Chelsea Flower Show 2013

My wife and I in the gold medal winning water aid garden

I visited the Chelsea flower show for the first time this year and it was a fantastic day. The weather was hot and we wondered around the various gardens and stalls with people selling everything from ladders to clothes and compost made from wool.

Me and Kazuyuki Ishihara

 My wife and I were lucky enough to get onto the gold medal winning water aid garden which was created by Herbert Smith Freehills and I managed to meet Kazuyuki Ishihara the Gold medal winner of the best artisan garden.

The East Malling Stall and the apple tree with roots

One of my favorite stalls was the East Malling Research stall which had an apple tree with all its roots visible. Amazing stuff.

Ants attacking caterpillars, me attacking the green flies

Green Fly on Apple Tree

I wrote last week that I had noticed lots of green fly eggs on some of the apple trees and was expecting an influx, the plan was to go down and spray an organic mixture to deter the the green flies attacking the fruit trees. Well I didn't do it straight away as we were expecting large amounts of rain. The rain would only have washed the mixture away. The rain came and we also had some reasonable sunny spells, then more rain.

Quince soon to flower

So over the weekend and I sprayed the mixture and as you can see from the pictures the eggs have hatched the the green fly are spreading and having a field day, they are mainly on the apple and some of the pear trees. I only managed to get around half the trees with the mixture and will try another dose in the middle of the week, that's with help from my wife. The quince trees need to be sprayed I looked at them on the way home, however I had no more mixture remaining.

I can see some lady birds around so I'm hoping that they will be able to breed and naturally keep the green fly population at bay.

I also noted two cherry trees don't have very many leaves, they did have large amounts of blossom a couple of weeks ago, the trees in questions were in a very soggy part of the orchard last year, and I'm a little worried about them. They are of the Black Prince variety of Cherry.

The smell of apple blossom is now in flow and its lovely. I literally can put my nose into the blossom and smell the scent. Great, if you see some give it a go.

Ants attacking Caterpillar

I also saw a number of caterpillars being attacked by ants. It was normally small groups of ants attacking and then killing the caterpillars. Usually 6 or more ants attacking and pulling the caterpillars apart. It was interesting. The ants are not as organised from what I saw, they grab and pull, literally stretching the Caterpillar and I can't be certain but I get the filling they must pull of bits of skin off from the caterpillar. It may just be the soldier ants doing the attacking and the others carrying on with normal routine work.

I have also seen various butterfly whizzing around, as well as wasps. The bees seems have done a good job at gathering most of the pollen from the blossom. I'm amazing at how good they are.

The grass is growing fast and is still uncut. I'm waiting on my brother having some free time to get the lawn mower down to cut the grass. Hoping sometime next week, Sunday or Monday.

Blossom looks great

Cherry Blossom

Older Cherry Blossom

The orchard is now in full blossom and looks great, we have loads of flowers and still more to come, however some of the early blossom which started over 2 weeks ago has started to die and the trees have begun the process of producing fruit and gathering and storing energy to grow for the next couple of months via the leaves that have starting to grow. I can see the start off the leafs growing but most of these are still small but they are growing. The apple trees are starting to blossom and that is one of my favorites as the scent that they produce is one I really like.

Crab Apple Blossom

I have however found very small aphids and caterpillars on a couple of trees which is disappointing. I plan to spray an organic spray made from chrysanthemum petals. I haven't used it in a couple of years but I am considering using it this year. The conditions for fruit production so far this year have been very good. I want the orchard to be a success at producing fruit as well as attracting insects, birds, people etc. I am hoping that this year will  be successful.

Someone has removed the Rabbit Guards from a number of trees. What seems to be happening is someone or probably children are removing the bamboo sticks that keep the home made rabbit guards in place. I have more bamboo sticks which I will replace. This has happened before, but this time it affected more trees.

The grass is getting longer, I was meant to get it cut over the weekend with my brother, but its rained on and off and I had various things to do. So it hasn't happened. I will try and get that done over the next couple of days perhaps next weekend, but lets see.

I currently had fenced off the bee hives and some of the fencing has fallen down. I will have to get that replaced. That will be a slightly harder job, but one that needs to get done.