On A Wet Day

One of the many questions the gardeners get asked at this time of year is 'What do you do when it is raining?' Well, apart from tidying our tea shed and tool sheds, cleaning our tools and maintaining our machinery, there is also washing the flower pots.
Today we were joined by two students, Alex and Charlotte, who helped us wash our pots. Using hot water and Fairy Liquid, the pots and seed trays are now clean and ready for us to use next month, when we start to sow the many hundreds of seeds we have ordered for our summer bedding display.

Brick by Brick

Back on the 19th January, blog entry 'We Did Well Today', I wrote about the start of a new Winter border. The border has now been dug over and leaf mould added to improve the structure of the soil, the next step is to edge the border with square stone setts.

Graham mixes the sand and cement whilst Kieron and Simon start to lay the stones. Over the next few days, providing the rain and snow hold off, the border will be edged ready for the next step of planting.

Tidying The Bottom Of The Provost's

Although this area is out of sight from visitors and students of Worcester College it still needs to be kept tidy. The area is at the bottom of the provost's garden, behind a number of gates, adjacent to the lake. The team, armed with, what seemed like, every tool from the tool sheds, spent the day tidying the area removing ivy from the trees, leaves from the path, cutting back over hanging branches and giving the whole area a spring clean. Over the next few months the Daffodils will bloom next to the path followed by the Blue Bells in May.

A Flash of Blue

For those of you who are working, visiting or studying at Worcester College, you may wish to take a walk towards the wooden bridge over the lake by the tree fern glade. If you are lucky, out of the corner of your eye, you may see a flash of blue just above the water or a spot of cinnamon sitting in a low hanging tree branch. If you are lucky enough to see this, then you will have seen the Kingfisher which has been seen on numerous occasions by the gardening team. Best of luck, it's well worth it.

First Cut

Josh has been staring longingly at his turf hidden below all the recent snow fall, but now it has all melted they have reunited. Today is the day for its first cut and the beginning of this years partnership between Josh, his mower, Dennis and the front quadrangle lawn. The reason for this early cut is that there is already a need to spray the lawn with a fungicide to prevent turf diseases such as Fusarium and Red Thread. The fungicide, Chipco Green, is best applied after cutting.

Turf

In 2008 the gardening team returfed the banks in the main quadrangle with Crested Hairgrass turf. This turf is made up of 100% Barkoel Crested Hairgrass, Koeleria macrantha, which poduces an extremely dense turf with a very slow growth rate. Unfortunately, the turf have been contaminated with some meadow grass, which grows at a faster rate, thus creating patches of lush, long grass amongst the slow growing dense grass. In order to repair this, we are attempting to grow our own Crested Hairgrass turf so we can replace all the odd looking patches of meadow grass.

First the trays are filled with a mix of sandy loam and compost, then the mix is levelled to make a smooth flat surface for the Barkoel Crested Hairgrass seed to be sown on.

After the seed has been sown the compost is seived over the top and watered. We now have eight large trays waiting for the seed to germinate and over the next few months we will have created new turf for us to use in the banks.

Not Such a Tangled Mess

For those of you who have been regularly following our blog, you may remember the entry "A Tangled Mess" from the 10th March 2009 in which I spoke about the pruning of a very challenging Wisteria. Well, earlier than last year, that Wisteria is in need of it's annual hair cut, this time by Joe and myself. Instead of taking all day it only took 2 hours, making it not such a tangled mess. Over the next six weeks the gardening team will, amongst other things, prune all the Wisteria, Campsis, climbing and shrub roses. Secatuers are sharp and ready to go.