Pruning the Apple Tree and a Place for the Birds)

When you find me here at last taking out this upper branch, as I said I thought we'd have to go the journey. Now is an ideal time because the leaves have all dropped and I've just put an undercut in here that's going up there so that the bark doesn't pull down the trunk as I take the weight of the branch off. And the reason I'm doing it now is because I'd like to put up a couple of bird boxes for all the birds I've got. I did have bird boxes before but the last one just sort of collapsed and rotted after being up a few years. I saw these and they're made out of silver birch trunks you know I like the silver birch bark and they've been hollowed out and I couldn't have done that myself so I've actually bought them. So this is a lovely open front of one like that that's going to be good for wrens and robins. I feel I'm nearly there I just want to ease it down instead of letting it crash and I think the birds are coming to watch. I think you're nearly there it still takes a while. There it is it's about to go just hold it I'll not be able to hold the weight but there we are. I know it's not so spectacular as letting it just crash to the ground but it saves anything getting smashed on the bottom. Anyway I'll take this up to the dead hedge because it can stay up there for the moment. This is becoming such a good store for my wood. There we go and I can do all sorts with a can just stay there it's off the bottom it's out of my way it can dry out. Well I've got another good branch out and I've started pruning the honeysuckle just so I can prune the dead out. I don't want to take you know all the all the growing off I want that to train in along the fence because the honeysuckle is so beautiful. Anyway welcome to my garden. I'm going to try and get this finished so I can put the bird box up. I've actually got two but as long as I get one up today that'll be fine by me. Anyway back up there with the pruners the loppers and the saw. So much dead on here because I haven't pruned it in so long. Three new shoots already so that's really good. I don't want to prune it all again. I think I need that branch up. I'm going to take that branch up while I'm on because I do need these ones. I'm going to take that one back down with the saw now. Saw at the ready. This branch here it's going up and it's going over the bench. That's why my bench keeps getting all messed up with the birds because it really shouldn't be over there. The weight of the honeysuckle was actually what was bringing it over. It's coming off. I'm starting now. I'm going to have to stand on the bench because I think there's a great big dead bit of the honeysuckle. I'm going to try and trace it down and get it out. I should have just reached for my loppers there so now I can prune this out a bit at a time. Such good bits of wood. I think I could do some sculpture with them. I'm keeping them out. Loppers to the rescue. That is dead in the middle. I knew that one was dead and that one and that one. I'll keep this one for the moment. Now I have to saw it. I'll do it here first. Undercut and then an overcut. I'll just let it fall easy. Well that's going to make a huge difference to the light. I can't do anything about my neighbour's holly tree. At least I don't need to add to the shade by letting the apple tree be out of control. So I'm just going to clear all this up. I'll clear as much of this as I can. Now I'm going to put the bird box in to keep as much of the honeysuckle as I can. I think that'll be enough. I need it a bit higher. I couldn't sit there. And then somewhere for the robins or a wren, both of which come to me so good luck nest box. Well I'll just have to see whether a little robin or a wren will grace that nest box. In the meantime I have a lot of tidying up to do. Here goes. I have had a good clear up and all of the apple branches and the big honeysuckle branches have all been squirreled away into the dead hedge and all the little stuff is away to the bin. Now it looks a bit weird at the minute and those big tall ones they definitely have to go. Those big water sheets there they shouldn't really be growing that big. It's just out of control. However it already even without the leaves on made a big difference to the light and the space up here and that's what I need. I need more sunlight because that's facing south for me. So I was cutting out all of my light and when I had lots of shady plants here it didn't matter quite so much although it was bringing the apple tree over a lot. But now I'm going to get light into the veg plot onto the pond because it's not good for ponds to be shady either and the honeysuckle will be back to the fence and it'll still be a lot. I've taken a lot away but there's a lot just tucked away behind the bench and I've hooked it back towards the fence and it should get a good start away next year. There are already little green shoots showing so it needed to be done really. Meanwhile in here everything's been growing really well. Some of the garlic and the onions are now ready to go out and I'll be planting them out later into the onion bed and also the winter purslane is already germinated and come through. I'll wait and I'll not prick them out quite yet. I've got my passandra seeds so they'll just be waiting until the spring. I also got a really nice collection of sweet peas and there are four varieties here and it's a fragrant collection. So I could pre-germinate these but I'm actually going away so I don't want to leave them to sprout and then just go a bit mouldy or anything. So I'm just going to chip these by scraping at the coating and I'm going to plant them into my other set of root trainers that I've got so that they can just stay in here and start to germinate. And another success at the minute is that the carling peas have germinated so I think I'm going to eventually, when I come back from visiting Naomi, I'm going to plant them out into the polytunnel. No sign of the broad beans yet though. Yes, only just broad beans germinated. I can see them. I didn't notice them before. There they are. So that's good too. I've got my root trainers ready. I've just put the seeds on top so that I can chip them first, or chip them. So if I can't pre-germinate, what I'm going to do is, you can see the line on the sweet pea. I don't know whether I'm going to be able to show you. There's a little line on the sweet pea. Now I'm going to, on the opposite side, I'm just going to nick through the coating until I can expose the seed underneath the seed coating. I bet you I'm not even showing that properly. But anyway, I want to do that because I don't want to be pre-germinating these. So by nicking through the coating, I'm going to encourage, look that coating came off so good. So you can see that I've just taken the seed coating off. And it just means that once I water these, they're going to be able to take up the water straight away. So I'm going to do all of them. There, that one's nicked. Sometimes a little bit comes off, sometimes not so much comes off. Once they're in, I'm just going to push them in with my finger. And I've just done eight of each. So I've got the four different varieties here. And I've kept the rest of the seed and I'll be able to sow them in the spring. So I'll have two goes of them coming or what it'll mean is I can have some coming early and some coming late, you know, to spread out the flowering time. That one nicked really nicely. In they go. So long since I grew some sweet peas. Wendy brought me the ones I've had this year. She's got pots of them and she kept some for herself and brought some to me. And I had them growing beside the runner beans and they've been gorgeous. Well, I think that's all I've got time for this week. I'm actually going to just take my garlic out and get it planted along with the red onions. And then for me, I am getting ready to go and visit my daughter. So I hope you've enjoyed this week's episode and we'll look forward to coming back and seeing what else happens next week. I'll have just come back from being with Naomi. So it depends whether I've been able to get round to do one or not. We'll see. Anyway, in the meantime, happy planting, happy growing, everyone. Thanks a lot for watching. Bye from Marian's garden.