curious things in a Cornish lane
- Thread starter Phil Pascoe
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weve had a few idiots here this summer! Mind you, they appear every summer 
Trainee neophyte
Established Member
My mother's house (Bodmin moor) has an ancient fig tree planted right up against it, allegedly to help remove the damp. It has figs most years, but they don't often ripen.
Where I live they are an invasive weed, but all the animals love the fruit. It's common to see a turkey with a fig being chased across the field by half a dozen other turkeys, chickens and occasionally a sheep. The pigs are particularly keen, but it can be a moving experience for them if they eat too many.
Fun fact: did you know that inside every fig is a dead wasp? It might make you change your mind about eating them.https://askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/life-and-death-fig-wasp
Where I live they are an invasive weed, but all the animals love the fruit. It's common to see a turkey with a fig being chased across the field by half a dozen other turkeys, chickens and occasionally a sheep. The pigs are particularly keen, but it can be a moving experience for them if they eat too many.
Fun fact: did you know that inside every fig is a dead wasp? It might make you change your mind about eating them.https://askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/life-and-death-fig-wasp
Phil Pascoe
Established Member
Many figs now don't need the wasp for pollination, I expect the wasp is probably necessary for ancient varieties in the fig's native areas.
I absolutely love figs. The wasp don't put me off.
When we finally buy a house, right up there on my list of essential things, juuuust after workshop is a fig tree. maybe some Greengage and victoria plums too. Maybe a walnut tree.
In five years time I'll be rolling in soft fruit.
Figuratively because that would just be a waste.
John Brown
Freeloading Social media influenza
Forget the wasps on the inside, our figs attract a lot of external wasp activity. As did the plums, last year, although there's not been a problem this year, so far.
As for walnuts, like our hazel nuts, green one week, stolen by squirrels? the next week.
As for walnuts, like our hazel nuts, green one week, stolen by squirrels? the next week.
Phil Pascoe
Established Member
Common invasive weeds here are St. John's Wort and crocosmia. My back hedge -
treeturner123
Established Member
All you'll be doing with a walnut tree is feeding the grey squirrel!!
And wasps with the soft fruit!
Phil
Argus
Established Member
Where I live now in Wales, it's too far north for Walnut trees to grow, but when I had a tree in Berkshire, the squirrels, like yours, always did the business if you left the nuts on the tree.
I had a sapling in a pot given to me by my next door neighbour when we moved in. It started fruiting - just half a bagful - when it was a bout 7 or 8 years old.... when we moved on some 15 years later, it was big enough to yield a couple of buckets full, and that was just what I could reach.
The answer, (if you are inclined because it does entail a little work), is to pickle them - not to everyone's taste, but a very old, traditional dish...... especially at Christmas.
If you are going for this, it's essential to time your picking to the point in time (depending on your geographical area) where the nut is fully formed but before the shell starts to form....... in Berkshire it varied a little but I worked it out to be usually around the first week in July. You generally have about a week or ten-day window to get the ladder out. If there is a little shell-start, it will be a star-shaped piece at the base of the stem and the tip, this just adds a little extra work to cut it away.
It takes about 3 - 4 weeks of intermittent stages to prepare and bottle the nuts, then just forget them for a few months. Then a lunch of hot, fresh bread, cold meats, good strong cheese... pickled Walnuts.........
Good luck
dannyr
Established Member
Pickled walnuts ... delish mmm
Here in Sheffield at 300ft I have plenty of figs, hazel/cobs, a too young walnut (but know of one not too far away that produces) ......it's always a race with the squirrels .. likewise for the sweetcorn, and what do squirrels do with a tree full of plums, as they took last year?? bury them? They don't take the grapes at least (big harvest just starting this year -Dutch variety Boskoop) don't mind sharing those with the blackbirds - they just take what they need at that time.
At least they won't take all the olives - I have a 20+ year old olive tree in a sheltered spot on the same allotment that produces hundreds of olives, but they never reach over 5mm in size.
Here in Sheffield at 300ft I have plenty of figs, hazel/cobs, a too young walnut (but know of one not too far away that produces) ......it's always a race with the squirrels .. likewise for the sweetcorn, and what do squirrels do with a tree full of plums, as they took last year?? bury them? They don't take the grapes at least (big harvest just starting this year -Dutch variety Boskoop) don't mind sharing those with the blackbirds - they just take what they need at that time.
At least they won't take all the olives - I have a 20+ year old olive tree in a sheltered spot on the same allotment that produces hundreds of olives, but they never reach over 5mm in size.
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Trainee neophyte
Established Member
These are probably oil olives, or it is a wild, inedible variety. Just for fun, as late in the year as you can wait (frost is not good), crush the olives using a blender or food processor and put them in a bucket of water. The oil will rise to the surface. It may take 24 hours or more to get a good yield, and then you have the puzzle of getting the oil out of the bucket without the water.
If you get more than 10% oil by weigh you are doing well - commercial operations get 20% on a good day.
The internet is full of more complicated ways of extracting oil but the easiest way is to have the bucket with olive mash full to the brim with water . As the oil rises to the surface it will be oil that overflows, so sit the bucket in a bigger bucket and keep topping it up with water. In theory it will be oil that overflows. Patience is required, as it may take a week to get all the oil out. I've never done this, as I have access to a proper press.
If there's damp it could be north facing which means the fig isn't getting enough sun? In England figs do produce a lot of figlets that either drop off or survive over winter to ripen the following summer. Interesting about the turkeys robbing fruit as the most popular variety in the UK is Brown Turkey.
My pigs used to get drunk on overripe apples!
Valid points.
To put your mind at rest I have, in the past and probably will in the future professionally culled grey squirrels. Well, professionally in the sense that I get paid for it. I'm fairly well versed in dealing with them. My parents have a walnut tree in their garden. This year I pickled 4Kg of nuts and there is possibly treble the amount left over getting all ripe. Old Scirius gets a few granted but he pays a heavy price...
I am also licenced to treat wasp nests, although I generally subscribe to the wisdom that unlike Squirrels they do more good than harm. I'm happy to let them have their share.
This isn't my first soft fruit rodeo. I find with plum trees - mature ones anyway is they all appear to ripen in a very short window so you always have more than is sensible to eat/make jam/flavour vodka with and end up giving them away etc.
Tris
What am I doing here?
Apparently Sheffield used to have an abundance of fig trees, the warmth created by the steelworks gave them a perfect microclimate.
Phil Pascoe
Established Member
I used to (when a child) put my ferret in the greenhouse after the mice got drunk on rotting grapes - they would just run around in circles until caught.
Pineapple
Established Member
I've got these too....It's the devil's own job to get rid if the Multitude of Bulbs that they produce. The only cure I can think of is to Remove; Dispose of to the Council-Tip & Replace ALL of the Soil in that area with Clean-Good-Quality-Compost ! - I have been tryng for 7 years up to now, without much success !
Argus
Established Member
We have Crocosmia here in Wales.... it's not particularly invasive, but tends to grow in some spots and not others, usually on the roadsides.
Not sure if this one works, but many years ago, In Christchurch one day, I noticed a bowling green keeper piling his grass cuttings all along the edges. Talking to him, he said that if it were layered up over the summer, resulting in a layer 4 to 6 inches deep, the decomposition juices penetrated the ground below and was toxic to weeds (and just about anything else, I suppose). He said you then leave it over the winter, roll it up each spring, then do it all again.
Anyway, having some ground elder under a hedge coming through from waste ground next door at the time, I tried it ..... and it worked. A bit unsightly, but it did the job for me. Didn't bother the Beech hedge too much.
Not sure if this one works, but many years ago, In Christchurch one day, I noticed a bowling green keeper piling his grass cuttings all along the edges. Talking to him, he said that if it were layered up over the summer, resulting in a layer 4 to 6 inches deep, the decomposition juices penetrated the ground below and was toxic to weeds (and just about anything else, I suppose). He said you then leave it over the winter, roll it up each spring, then do it all again.
Anyway, having some ground elder under a hedge coming through from waste ground next door at the time, I tried it ..... and it worked. A bit unsightly, but it did the job for me. Didn't bother the Beech hedge too much.
Trainee neophyte
Established Member
Absolutely yes north facing. The roots lift up the flagstones the kitchen from time to time, and once we had a spring appear, which is like rising damp, only wetter. Still, it mostly seems to work. No idea how old the tree is, but it was mature 50 years ago.
To be fair to the pigs, we all like cider.
Great tip - we have ground elder so I'll give it a go. When I was a lad I worked on a farm and the hedge along the silage pit was killed by the dark brown runoff.
Stevekane
Established Member
We have great patches of that Crocosima plant, it was given to us by a neighbour who said it was a nice plant,,,daft old bugger! Anyway not being gardeners this stuff has been left to do its own thing for the past 15 yrs and it was only during the covid lockdown that we looked critically at the garden and “discovered” large crowns of the stuff with hundreds of smaller plants everywhere,,,its certainly a menace. Digging up the big crowns is hard but satifying but does leave little bulbs, but the big success was reading that its particularly susceptible to a single dose of Roundup weedkiller, and a great swath of the garden is now completely dead,,,,we have other patches which I will treat as well as pulling any I notice, but as has been said, once you've got it I think it would be very difficult to eradicate completely.
BTW I see that Lidls do a gas powered wand you burn the weeds with, does that kind of thing actually work,,,I would have thought a weed or anything else would just regrow?
Steve.
BTW I see that Lidls do a gas powered wand you burn the weeds with, does that kind of thing actually work,,,I would have thought a weed or anything else would just regrow?
Steve.
