On 08/01/09 12:26, Alan Johnson wrote:
Sacha wrote:
-6C here last night and a white start to the day.


It was about -20°C here in northern Germany two nights ago. The lowest
temperature was recorded about 50 miles away at -28°C (Bad Lippspringe).
It was only about -15°C last night. I haven't seen the good side of
freezing point for over a week. It rarely climbs above -10°C during the
day. My leeks look dead. I'm just glad the price of heating oil has
fallen. We've just ordered 4000 litres for around £2000. In the spring
3000 litres cost us around £3000.

Regards


But this is exactly what we need. Deep, deep cold for weeks and weeks.
If you have dug your soil over in November and left in in clods , then
it will break down beautifully in the Spring when you start to till it.

Also , the deep frozen ground will kill loads of slugs (so, they tell me)

On 08/01/09 12:26, Alan Johnson wrote:
Sacha wrote:
-6C here last night and a white start to the day.


It was about -20°C here in northern Germany two nights ago. The lowest
temperature was recorded about 50 miles away at -28°C (Bad Lippspringe).
It was only about -15°C last night. I haven't seen the good side of
freezing point for over a week. It rarely climbs above -10°C during the
day. My leeks look dead. I'm just glad the price of heating oil has
fallen. We've just ordered 4000 litres for around £2000. In the spring
3000 litres cost us around £3000.

Regards


But this is exactly what we need. Deep, deep cold for weeks and weeks.
If you have dug your soil over in November and left in in clods , then
it will break down beautifully in the Spring when you start to till it.

Also , the deep frozen ground will kill loads of slugs (so, they tell me)

On 08/01/09 12:26, Alan Johnson wrote:
Sacha wrote:
-6C here last night and a white start to the day.


It was about -20°C here in northern Germany two nights ago. The lowest
temperature was recorded about 50 miles away at -28°C (Bad Lippspringe).
It was only about -15°C last night. I haven't seen the good side of
freezing point for over a week. It rarely climbs above -10°C during the
day. My leeks look dead. I'm just glad the price of heating oil has
fallen. We've just ordered 4000 litres for around £2000. In the spring
3000 litres cost us around £3000.

Regards


But this is exactly what we need. Deep, deep cold for weeks and weeks.
If you have dug your soil over in November and left in in clods , then
it will break down beautifully in the Spring when you start to till it.

Also , the deep frozen ground will kill loads of slugs (so, they tell me)

Sacha wrote:
On 8/1/09 12:26, in article , "Alan
Johnson" wrote:

Sacha wrote:
-6C here last night and a white start to the day.

snip

The birds are eating us
out of house and home and to our real pleasure, the long-tailed tits are
back. We saw them for the first time ever last year and then they
disappeared. But today they're back on the peanut feeder, vying for space
with the blue tits.

We also have a lot of birds in the garden, although I'm sorry to say I'm
not very good at identifying them yet. We put lots of food out for them
in this weather. Of those that I do recognise we have blue tits and
great tits, greenfinches, sparrows, robins, thrushes and blackbirds.
Last week I saw a hawfinch (had to look that and the greenfinches up in
my bird book). The crows and magpies appear to have returned since last
week and I was also surprised to see our regular summer and autumn
visitor, the woodpecker. I'm not sure what woodpecker it is: it's grey
and black with a red head, or red markings around the head. There seem
to be several that look vaguely similar.

Hope you'll warm up soon, Alan - let us know how it goes. Reading your post
reminds me of why that huge Camellia at Pilnitz near Dresden, has its own
greenhouse on wheels for the winter! I think you get colder where you are,
don't you?

Yes. On the whole, I describe the climate as similar to the UK, but the
extremes do tend to be more pronounced. Winters have been milder over
recent years but -10°C to -15°C isn't really unusual. And a warm summer
is 30°C but over the (many) years I have now lived in Germany I have
seen 40°C+ a number of times.

Last night was around -15°C.

Regards

--
Alan Johnson, Geotr@ns
www.geotrans-online.de
German-English, Geosciences/Technical
http://geotransblog.blogspot.com/
Terminus Est

Ed wrote:

But this is exactly what we need. Deep, deep cold for weeks and weeks.
If you have dug your soil over in November and left in in clods , then
it will break down beautifully in the Spring when you start to till it.

I don't deny it's what we may need. In fact, I'm releived that we are
finally getting a really cold winter again. Unfortunately, I didn't get
a great deal of digging done last year. We bought the house and moved in
at the end of March. The house, with large garden, had previously been
rented for 10 years and neither the tenants nor, apparently, the
landlord, cared much for gardening. Which borders on the criminal with a
1600m² garden (that's a sixth of a hectare). So we spent a large part of
the summer and autumn filling 5 or 6 skips with rubble and assorted
garden waste. We've still got a bit of each left. The 'lawn' was a foot
long, there were trees sprouting up everywhere (everything from a
quarter of an inch to 5-6 inches thick). We discovered many, many yards
of pathways after clearing away moss and grass. We cleared away a couple
of tree stumps where somebody had cut down trees about a foot above the
ground and then just left the stumps in place, planting ivy around them
to cover them up. We felled about a dozen other trees, including four
enormous fir trees, one with a diameter of about three feet. Etc. So no,
we didn't do much digging. :-) That'll start in earnest this year.

Also , the deep frozen ground will kill loads of slugs (so, they tell me) .

That's why I'm releived that we are getting a really cold winter. It
puts paid to alsorts of nasty beasties, especially that particular pest
in German forests, the bark beetle. A hard winter like this also tends
to reduce the mosquito plague in the summer.

I hope it stays frozen for a few more weeks yet despite the problems.

Nah, I think it's time for thaw now. Don't like this excessive cold.

In the meantime, wear woolly hats and gloves and thermal vests and
pants. Don't let your body get cold if you are working outdoors!

At these temperatures, I ain't working out of doors, believe me.

Regards

--
Alan Johnson, Geotr@ns
www.geotrans-online.de
German-English, Geosciences/Technical
http://geotransblog.blogspot.com/
Terminus Est

In message , Alan Johnson
writes
Sacha wrote:
On 8/1/09 12:26, in article , "Alan
Johnson" wrote:

Sacha wrote:
-6C here last night and a white start to the day.

snip

The birds are eating us
out of house and home and to our real pleasure, the long-tailed tits are
back. We saw them for the first time ever last year and then they
disappeared. But today they're back on the peanut feeder, vying for space
with the blue tits.

We also have a lot of birds in the garden, although I'm sorry to say
I'm not very good at identifying them yet. We put lots of food out for
them in this weather. Of those that I do recognise we have blue tits
and great tits, greenfinches, sparrows, robins, thrushes and
blackbirds. Last week I saw a hawfinch (had to look that and the
greenfinches up in my bird book). The crows and magpies appear to have
returned since last week and I was also surprised to see our regular
summer and autumn visitor, the woodpecker. I'm not sure what woodpecker
it is: it's grey and black with a red head, or red markings around the
head. There seem to be several that look vaguely similar.

snip

You seem to have a good variety of birds. Put out nyjer seed and you
will probably get the stars of the finches - the goldfinch & siskin.-
although I'd love to be able to attract bullfinches to our garden. We
see them occasionally but they're spectacularly shy. Your woodpecker is
almost certainly a Great Spotted Woodpecker. In Germany you normally
have 4 woodpeckers - Green, Great Spotted, Lesser Spotted and Black ....
we don't get the Black in the UK. You are very fortunate to have the
Hawfinch - relatively rare here. They usually travel in small groups
prefering tall deciduous trees like beech and oak (and cherries; they
crack to stones with their massive beaks). They also appear in old yew
trees - about a dozen or so caused quite a commotion when they visited
the churchyard in our small Dorset village a year or so ago. They stayed
about 2 months in the old yews and then disappeared. We had a fair
amount of twitchers coming to tick them off their list.
--
Gopher .... I know my place!

Gopher wrote:

You seem to have a good variety of birds. Put out nyjer seed and you
will probably get the stars of the finches - the goldfinch & siskin.-
although I'd love to be able to attract bullfinches to our garden. We
see them occasionally but they're spectacularly shy. Your woodpecker is
almost certainly a Great Spotted Woodpecker. In Germany you normally
have 4 woodpeckers - Green, Great Spotted, Lesser Spotted and Black ....
we don't get the Black in the UK. You are very fortunate to have the
Hawfinch - relatively rare here. They usually travel in small groups
prefering tall deciduous trees like beech and oak (and cherries; they
crack to stones with their massive beaks). They also appear in old yew
trees - about a dozen or so caused quite a commotion when they visited
the churchyard in our small Dorset village a year or so ago. They stayed
about 2 months in the old yews and then disappeared. We had a fair
amount of twitchers coming to tick them off their list.

Gopher,

In the summer we have even more bird varieties. I'll have to seriously
try and identify more of them. I've only seen the Hawfinch once ot twice
before. It was that big beak that gave it away. We chopped down a number
of trees but we have a lot of hazel in our garden and the neighbour's -
that's what seems to attract the woodpecker. We also have a cherry tree,
but I don't think that's what attracted the Hawfinch last week... :-)
You're right, though, it'll be a Great Spotted Woodpecker.

Thanks and regards

--
Alan Johnson, Geotr@ns
www.geotrans-online.de
German-English, Geosciences/Technical
http://geotransblog.blogspot.com/
Terminus Est

In message , Alan Johnson
writes
Gopher wrote:

You seem to have a good variety of birds. Put out nyjer seed and you
will probably get the stars of the finches - the goldfinch & siskin.-
although I'd love to be able to attract bullfinches to our garden. We
see them occasionally but they're spectacularly shy. Your woodpecker
is almost certainly a Great Spotted Woodpecker. In Germany you
normally have 4 woodpeckers - Green, Great Spotted, Lesser Spotted
and Black .... we don't get the Black in the UK. You are very
fortunate to have the Hawfinch - relatively rare here. They usually
travel in small groups prefering tall deciduous trees like beech and
oak (and cherries; they crack to stones with their massive beaks).
They also appear in old yew trees - about a dozen or so caused quite
a commotion when they visited the churchyard in our small Dorset
village a year or so ago. They stayed about 2 months in the old yews
had a fair amount of twitchers coming to tick them off their list.

Gopher,

In the summer we have even more bird varieties. I'll have to seriously
try and identify more of them. I've only seen the Hawfinch once ot
twice before. It was that big beak that gave it away. We chopped down a
number of trees but we have a lot of hazel in our garden and the
neighbour's - that's what seems to attract the woodpecker. We also have
a cherry tree, but I don't think that's what attracted the Hawfinch
last week... :-) You're right, though, it'll be a Great Spotted Woodpecker.

Thanks and regards

I lived for quite a time in Germany too attending University in Würzburg
and then lived on in Bavaria for a time. All quite some time ago but I
recall being enthralled watching Bluethroats (Blaukehlchen) under one of
the bridges outside the town centre. Loads of birding opportunities in
Germany.

Brgds.
--
Gopher .... I know my place!

On 9/1/09 17:50, in article ,
"VivienB" wrote:

On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:26:32 +0000, Ed ex@directory wrote:

Also , the deep frozen ground will kill loads of slugs (so, they tell me) .

I hope Vine Weevils and Lily Beetles will also be much reduced in
numbers - they have been building up around here, helped by the mild
winters we have had the last few years.

The gnats were out today.........

--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon
(new website online)

On 9/1/09 22:21, in article ,
"Martin" wrote:

On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 22:19:11 +0000, Sacha wrote:

On 9/1/09 17:50, in article ,
"VivienB" wrote:

On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:26:32 +0000, Ed ex@directory wrote:

Also , the deep frozen ground will kill loads of slugs (so, they tell me) .

I hope Vine Weevils and Lily Beetles will also be much reduced in
numbers - they have been building up around here, helped by the mild
winters we have had the last few years.

The gnats were out today.........

in the Heineken brewery they are out 24/7 )

When we get free beer on the garden paths I'll be sure to tell you! In the
meantime, what has that to do with gnats in uk gardens? What am I not
picking up on?
--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon
(new website online)

On 9/1/09 22:40, in article ,
"Martin" wrote:

On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 22:32:58 +0000, Sacha wrote:

On 9/1/09 22:21, in article ,
"Martin" wrote:

On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 22:19:11 +0000, Sacha wrote:

On 9/1/09 17:50, in article ,
"VivienB" wrote:

On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:26:32 +0000, Ed ex@directory wrote:

Also , the deep frozen ground will kill loads of slugs (so, they tell me)
.

I hope Vine Weevils and Lily Beetles will also be much reduced in
numbers - they have been building up around here, helped by the mild
winters we have had the last few years.

The gnats were out today.........

in the Heineken brewery they are out 24/7 )

When we get free beer on the garden paths I'll be sure to tell you! In the
meantime, what has that to do with gnats in uk gardens? What am I not
picking up on?

That much of the stuff sold as premium lager in UK is extracted from gnats.

Duh! So sorry - very slow of me!
--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon
(new website online)

In message , Martin
writes
On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 22:19:11 +0000, Sacha wrote:

On 9/1/09 17:50, in article ,
"VivienB" wrote:

On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:26:32 +0000, Ed ex@directory wrote:

Also , the deep frozen ground will kill loads of slugs (so, they tell me) .

I hope Vine Weevils and Lily Beetles will also be much reduced in
numbers - they have been building up around here, helped by the mild
winters we have had the last few years.

The gnats were out today.........

in the Heineken brewery they are out 24/7 )

LOL!
--
Gordon H
Remove "invalid" to reply

On 9/1/09 22:45, in article ,
"Martin" wrote:

On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 22:43:44 +0000, Sacha wrote:

On 9/1/09 22:40, in article ,
"Martin" wrote:

On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 22:32:58 +0000, Sacha wrote:

On 9/1/09 22:21, in article ,
"Martin" wrote:

On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 22:19:11 +0000, Sacha
wrote:

On 9/1/09 17:50, in article ,
"VivienB" wrote:

On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:26:32 +0000, Ed ex@directory wrote:

Also , the deep frozen ground will kill loads of slugs (so, they tell
me)
.

I hope Vine Weevils and Lily Beetles will also be much reduced in
numbers - they have been building up around here, helped by the mild
winters we have had the last few years.

The gnats were out today.........

in the Heineken brewery they are out 24/7 )

When we get free beer on the garden paths I'll be sure to tell you! In the
meantime, what has that to do with gnats in uk gardens? What am I not
picking up on?

That much of the stuff sold as premium lager in UK is extracted from gnats.

Duh! So sorry - very slow of me!

)


I put it down to being more a Cristal type, myself. ;-))

--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon
(new website online)