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Archive for September, 2016

Have you seen our TWO NEW FREE Wildlife Competitions

Posted in Competitions, Gardening at Home, Gardening at School, School Projects, Wildlife, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 29, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Hedgehogs are unique creatures that we rarely see, they are a true gardeners friend eating lots of pests including slugs and snails, unfortunately their numbers are in decline. At this time of year we can help by putting out food (not bread or milk) so they gain the weight needed to see them through the winter and by providing them with a safe home to hibernate.

We have launched two new competitions on the Gardening With Children website, giving you the opportunity to win Wildlife products for the Hedgehogs in your garden:

 

In the School Zone you could win a Hedgehog Pack containing:

A Hogitat Hedgehog House

Wildlife World Hogitat Hedgehog House Habitat

A Hedgehog Snack Bowl

Wildlife World Hedgehog Snack Feeding Bowl

A 220g pack of Hedgehog Food

Hedgehog Food

A field guide to Hedgehogs

Field Guide to Hedgehogs

To enter all you need to do is to find the hidden words in our Hedgehog Word Search the first correct entry drawn out of the hat will win.

For full details, The Hedgehog Word Search and an entry form click here, the closing date is Wednesday 30th November 2016.

 

In the Family Zone you could win a Hedgehog Pack containing:

An Igloo Hedgehog House

Wildlife World Hedgehog Igloo House Habitat Shelter

A Hedgehog Snack Bowl

Wildlife World Hedgehog Snack Feeding Bowl

A 220g pack of Hedgehog Food

Hedgehog Food

A field guide to Hedgehogs

Field Guide to Hedgehogs

To enter draw or paint a picture of a Hedgehog and give him/her a name and our favourite picture will win.

For full details and an entry form click here, the closing date is Wednesday 30th November 2016.

Good Luck

Gill

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Take a closer look at the spiders in your garden

Posted in Gardening at Home, Gardening at School, School Projects, Wildlife, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 20, 2016| Leave a Comment »

garden-spider

In Autumn if I am walking in my garden or out of the front door first thing in the morning I have to tread carefully as the spiders have usually been busy making their webs which stretch between plants, gateposts and across footpaths. The culprits are Garden Spiders (Araneus diadematus) and although they live in the garden from May to November it is only from mid-August that they seem to appear.

Garden Spiders can vary in colour from very dark brown to pale yellowy brown but they all have a group of white spots on their abdomen in a cross shape, they spin Orb Webs to catch their food which include midges, flies, butterflies and wasps, Orb Webs look like a wheel with spokes and are the most advanced spider webs, they are built by laying spirals of silk around radial threads the spider then waits in the centre of the web for its prey to get caught on the web, it then rushes out and wraps it in sticky silk so that it cannot get away.

Female Garden Spiders lay their eggs in a silken cocoon, they protect this egg sac until they die in late Autumn, the following May the spiderlings will hatch and the cycle begins again.

7 fun and interesting facts about Spider Webs

  1. The threads of spider webs are called ‘silks’.
  2. Spider silk is five times stronger than a strand of steel that is the same thickness.
  3. Many spiders make a new web every day; they eat their old web which contains protein.
  4. Abandoned Spider Webs are called ‘cobwebs’.
  5. Spiders don’t stick to their own webs because they can make parts of one thread sticky and non-sticky, they stay off the sticky spots.
  6. Young Spiders (spiderlings) float through the air on strands of silk this is called ‘ballooning’.
  7. Spiders are the only group of animals to build webs.

Spider webs look beautiful in the morning covered in dew why don’t you see if you can find some and take some photographs or draw a picture of them.

dsc04561

Have fun

Gill

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Raspberries – delicious to eat and easy to grow

Posted in Gardening at Home, Gardening at School, Recipes, School Projects, tagged , , , , , , , on September 13, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Autumn Rasberries

Autumn Raspberries

The Autumn Raspberries are ripening fast in the warm weather and can be picked daily they are delicious with cream or ice cream but freshly picked Raspberries have a limited shelf life of about 3 days in the fridge, if you have a glut make them into delicious jam or freeze them in a single layer on trays then bag them up for use later on either in pies, crumbles, sauces, fruit smoothies, jams/jellies or in cakes. Here is a delicious recipe for you to try:

Raspberry and Lemon Drizzle Cake

Ingredients

  • 115g butter, softened
  • 175g self-raising flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 175g caster sugar
  • 2 medium eggs
  • Zest of one lemon
  • 4 tbsp milk
  • 150g raspberries

For the drizzle

  • 80g caster sugar
  • Juice of one lemon

What you need to do

  1. Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4/fan 160C and grease and line a 28cm x 18cm rectangular tin.
  2. Put the butter, flour, baking powder, caster sugar, eggs and lemon zest in a bowl and beat for 2 minutes until well combined.
  3. Gently fold in the milk and two thirds of the raspberries
  4. Spoon the mixture into the tray and level out.
  5. Sprinkle the remaining raspberries over the surface of the cake.
  6. Bake for approx. 45 minutes until the top is golden brown and the cake is spongy to touch.
  7. Mix the lemon juice and sugar together, remove the cake from the oven and while still hot make holes in the top with a skewer and pour over the drizzle, leave to cool in the tin.

Eat cold or as a pudding warm with custard, ice cream or crème fraiche.

 

Raspberry Support With Extension

Raspberry Support

When you have finished picking the Autumn Raspberries (August to October harvest) cut the canes down to soil level, new canes will grow in the Spring that will bear next year’s fruit, if you have Summer fruiting raspberries (June to early August harvest) only cut back this years old fruiting canes, leave tie in and support this year’s new canes these will produce next year’s fruit.

Budget Fruit Cage

Fruit Cage

Raspberries are very easy to grow, bare root Raspberry canes can be ordered now for planting in November-March when they are dormant, they prefer a fertile well-drained soil in a sunny position. Plant the canes of Summer Fruiting Raspberries 40cm apart and Autumn fruiting Raspberries 60cm apart at a depth of 8cm, firm in, water well and reduce the canes to a height of 25cm. Each spring mulch around the canes with well-rotted manure or apply a general fertiliser and then mulch with garden compost, water during dry weather and protect with a fruit cage or netting to stop the birds eating your crop.

Right I’m off to pick some more – it is raspberries and ice cream for tea!

Gill

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A loveliness of Ladybirds

Posted in Gardening at Home, Gardening at School, School Projects, Wildlife, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on September 8, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Is it me or are there suddenly a lot of Ladybirds, when I bring in the washing I unknowingly bring in with it a couple of these delightful insects, I also found a Ladybird larvae on the washing machine, they are grey and grub like and not very pretty to look at, they don’t resemble a Ladybird and if you didn’t know what they are you might be tempted to squash them.

Ladybird Larvae

Ladybird larvae

In Britain there are 46 species of Ladybirds, 19 species are dull in appearance and do not look at all like the familiar brightly coloured spotted ones that we all love, the 17 spotted varieties have different colour variations, orange with black spots, black with orange spots, white with black spots, yellow with black spots or brown with white spots and also different numbers of spots 2, 7, 11, 14, 18, 16, 22 and 24.

So why are there suddenly a lot of ladybirds?

They are this years newly hatched Ladybirds, during August they emerge from their pupae and then feed up on lots of aphids to build up their reserves to see them through the Winter months (October-February) when they go into a dormant state. In March-April they will emerge and search for food (aphids), the male and female then mate and the female will lay up to 40 eggs during June-July these are bright yellow and can often be found on the underside of leaves, they hatch within 4-10 days and over the following 3-6 weeks the larvae feed on aphids and grow fast shedding their skin 3 or 4 times before attaching to a stem/leaf and becoming a pupae, during the next two weeks the pupae changes dramatically and emerges as a Ladybird in August.

Ladybird Pupae

Ladybird Pupae

Ladybirds are great for the garden the Seven Spot Ladybird can eat 5,000 aphids in its year-long life span so as well as being beautiful they are a true gardener’s friend and worth looking after, unfortunately some native UK Ladybirds species are in decline. During September Ladybirds are feeding up and looking for a safe, dry place to spend the winter why not put some Ladybird and Insect Towers around your garden, each one has a hollow centre filled with straw which provides insulation and drilled holes to allow the Ladybirds access to the inner chamber, place them somewhere warm and sheltered either amongst the flowers, in a wooded area or even in a planter.

Wildlife World Ladybird and Insect Tower

Ladybird and Insect Tower

The collective name for a group of Ladybirds is a ‘loveliness’, I cannot think of anything more fitting.

Love your environment

Gill

 

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