberries, early fruiting to the autumn ones. Have never tried blackberry but there are wild pickings.

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Aug 17 - 09:13 AM

Look for the long, straight, sappy, leafy new shoots that have no flowers or fruit on them. They're the ones that will carry next year's crop. Don't cut them off. After the picking has finished you can cut away most of the shoots that have flowered this year, then train those new shoots along wires. The advantage of this is that the berries next year will be far easier to reach. That's a counsel of perfection. You could just leave the whole lot to do its own thing!

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 16 Aug 17 - 08:35 AM

I'd missed the actual tree bit... Out of curiosity though, how big will say a blackberry bush grow? I ask as the usual, at least here, is to cut them right back. Mum was (the guy who does the hour a week does this now and is less so) quite, so it seemed to me, drastic with blackberries but it worked.

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 Aug 17 - 05:22 PM

I will be passing again soon so will do. One hard and fast rule I always stick to - If in doubt, do nowt. :-)

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Aug 17 - 05:02 PM

Neither redcurrants nor blackcurrants grow on trees, Dave. Send me a pic!

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 15 Aug 17 - 03:48 PM

I'm not sure there is a hard and fast rule Dave and others may correct me but it strikes me as being a bit late for redcurrants.

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 Aug 17 - 03:30 PM

Blackberries are not out in the lane yet but judging by the buds there is going to be a plethora of rose hips. I passed a tree full of red berries - Clumps of them that look like blackcurrants. They looked ripe and judging by the pictures I have looked at since, probably redcurrants. But seeing I am not sure I am not going to risk it!

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Raggytash
Date: 15 Aug 17 - 10:28 AM

The article reads that the kelp will be "mown" and will be sustainable, this would seem to be a similar methods used by harvesters for eons, the kelp is cut back but the root and a short amount is left to regrow.

I know there was some controversy in County Galway and the off-shore islands regarding the granting of a permit to one company to harvest seaweed at the exculsion of locals who use it for fertiliser. I will do a bit of research next month when I am back over there.

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Aug 17 - 10:07 AM

Then there's calcified seaweed, a coral-like substance that has to be dredged from the shallow sea bed. The dredging is very destructive to the sea-floor part of the marine ecosystem, but, well, it's a damn good fertiliser and you can call it organic and...and...,

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Iains
Date: 15 Aug 17 - 09:53 AM

Bit of a jump from hedges!
http://bantrybaykelpforest.com/

Not too much publicity given to this. It is a controversial subject around the bay.


http://www.southernstar.ie/news/roundup/articles/2017/06/26/4142092-we-would-not-have-invested-so-much-just-to-destroy-the-resou

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Thompson
Date: 15 Aug 17 - 08:33 AM

I'd like to grow a mulberry tree, but I'm not sure whether the roots are deep and hungry for foundations like certain other trees. Tasted the fruit from a tree in a London park recently - it was delicious.

The authorities in Ireland - both the farming advisors and the over-car-friendly advisors on streets and roads, seem determined to wipe out hedges.

There's a huge row going on here at the moment over the selling of the right to harvest seaweed to a massive foreign company; meanwhile, studies have shown that adding a tiny amount of seaweed to cattle feed stops the methane production that threatened the dairy industry (and the environment).

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Raggytash
Date: 15 Aug 17 - 07:18 AM

They are certainly ready to pick up here, very early in fact.

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Aug 17 - 07:07 AM

Brambles are not a single species. Rubus fruticosus agg. reproduces by apomixis and/or sexually and is prone to doubling up its chromosome count, so in the UK it's likely that there are upward of 400 microspecies. In my experience, fruit flavour is just as variable. If you see a likely thicket, taste a couple before you decide whether the rest are flavoursome enough to be worth collecting. It's a bit early yet and the summer has been a bit disappointing in recent weeks, just when warm sunshine is needed to fatten and sweeten up those drupelets. If you have a large amount of space, plant a variety called Himalayan Giant. You could train it along twenty or thirty feet of wire. You'll get a massive crop of fruit that are as big as a 50p and which taste better than any wild fruit. A gorgeous blend of sweetness and brambliness. When you're picking, it helps to wear armour.

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Iains
Date: 15 Aug 17 - 06:23 AM

Has anyone been blackberrying yet? I picked my first kilo an hour ago. They all seem very puny this year.

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Raggytash
Date: 14 Aug 17 - 06:55 AM

It's strange Mr Red I used to live on a very busy road choked with slow moving traffic, getting out in a morning was always difficult until I learned to edge out in front of expensive new cars.

Two reasons 1. the chances were that the brakes were in good condition and 2. the drivers didn't want their pride and joy dented.

Worked a treat !!

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Mr Red
Date: 14 Aug 17 - 06:16 AM

Flora is like fashion.

It pays little heed to human functionality.

The other day I saw a pimped-up Audi come round a roundabout (indicator, what indicator?) noticeably faster than the scores before him. A motor-caravan decided to cross the path he had not yet defined and rather than slow down in good time he preferred to sound his horn.

Because there was vegetation (bushes etc) in the roundabout, neither was fully aware of the others' existence & then intentions.

The moral - prettiness and visibility are in conflict at such locations. And drivers of expensive cars are far less likely to be considerate. (Stamford Uni did the research BTW).

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Raggytash
Date: 14 Aug 17 - 02:41 AM

Some friends I know in Ireland have put a small selection of photographs of wild flowers, taken locally, on their facebook page.

Wild Flowers, Connemara

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 13 Aug 17 - 07:43 AM

Ours is a pretty young tree. We did make a big mistake of a different type with this one. It was a very heavy cropper from day one and we failed to thin the fruit it couldn't support. It lists a bit and we can have props under some branches. Maybe one day, it will fall over – I don't know… All I do know is that while it provides us with a consistent (actually far in excess) crop (much of what we want cooked and frozen for pies, crumbles etc. throughout the year), it has a place here.

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Aug 17 - 06:55 AM

My Bramley seems to buck the trend too. Scabby old thing!

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 13 Aug 17 - 06:23 AM

I'd not heard of apples doing that but fond a little here

Our fruit trees (also plums and pears) do have good and bad years but I've not noticed a pattern that well defined. Our most consistent cropper is probably the Bramley. Our gages have more off years then on...

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Aug 17 - 08:30 PM

I've been stupid with my apple trees. I've let them go all biennial on me. There'll be a great crop this year and I'll be giving groaning bag-for-life's-full of them away to all and sundry. Next year I'll be lucky if I can sink my teeth into any at all... My Discovery apples are cropping well already and they are utterly delicious. Bloody blackbirds are scoffing my autumn-fruiting raspberries and shitting red birdshit all over my garden furniture. They'll soon move on, and I do love me blackbirds to bits...

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 12 Aug 17 - 11:15 AM

I'm not sure what else mum has tried to make on the "dilute to taste" line, Dave. Her other with long standing popularity here comes from fruit we planted rather than things that were just there. That's a blackcurrant one which seems to keep more of a "just picked" taste/or maybe smell that Ribena to me seems to loose. They are not made every year but production of this and the elderflower one are done in batches. Between those and our own apple juice we can have the bottom half of small chest freezer in the porch pretty well stocked up with soft drinks...

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 12 Aug 17 - 10:49 AM

Ooooh - You reminded me. Mrs G does make a lovely elder flower cordial. Uses it in all sorts of things including a compote of our home grown rhubarb and store bought gooseberries. The store was the butchers but we do live in an odd place. One of the daughters picked the elder flowers for us while we were out and when we came in we were convinced that one of the cats had peed somewhere. Glad that smell goes when it is boiled :-) She also tried a cordial of meadowsweet but that never lost the smell of Germolene so it did not go down too well.

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Raggytash
Date: 12 Aug 17 - 09:49 AM

Seaweed .............. a few years ago on a sojourn to Ireland I bought my good lady a seaweed bath which she used when back in the UK. She LOVED it, said it made her skin feel beautiful .......... it took me half an hour to clean the bath though !!

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 12 Aug 17 - 09:44 AM

Hm wines. My mother (actaully pretty near a teetotaller) used to make a few. One I used to particularly like (and we had a massive blanket of these that kept expanding when we were in N Wales last time) was cowslip. The "inedible" plum tree there also had fruit that could be turned into a reasonable wine.

Other drinks:

Masses of sloes here but if I pick them, it's to give them away. I love sloe gin but can do without that temptation.

One my mother makes and both parents love from pickings round the back is elderflower cordial.

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Aug 17 - 09:35 AM

I forgot to mention lamb's lettuce. It grows in lots of places round here, and I'd rather have it in salads than any tasteless shop lettuce any day. The old boy who cooked all of the superb fine-dining dishes in our Lake Como abode in June used it a lot. A few years ago I sowed wild rocket in the garden and since then it pops up as a "weed" wherever it likes and we have a year-round supply. Chives also never needs planting. There's always a clump of it somewhere.

I know you can eat hogweed, Alexanders, hedge garlic and nasturtium leaves but I find them a bit too spicy and assertive. There are seasidey things around here such as samphire (the cliff one) which I find too sharp, though the Tudor dynasty went mad for it, and that salt-marsh samphire that's always pretentiously served with fish. I find it pointlessly stringy, but whatever stirs yer loins... I've never really got into seaweeds but I've tried some sea lettuce and I found it too tough. You could get all the protein you need round here by eating the abundant mussels.

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Aug 17 - 09:00 AM

Weeds can be good. Chickweed is a very tasty addition to a salad. You can eat daisies too. Dandelions make excellent wine and don't make you pee the bed. The best wine I ever made was made from rosehips. You have to be very careful not to include any of those stiff little hairs in the finished product as they'll make you cough. Pansy and wallflower petals make a nice splash of colour on a green salad. Sorrel adds a lovely tang to a dressing but make sure it's the common sorrel, not sheep's sorrel which has a coarser flavour. Both young sorrel leaves and young nettle tops make lovely light spring soups. Ramsons leaves (wild garlic) are just as good as regular garlic. If you have spare gin you can make a superb liqueur from young beech leaves. Dahlia tubers are edible, as are fuchsia berries. Ivyleaved toadflax was once a popular salad ingredient, though I find it a bit too spicy. Scurvy grass will stop you getting scurvy but pick it at the seaside, not from motorway central reservations.

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 12 Aug 17 - 08:16 AM

:-) Try Morrisons instead (I have to say that)

I'll have a look at Mabey. SAS sounds a bit extreme for me!

Thanks

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Iains
Date: 12 Aug 17 - 08:09 AM

I have only limited experience of foraging. Richard Mabey is one source I have used and the SAS survival guide. I find Tesco far easier to negotiate, though not on a friday evening or saturday!

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 12 Aug 17 - 07:22 AM

Aye - I have seen those,Iains. It was the very plethora of them that led me to ask the question. Are there any in particular that you have used? Anyone?

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Iains
Date: 12 Aug 17 - 07:13 AM

D the G
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=foraging

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Raggytash
Date: 12 Aug 17 - 06:15 AM

The car park of the Co-op in town is surrounded by rose bushes which produce a copious amount of Rose Hips. I could probably supply the entire town with Rose Hip Syrup each year !

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 12 Aug 17 - 05:55 AM

There is a lovely short walk ( < 3 miles) from our front door which takes me through a woodland with a stream running though, across open fields and then down a very quite lane with hedgerows on both sides. I am sure there are rich pickings to be had all along but sadly I only ever pick the blackberries from the hedgerows. I must expand my knowledge! Oh - I did pick some bilberries on the moorland above Haworth last week though. There are plenty on the hills immediately above us as well. I am told the best way to harvest them is with what we used to call an 'Afro comb'

Any advice on good reference books for foraging would be appreciated.

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Iains
Date: 12 Aug 17 - 05:26 AM

Raggytash. Don't forget to forage for rose hips as well, in case of a hangover.

http://www.theotherandyhamilton.com/2012/12/11/natural-hangover-cures/

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Raggytash
Date: 12 Aug 17 - 05:19 AM

I think I'll try the Gin from Iains link !!

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: JHW
Date: 12 Aug 17 - 04:51 AM

A wonderful (sown) display of mixed wild flowers again on the roundabout just west of Sedgefield, Co.Durham. Wild flowers do though need to be managed, cut down and taken away or the ground enriches and you just get nettles.
As for drivers tearassing round country lanes I'd say that has definitely got worse. Any time I use a single track road I find oncoming drivers ignoring a pull-in they could easily use and expecting me somehow magically to levitate out of the way. I wouldn't recommend cutting back hedges to encourage them.

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Aug 17 - 07:46 PM

Our coralroot is Corallorrhiza trifida. I think the US has other species.

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Aug 17 - 06:36 PM

I like that link. Anyone who can put a romantic patina on the prosaic writings of scientists gets my vote!

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Aug 17 - 06:24 PM

The ghost orchid we have in England, and maybe Wales, is incredibly elusive. It's often gone for years without being found at all. I have a feeling that 99.9% of its life is spent happily underground and that it's not quite as rare as reputed. It's very hard to spot even when it pops its head above ground in leaf litter as it's a pallid little thing with no green parts and vestigial leaves only. It has complex relationships with a number of fungal myceliums and is best regarded as a sort of epiparasite. Raggytash's military orchid is one of the rarest UK plants with two locations only. The rarest orchid is the lady's slipper (Cypripedium calceolus) which now grows in one location only in the Yorkshire Dales. A hundred years ago it had over a hundred locations but has suffered from the depredations of collectors. A waste of time as the plant won't transplant. It's location is a badly-kept secret but we won't ever say. 😉 Another very rare oop-north orchid is the coralroot orchid. It has a location in the Dales that I would disclose only at the point of a gun. That's its southernmost outpost in Britain but it does have a couple more further north in England and a few in Scotland.

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Raggytash
Date: 11 Aug 17 - 06:01 PM

Hi Jeri, just tried Iains 11.02 link again to no avail. Thanks anyway, I'll try tomorrow on the papers own website.

---

Try it again. I fixed my fix.

Subject: RE: BS: Hedgerows and Verges
From: Jeri
Date: 11 Aug 17 - 05:51 PM

I fixed his link. It was probably long enough to confuse the blickifier.