Monthly Archives: June 2008

A Recent Order for Hedging Plants

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You recently sent me an order of 100 conservation mix hedging plants and I thought I would drop you a line now that I have finished planting my hedge.

From the first contact with your company  I had good information, good service and excellent value.  A request to get the plants to me before the weekend so that I could get planting quickly was met with a very professional response – the plants arrived on Thursday, two days after the order.  On opening and preparing for planting I found wonderfully healthy and well sized hedge plants which filled me with confidence that after spending the day laying them in the plants would be robust enough to flourish quickly.  And all this for £50 – incredible value!

If anyone I know is thinking about planting a hedge I shall recommend your company immediately.  I am looking forward to a let up in the chill weather to watch my hedge begin to break out into leaf and to thicken.

Thanks once again.

ZY

Feb 2008

(name reduced to capitals as it is sufficiently unusual to be obvious on a web search and I would hate a happy customer to be inundated with spam – Ed. PPS – that is why this post looks like it came from me)

June Jobs

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There are a number of (relatively) early flowering trees and shrubs that prefer to be pruned immediately ofter planting as it gives them more time to produce new wood on which they will flower next year.  The list includes Deutzia, Kolkwitzia and Philadelphus.

Trim/clip back Privet, Pyracantha and the hedging Viburnums (such as V. tinus Eve Price).

Please don’t forget to water the trees and hedges you planted over the winter and into the spring – it really makes a difference.

You should also keep both newly planted trees and hedging clear of weeds.

And keep an eye out for caterpillars at this time of year.  There are one or two processionary moths that can create an infestation in a couple of weeks and thousands of caterpillars can strip young hedge plants (beech hedging is a favourite) in a few days. Either kill them with a proprietory spray, or blast them off with a pressure washer if you do not like using poisons

Fruit needs a bit of attention at this time of year. Fruit trees grown against walls should have any really vigorous side shoots shortened or they become lop-sided.  You can also tue in new growths on espalier and fan trained fruit.

Your blackberries, boysenberries, raspberries etc will all be producing new canes (on which they will fruit next year).  These will need to be tied in, but try to do it in such a way as to make sure you do not cut them out by mistake later in the year when you remove the old canes….

Elderflower Champagne Recipe

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When you have enough Elderflower Cordial (you can get to our favourite recipe here) you might like to think about Elderflower Champagne. By the way it is a good excuse to plant a few more Elder (Sambucus nigra) bushes – available at http://www.ashridgetrees.co.uk/Common-Elder-Sambucus-nigra as you will find you have friends calling round in June and July almost daily and for the oddest reasons…..

This is a recipe that has been in our family for at least four generations and it is known as Gonga’s Pop – after the great-grandmother of the present youngest generation. She used to make it to keep us quiet when we were kids – being mildly alcoholic (about the same as a light lager) it did that very nicely. It is also the best Elderflower Champagne recipe we know:

You will need (to make 10-12 litres):

  • a really clean container big enough for the mix (large bucker, bin, brewing tub etc)
  • a clean cloth (muslin is best) to cover said container
  • strong bottles which will need to be sterilised at bottling time (the ones with spring closures are best, but screw capped fizzy drinks bottles work well)
  • syphon tube (one with a clip or tap on the end is preferable)
  • 35 elderflower heads – pick the ones with the strongest scent
  • 2.5kg granulated sugar
  • 2 proper tablespoons of white wine vinegar
  • 5 litres boiling water & some cold water
  • Juice and grated skin (zest) of 5 lemons – unwaxed if possible
  • Juice and grated skin (zest) of 1 lime – also unwaxed

Instructions:

  • Dissolve the sugar in the boiling water then put in the large container and add cold water to make a total volume of between 7 and 8 litres.
  • Mix in the elderflowers, the white wine vinegar, the lemon and lime juice and their zests and stir the brew.
  • Cover the whole thing with the clean cloth (or use an airlock if you are a brewer) and put it in a cool place to ferment for two days. If, after a couple of days it has not started fermenting (easy to tell as there will be a foamy sort of scum on top) then add a pinch of dried yeast to get it going. Generally you will find that enough wild yeasts came in with the elderflowers for this not to be necessary.
  • Keep the container covered/airlocked and let the champagne carry on fermenting for another 4-5 days.
  • Using a winemakers sieve or the muslin you covered it with, strain the champagne into another container, let it settle for a couple of hours and siphon it into the sterilised bottles. Do make sure they can take a LOT of pressure – this is not known as Gonga’s Pop for nothing. Seal the bottles tightly. N.B. If you are using plastic drinks bottles keep an eye out for ones that start bulging – if they do, loosen the cap to let some carbon dioxide out and then tighten again.
  • Leave it to ferment for at least another week after which it is delicious although it gets better with age. In nearly a hundred years the family has never found out how long it keeps – however much was made never lasted more than a year…

Enjoy ice cold


Creative Commons License

Elderflower Champagne Recipe by
Frances Bosdari is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at
http://blog.ashridgetrees.co.uk.

Negative Equity – Reduce it (or Hedging your bets)

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One way of beating the looming negative equity trap is to make your home worth more than it is now.

Pushy salesman and endless fliers sing the praises of roof insulation and double glazing as being good investments. It is not for me to say they are wrong, although enough articles have been written on the length of time one has to wait for a payback on double glazing for one to think there are probably better ways of spending one’s money. So if you are short of ideas, why not spend a bit of time (and not a lot of money) on making your garden better. If yours is a family home, make it more child friendly, otherwise just smarten it up.

The first thing a buyer sees is the front garden and the last thing is the back garden. The RICS (the estate agents’ representative body) reckons that £900 spent on remodelling a garden can add up to £6,000 to the value of a house. Some suggestions I would make include:

  • Plant a quality hedge – yew and beech are big value generators, while privet does not have the save effect but is a lot faster. Hedges look much better than fences….
  • If you have the space create a small orchard, if not plant a couple of cordon apple trees against a wall.
  • Cut your lawn not less than twice a week. You will kill the weeds in it and your grass will look fantastic in a couple of months. It may cost you a bit in fuel, but the value add is enormous – everyone likes sitting on a lush green lawn.
  • On the same note, if your already have a hedge, keep it well clipped.
  • If you have a decent lawn, why not plant an ornamental tree in it? Flowering crab apples, snakebark maples, small cherry trees are all beautiful, decorative and value adding. A bare-rooted specimen costs less than filling your car up…..