Category Archives: Trivia (or are they?)

There is actually not much difference between gages and plums.  Gages are generally considered to be green to yellow, while plums are red to purple.  But there are yellow plums such as Prunus domestica Pershore.  And Prunus domestica Jefferson is almost red….

What is certain is that the first “gages” were brought to this country by Sir William Gage in the mid 18th century. They were highly regarded as they were sweet, while traditional english plums were sharp and needed to be cooked before they could be eaten.  To this day, there are no cooking gages, and if you look far enough back into the parenthood of the sweeter plums, you tend to find a gage.

So the answer is probably that no one knows anymore, and that the distinction between the two has become so blurred that one could argue for hours which is what provoked this post.  Or you just eat them  – which is also to the point as our gages and plums are ripening now. We have just been having a run off between Cambridge Gage a gage and Coes Golden Drop a plum.  I tell you they were both delicious.  We cheat a bit – to get early fruit we train them against a wall and cover with fleece if it gets cold in April.  But both are fine in the open – they just crop a bit later.

Off for some more

Watch you plants grow and Enjoy!

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…..

The Dogwood family has many members some of which grow on practically every continent on earth. They can range form entirely insignificant to stunning beautiful and from very small to decent sized trees.

Telling a dogwood is easy (provided it is in leaf).  Look for plants that are generally shrubby and that have spear-head shaped leaves. Take a leaf and gently pull it “across the grain” (so you are pulling the tip of the leaf directly away from the stalk.  Just as it splits, look to see if the veins in the leaf remain unbroken – they look like threads bridging the gap.  If they do, you have a dogwood.

Congratulations, but so what.  Well if you happen to be stranded and have to fend for yourself, Dogwoods are useful friends.  That same stringiness in the leaf applies to the bark. Strip it lenthways and palit or twist it and you have a strong cord to use in snares, tying tend poles together, making fish traps etc.

You will also notice, that the young growths of dogwoods are very straight.  And if you try to burn them, they just smoulder.  Which makes them great as kebab sticks over an open fire – when sharpened at one end with your flint knife…

If you want to read a bit more about dogwoods and maybe buy a few, why not visit the Willows and Dogwoods section of the Ashridge Trees site?