The perils of feeding birds on your lawn

I've written several articles about feeding birds in the garden, just type the word "birds" into the search box, top left, if you are interested.

But today is a warning against putting bird feeders on your lawn.

One of my Clients wanted to move their feeding station onto the grass in front of their window, partly so that they could watch the birds more closely (a perfectly reasonable idea, considering how much it costs to buy the bird food), and partly because they were making such a mess on the patio.

I warned them that it would ruin the grass underneath, but they didn't believe me. 

Me: "I should warn you that the birds will scatter a lot of seeds, and they will germinate in the lawn."

Them: "No problem, we'll just mow them down." 

(the sprouting seeds, not the birds)

(at least, I hope so....)

Me: "...and the birds will make quite a mess of the grass."

Them: "It won't matter if they poop on the grass," they said, "because it's biodegradable."

Me: *silently, to myself* "You are going to regret this...."

So I moved the feeding station, we hung all the feeders back up, and they were very pleased.

Two weeks later, I arrived to find that the bird feeding station had been moved back onto the patio.

And this is why: 

Yup, there is a large patch of grass which has been completely ruined: those bare patches are hard and glazed, where many bird (and rat!) feet have stomped around while pecking up (or eating) the fallen seed.  

Wild birds (and rats) aren't like chickens, which scratch to find food, therefore scarifying and lifting the ground: they just eat the loose seeds, then flatten it right down.

I find this in my own garden, where my bird feeders are over shingle: the shingle becomes weirdly compacted, to the point where, every so often, I have to go out with a Daisy Grubber and physically loosen it.

Taking a closer look at this lawn: 

...you can see that there are also areas of fluffy white mould/fungus.

These are formed when a clump of seeds gets wet and sticks together (often due to being pooed upon) and then rots.

Even the rats won't eat it!

You can see what damage it has done to the grass, but what you can't see is how rock-hard the whole area now is. There is a solid crust all the way across the area.

Lovely!

So I will have to scarify the area, maybe I'll enrich it a little, with some compost, then a generous fistful of grass seed, in the hopes that it's still warm enough (mid October, as I write) for the grass to germinate and fill in the bare patch.

So, give some though to where you site your bird feeders: and accept that feeding birds will result in a certain amount of mess!

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Roses - end of season pruning

 Here's a good example of why people pay for professional gardeners: I was recently asked the following question regarding the pruning of roses:

"I was told when flowering was over, to cut them back by 50 % and then in March down to knee height.
What do you think?"

It's the usual "non-gardener has read it in a book and not fully understood" problem - or should I say, it's the usual "gardening book/website has not explained it clearly, plus this is a simplification, and there's a bit more to it than that!"

First point, this does not to apply to all roses: it applies to shrub roses: not to climbers, ramblers, gallica-type, fan-trained, wall-trained, standards, etc.  I've covered climbing roses in another article, so take a look at that one, if you get the time.

So today, ("children,") we are talking about just the stand-alone, bush type, often to be found in a bed or border, like this lot - left. 

Yes, I know, fruit salad: personally I would prefer a little bit more organisation in a rose bed, with colours grouped to either tone, or to contrast, but hey, the owner likes it!

Moving on....

This sort of rose is often labelled Hybrid Tea Rose, Shrub Rose, Bush Rose: anything which stands about waist-high. 

The following advice does also apply to Patio Roses, I should say: Patio Roses are miniature versions of Shrub Roses: you just need a much gentler hand! And a smaller pair of secateurs...

So, what do we do with our Shrub roses, then, and why?

In autumn, ie "when flowering is over" (although in my experience roses will continue to flower into November) we give the roses their pre-winter prune, to reduce the top growth, which is to prevent wind rock, ie damaging the roots over the winter.  Yes, that's the real reason. Shrub roses are very top-heavy, with usually just one central stem, and it is very easy for them to be rocked about over the winter, which damages the roots, and which also creates a vertical hole around the main stem, so water will tend to pool down there, and rot the roots. 

That's why we do an autumn prune - to prevent damage from wind rock.

This does not have to be a fixed percentage, it depends on how exposed the garden is, how old the roses are (ie older ones will be more sturdy, recently planted ones will not be fully rooted, so they will need harder pruning, and so on), how well dead-headed they were throughout the summer, how lanky they have grown during the summer, and so on.

As I tell students (repeatedly!) there are no hard-and-fast rules in gardening, it's all about the interpretation. This might seem daunting to a beginner, but it also means that there is no Right or Wrong: and I have yet to see anyone kill a rose by pruning it "badly". So be brave! Get out those secateurs, make sure they are sharp (if they are blunt and rusty, throw them away and buy a new pair), and prune those roses. 

I've just said "there is no right or wrong way" and I stand by that statement, but at the same time, there are a couple of points about pruning roses which are important: and that's the Sloping Cut, the Outward Facing Bud, and the Open Goblet Shape, which I'm sure I've covered in earlier articles. 

So, incorporating those principles, in autumn we reduce the top growth of our Shrub roses.

Then in spring, before growth fully starts, we go over them and remove any dead, diseased and damaged material. Often the winds, rain, and snow of winter cause damage: and sometimes branches just die back after being pruned, so the first job it to get that lot out of the way.

At that point we can also re-shape them if necessary: firstly, because we may have removed some of their limbs due to the three Ds, and secondly, because it might now be easier to see - now that the stems are bare - if the rose structure is becoming unbalanced.

We might also decide to remove one of the older stems, if we thought it appropriate. This can also be done in autumn, but personally I leave major thinning until spring, because you never know what damage will occur over the winter, and it always seem a bit daft to do major pruning, without knowing which branches are going to survive the winter.

Also, if you do this work in spring, the rose will immediately start to re-grow, so you can see results more quickly. I always find it reassuring, to see those dear little new buds appearing, after I've given a rose a stern going-over with the secateurs.

Having said that, I have known years when the spring pruning wasn't necessary at all, having done it all thoroughly the previous autumn: but usually, there is at least a little neatening-up to be done.

The other point I would make about that original statement is that it implies that no pruning was done at all, while the rose was flowering. ("when flowering was over, to cut them back...")

This is quite wrong - oh, although yes, there is no Right or Wrong in gardening, ha! ha! -  because "one" should deadhead roses all through the flowering season, on a flower-by-flower basis, repeatedly.  And dead-heading is part of pruning, a part that should be done on an ongoing basis. More of that in another article...

If deadheading has been done as "hard" as it should have been done, then there won't be any need to cut back by 50% in autumn: you would only need to cut off the last of the flowered stems, with an eye to retaining the framework of older wood.

But, in the real world, people often don't deadhead as hard as they - in my opinion!! - should, so there will still be some work to be done in autumn.

So there you have it: deadhead throughout the summer, do a final deadhead/cut back in autumn to reduce the risk of damage over the winter, then go over them again in spring, cleaning out any dead wood, tidying up the shape, and generally getting them ready for the summer.

And they should be lovely!

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Neem Oil - no thank you!

 

Now, a quick word about Neem oil, which has been flavour of the month amongst the organic/permaculture crowd for the past few years. What is it? "Neem oil is a naturally occurring pesticide found in seeds from the neem tree."

In my opinion, Neem oil is evil, evil, stuff, avoid it like the plague. It is extremely potent, stains the concrete if you spill it, stinks, and: 

...and it doesn't have much of a beneficial effect - in my opinion - on pests: it certainly did nothing at all on the aphid infestation on the lupins.

In fact, it seemed to kill off the ladybirds, rather than making inroads into the aphid population. 

To be strictly fair, perhaps I should say that when the aphids first moved in, I looked out for ladybirds and only found on average two of them per plant, over a large bed of lupins.

This is why I was persuaded by the owner to try Neem Oil - because we just didn't seem to have any decent number of ladybirds. But alas, despite following the best instructions on the internet (*laughs*), and the exact dilution and frequency of spraying details on the bottle, the lupins got worse and worse, and not a ladybird was to be seen. 

So it might have been coincidence, it might have been that the Neem Oil was working very slowly, and the ladybirds didn't like the neem-flavoured aphids... but in my opinion, the neem oil failed to control the aphids, and seemed to scare away the ladybirds.

When I tried Neem oil at home, against lily beetles, I'm afraid to say that it ruined the lilies - right

This was the result of one single spray, diluted as per instructions on the bottle, and as you can see, it simply killed off the tops of all the lilies, which meant no flowers that year.

I was not happy.

I threw away the Neem Oil and went back to the old-fashioned method of lily beetle control, ie ceaseless vigilance and crushing the little beasts with a thumbnail.

Quite apart from its lack of beneficial effects, I was quite shocked to find out, when I did some research, how potentially harmful it is - even the bottle carries a warning that it may cause an adverse reaction in someone with sensitive skin or a skin disorder like eczema.

Don't believe me - do some research for yourself. Just put something like  "Neem oil harmful" into a search engine, and see what you get. Here are a few which I have just pulled up, at random:

WebMD: "Taking Neem oil by mouth is extremely unsafe in children. Serious side effects in infants and small children can happen within hours after taking neem oil. These serious side effects include vomiting, diarrhoea, drowsiness, seizures, loss of consciousness, coma, and death."

 Organic gardening website: "Is it safe to eat vegetables sprayed with neem oil? Yes, you can eat vegetables sprayed with neem oil, but make sure you wash the vegetables thoroughly before consuming them. However, it's not advisable to spray neem oil on vegetables if you're going to consume them the next day."

Bobvila.com: "some neem oil products contain additives that can be irritants."

Pesticide product label: "Harmful if inhaled. Avoid breathing spray mist. Causes moderate eye irritation. Harmful if absorbed through skin."

So why would you want to use something with so many warnings, and which doesn't appear to be terribly beneficial to plants, and is actually extremely detrimental to lilies?

My answer: don't. As per the article about "natural remedies", the old-fashioned answers are usually the best, and that means keeping your plants in tip-top condition by regular feeding and watering: keeping on top of garden hygiene by ensuring good airflow around the plants, and clearing  up debris: and by constant vigilance: if you can catch an infestation early, it is much easier to deal with it.

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Hedgehogs in my garden

Or, The Strange Tale of the Goings-On In My Back Garden Last Week.

There I was, sitting quietly indoors the other evening, when I heard a kerfuffle in my back garden. Not exactly an uncommon occurrence, but it seemed to be going on a bit, so, intrigued, I flung open the patio doors, whereupon it all went quiet. 

Taking up a torch, I stepped outside. 

At this point, we have to briefly go back in time: for some reason, my garden is quite a lot lower than my house, enough that I nearly broke my ankle the first time I stepped out, so I built some steps to make it easier.

Over the years, I've tried various styles, and the best seems to be simple decking planks, screwed onto "joists" made of fence posts.

 Here are the current steps - left - being built, about three years ago: yes, I know they look like pallets, but I assure you, they are made from the finest quality decking planks, no expense spared... and once they were painted, they looked fine.

Stepping down, then, I shone the torch out into the garden, and found that there was a rather nice ginger cat, terrorising a rather large hedgehog.

I looked at the cat. He looked at me. I gave him a "it's not edible you know," look. He returned it with a "yes I know that, but I am asserting my dominance over slow-moving critters." stare.

I went for a rather stern "it's my garden, matey, thou shalt not claim dominance here," look, at which he rolled his eyes, sighed, and, clearly thinking "we'll see who owns this garden once you have gone to bed, hur, hur," he stalked off in a lordly manner, his dignity only slightly diminished by having to squeeze inelegantly under the gap in my side fence which I leave for the convenience of hedgehogs and cats who are too lazy to jump over it.

The hedgehog, meanwhile, had gone into Ravenous Bugblatter beast of Traal mode, ie pretending that, if he couldn't see me, then I couldn't see him. Knowing that hedgehogs in this situation will stay perfectly still for a minute or more, I went back indoors, turned off the lights, opened the window, and sneakily watched him from above.

Sure enough, a minute and a half later, he started moving again, and bumbled around outside the window, before heading off for the steps.

I watched, in fascination, to see what he would do: and rather than go round, or up and over (they are quite high steps, for hedgehogs, although their legs are a lot longer than "one" would think, from looking at them) he went straight underneath my decking steps.

Under the steps? Why? Why?

Closing the window, I went back to the patio doors, and looked out - he was visible between the planks (Memo to self: time to repaint them, getting a bit shabby), and he was just standing there.

For a long time. I stood and watched, for minute after minute. (oh no, I can feel a Monty Python sketch approaching...) 

A minute passed.

Another minute passed, followed by another, different, minute.

I waited a minute, while a minute passed swiftly past.

This was it! A minute passed.

Sorry, end of diversion....

There he is, can you see him?  

He'd been there for so long, that I did have a momentary concern that he'd somehow get trapped under there - can hedgehogs reverse, with all those spines? Would he get stuck? Would I have to go outside and lift the steps up to free him? Should I have boxed off the sides of the steps to prevent such disasters?

While I was pondering, I heard more rustling and bumbling sounds, and a second hedgehog appeared from the darkness, apparently quite unconcerned by my torchlight.

The first one didn't seem to be particularly interested in the second one, and continued snuffling about under the steps, moving quite freely in the fairly large gap under the step. I need not have worried about him getting stuck, he seemed perfectly comfortable: and maybe this explains why I find bits of broken snail shell in the gap under the steps, on those rare occasions where I lift them and sweep underneath them....

After a couple more minutes of snuffling,  Hedgehog Number 1 emerged from under the steps, and wandered off across the garden, bumping into Hedgehog Number 2 as he went. And I do mean "bumping into", they literally bumped into each other, then trundled off around my garden, presumably in search of more small edibles.

And that, dear reader, was the story of What Happened in my Back Garden Last Week!

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Wheelie Bins & Good Neighbours

Slightly off-topic today: this is something I saw in a garden last week, and it's so wonderful that I want to share it with you.

Wheelie bins: love 'em or hate 'em, they are here to stay. They are big, they are unwieldy, they certainly ain't pretty (!) but most of us have them, and we all have to find room for them in our gardens.

It's always a compromise: generally speaking, we generate the majority of our non-compostable waste in our back gardens, but they are emptied at the fronts of our houses, so we have to choose: do we position them in the back garden, making them easy to fill - or in the front garden, making them easy to put out for the bin men?

Many people compromise by putting them in the side way, where they are an eternal nuisance, as they obstruct the passageway, and you still have to carry waste to them, and you still have to drag them out into the front, on bin day.

But take a look at this:

To explain: the bins belong to the house on the left, and they are sitting in the small alcove formed by the projecting chimney-breast of the house on the right, whose side access is on the other side of their property.

The line of edging slabs shows the boundary: the house on the right has a hedge, and has this tiny space left, which they can't access without going onto the left-hand house's drive.

So it was unused.

The people in the left-hand house asked if they could use the alcove to store their wheelie bins, which happen to fit just perfectly into the space.

The neighbours agreed, so the people on this side put down some slabs to keep it neat and tidy, and lo! and behold, nice neat wheelie bin storage, easy to pull them out and move them down the drive for collection, and they are not blocking the narrow side entrance.

Isn't that just the nicest thing?

A tiny bit of generosity on one side, and a lot of gratitude on the the other!

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"Natural" remedies - the correct way to go, or a waste of time?

Following on from the recent article about Plum Rust, I was asked about what products to use, when doing the spring spray.  It's a good question, and relates not just to fruit trees, but to many garden plants which suffer from fungal infections.

This one - left - is Hellebore Black Spot, another fungal infection, although in this case it's less "black spot" and more "black leaf", as you can see! 

Anyway, getting back to preventative measures:

Specifically, the question was:  "would it be possible to use a natural spray at blossom time in spring / early summer e.g. Garlic Spray in the correct ratio garlic juice to cold or warm water or indeed diluted apple cider vinegar or Neem leaf diluted spray which all have antifungal as well as other medicinal properties?"

Of course it would be possible - you can spray with anything you like! Apart from glyphosate, or other weedkillers, of course... but the question really was, will these natural remedies do any good?

Now, I am fully prepared to be shot down in flames for this, in fact, I might even turn off comments for this article (*laughs*) but after nearly 20 years of observing "natural" and "home-made" and "organic" and "eco-friendly" remedies, I would say that most of them simply don't work.

What sort of "natural sprays" are we talking about?  Garlic, apple cider vinegar, baking soda, ordinary vinegar, cornmeal, cinnamon oil, hot peppers, chili peppers, ordinary salt-and-pepper pepper - all of these and more are, you will find from a cursory internet search, being recommended as the perfect answer for whatever ails your garden or allotment, if you don't want to use chemical sprays.

The questioner (*waves* "Hi, Michele!")  mentions dilution, and the "correct ratio" but the problem with all these home remedies is that no-one knows what the "correct ratio" actually is, because none of these are regulated products, and none of them have gone through scientific testing. 

So there's the first problem: no-one knows what the correct dilution actually is. 

Next, we have to consider what "natural products" we are told to use, and what proportion or strength or quantity of the active constituent - whatever that might be, the internet rarely specifies - it contains.  Any random clove of garlic/chili pepper/etc which you buy or grow will have a different "strength" to any other random clove of garlic/chili pepper/etc, and it's impossible to gauge this, so even if you knew what the "correct" dilution rate ought to be, how can you relate that to your random, unknown-strength, clove of garlic? 

For that matter, any pack of baking soda/vinegar etc may well have a different concentration from any other brand or pack of the same product, and the concentration won't be listed on the pack, because you are using something for a purpose for which it is not intended, so they won't feel the need to tell you how much of the relevant ingredient it contains - assuming that you know which chemical is the one you need, of course.

So that's the second issue: you don't know how "strong" the clove of garlic in your hand actually is. And that's assuming that garlic - or whatever it is - actually does any good.

And now here's the third point, the common-sense one:  if these home remedies actually worked, don't you think that commercial crop growers would have tossed aside the expensive chemical products, and leapt on these easily-available, grow-your-own, cheap,  remedies? Don't you think they would like to avoid the whole business with the hazardous chemicals, PPE for workers, safe storage and disposal, coping with complaints from the organic movement, resistance, both from the plants, and from the organic movement (*laughs*) (well, I thought it was funny...) and so on?

And yet they don't. Doesn't this say something about "natural" remedies? They are what you might call a bit hit and miss.

In fact, I honestly believe that when people claim that something like this has worked for them, it's a one-off, lucky-for-them, low-pest/disease year, and quite coincidental: and has more to do with the way pests and diseases come in cycles, dependant on a very complex interaction of weather conditions, prey and predator numbers which affect spreading vectors (some infections are spread by insects) and other factors. 

In my opinion - and experience - it's also entirely feasible that when someone realises they have a problem in their garden, they get out the garlic spray, but they also attend to garden hygiene, by picking off/up diseased leaves, correct pruning, burning rather than composting of diseased material: they feed and water the plants concerned, to get them as strong and healthy as possible;  and they are probably on high alert very early in the year, having suffered the previous year, which means that they are far more likely to spot an infestation or infection as soon as it appears, and will deal with it promptly, thus preventing the spread.

And then they say "Ah, it was all to do with my home-made remedy, I shall tell everyone on the internet about the wonders of crushed moth balls mixed with aniseed" and, as is the way with the internet, their text gets cut-and-pasted into any number of other websites, until it becomes as "authentic" as anything else on the internet.

I do get this myself, by the way: the number of times I've spotted my own hand-written (if you see what I mean) text appearing on other people's websites, is hilarious! No, I don't get all upset about it - imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, as we all know: plus, there is absolutely nothing I can do about it, so there's no point crying and wailing. OK, it's a bit of a shame that I don't get a credit for it, or a link back here, but hey, it's the internet, and anyone creating original content has to accept that someone, somewhere, will steal it. Moving on...

So where does this all leave us, with our trees covered in pests and diseases?

My answer: If you "need" the crop, if you are relying on it to feed you, then use a proper, bought-in, chemical, spray.  If you don't "need" it, ie you just grow fruit for fun, or because it's nice, or because you enjoy being able to pick your own now and again, then put up with losing some of your crop to bugs, pests and diseases (who do, also, have to eat/live), and maybe just check your plants early in the season, keep them well fed and well watered, keep on top of your garden hygiene, and who knows, you might see a mysterious improvement in them, without having to resort to any sort of spray, natural or otherwise!

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Plum Rust - what to do about it

A question popped up recently about Plum Rust on a young tree: it was a question in four parts, so let's go through them one by one.

1) Firstly, what exactly is "Plum Rust"?

"Rust" is a catch-all term for a number of fungal infections, which show themselves in the form of brown dusty material on the leaves. Many plants suffer from various types of rust - trees, shrubs, herbaceous, bulbs, veg, you name it -  and the infections are usually specific to a particular genus, hence the names Plum Rust, Pear Rust, Hollyhock Rust, etc.

The symptoms usually appear towards the end of summer, and into winter, and take the form of brown dots, brown-orange patches, pustules, all sorts of lovely things, on the leaves: usually on the undersides of the leaves at first.

Often, the whole tree is affected, sometimes it starts in one place and spread across: sometimes only one or two branches are affected.

As it's a fungal infection, it is spread by spores, which float gently on the soft, winnowing winds of summer and autumn (said she, with her hair blown back off her face as though by a force 9 gale) so there is pretty much no way to prevent infection altogether.

The key seems to be in "managing" it: reducing the situations in which fungus thrives is a good start, and that means pruning to get the "open, goblet shape" so beloved of the RHS, who never seem to realise that out here in the real world, trees simply don't grow in the neat, tidy way, shown in their pruning illustrations.... anyway, prune out branches which cross each other, and which point inwards, in order to allow as much air flow as possible.

Yes, that does mean that you are reducing the amount of fruit it might bear next year, but it's better to have slightly less, good fruit, than to have a tree full of fungus.

The pruning will help to prevent pockets of still, moist air where a fungus could thrive.

Hygiene is also important, when dealing with fungus: when you have it, clear up all fallen leaves and burn them: don't compost them, or put them into leaf mold pens. (If you are not allowed to have bonfires, Also, check within the tree for any dead branches, and remove them. If the infestation is really bad, it's worth carefully picking off what leaves remain, as they are not going to be doing much in the way of photosynthesising, so they might as well join the others on the bonfire heap. 

2)  Having said "prune it into an open goblet shape, and cut out any dead wood", there is also the issue of silver leaf disease.

Traditionally, the books will say "only prune stone fruits in mid summer, to avoid silver leaf disease" but that's a bit of a simplification, for the benefit of non-gardeners. In real life, we sometimes have to prune at the "wrong" time of year, and that's when it's important to know the real reason behind these gardening rules.

In the case of silver leaf, it's wet weather that spreads the spores, so it's ok for professionals to prune stone fruits (ie plums, apricots, anything with one solid stone inside, rather than lots of pips) in winter, as long as it's during a dry spell. Which is not always easy to forecast, admittedly! So it's always safer to prune stone fruits in summer if you possibly can.

3)  The third part of the question concerned the fruit:  the owners had said "they were advised not to eat the plums, in the first year the tree bore fruit. Is that right?"

The usual advice is to pick off the fruit as it starts to form, for the first year or two of fruiting, so that the young tree puts its energy into rooting, not fruiting.

If the owners didn't do this, then they might as well eat the fruit, as waste it... unless the rust has also extended to the fruit, in which case they would be advised not to eat the fruit. 

4) Finally, we have a very reasonable question - Is there any any remedial natural spray besides the garden hygiene to apply in autumn?

Traditionally, spraying against rust infections is done at blossom time, in spring/early summer, and it involves chemical fungicides. In simple terms, no, there aren't any  "natural" sprays which will control it, especially this late in the year, by which time the damage is done.

In many cases, no control is actually necessary: the trees are about to lose their leaves anyway, and the RHS do say "many rusts of trees develop too late in the summer to have a significant effect on  vigour, even though the whole tree may appear yellow or orange in late summer due to the huge number of rust pustules on the leaves."

So don't waste time with garlic sprays, or banana peel sprays (*laughs*), just be sure to rake up every single rusty leaf which falls, and burn them, along with any other debris below the tree.
 

 

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Honesty in autumn

No,  not me saying "Now look, dear Client, your garden failed to live up to my expectations this summer, you need to let me do a crown lift on those trees otherwise this bed will NEVER SEE THE SUN AGAIN..."

I'm talking about Lunaria annua, the Annual Honesty which many of "my" gardens have. I say "annual" but properly speaking it's a biennial, which means that it takes two years to flower:  you get a small, nondescript plant one year, then the following year you get the full glory of the flowers - and the wonderful seed pods. Then they die, and from the seeds you get more plants: which also take two years to flower, which theoretically means that once you start growing them, you will have one year on, one year off, in terms of flowers. 

However, in the real world, some of the seeds don't germinate straight away, and some of the seedling plants do manage to flower in their first year: all of which means that once you get them in your garden, you are pretty much guaranteed to have them every year thereafter.

Personally, I don't grow Lunaria for the flowers, I think they are  nothing special:

...if I wanted flowers like that, I'd far rather have Phlox, which is a perennial, and which is available in a wider range of colours.

But once the flowers are gone, the plants set seeds, which are first don't look particularly promising: 

This is what they look like - right.

Nothing special.

An interesting shape, you could say?

But that's about it.

However, in a couple of weeks, the seeds will develop inside the pods - you can just see tiny dots, five or six per pod - and will become large flat things. 

Then, the two outer layers of the seed pod will peel back, revealing the white, silky, translucent inner membrane:

...and these are indeed a sight to behold, especially if you can get the light behind them.

It makes you realise why the other common name of this plant is Silver Dollars!

In some years, they "self-peel", but most years, they need a bit of help: if you leave it to nature, the outer layers don't de-laminate until the seeds are ready to fall, so the inner membrane is already a bit tired, and starting to rip.

This is one of those jobs which I always encourage the garden owner to do, because it's fiddly and time-consuming, and I always feel just a little bit guilty, when I do it for them.

(A bit like peeling the old bark from Himalayan Birch (Betula utilis 'Jacquemontii') which I simply cannot resist.... I do it furtively, when the Client isn't looking.... sorry, Peter!)

But it's well worth doing, because as a result, you get this fabulous shiny, almost glittery effect, which can last for several weeks, before the wind and rain destroy the delicate inner membrane.

And that's pretty much where we are now:  after a long, long spell of dry weather we've finally had some heavy rain, and some wind, and now:

... oh dear, they are starting to look quite battered and untidy.

This means it's time to heave them out: being biennials, they won't be back next year, so you can pull the whole thing out, and put them on the compost heap - it's safe to do this, despite their generosity of seed production, because the act of stripping off the outer layers allows the seeds to fall to the ground.

And there will be plenty of little seedling popping  up next year, I can assure you!

 

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