Autumn Jobs

I took advantage of a relatively dry day to get on with some garden jobs I raked up half a dozen sacks of leaves from the Green to make leaf mould, finished clearing and mulching the roses, weeded the asparagus and rose beds and tidied up the home brassica plot.  Whilst doing the last of these I harvested the smaller cabbages for pickling.

The care for the roses has been inspired by my college course where we have discussed ways of limiting black spot damage.  The roses haven’t suffered too badly in the past, but all have some degree of infection, so if I can reduce this next year, then we may be in a position to take some hardwood cuttings of the nicer ones this time next year.

Indian summer

After a week away and some catching up in the office, I took advantage of the glorious weather to get into the garden and cracked on with a number of jobs that have been bubbling under on the “To Do” list.  These included mowing, planting the elephant garlic, weeding the asparagus bed again, checking the brassicas, finishing clearing up the growbags and pots that had hosted the blighted tomatoes (a couple have started to re-grow, so I’m giving them a little time to see if we can sneak a late harvest) and potting on some strawberry runners to get a strawberry bed started on the allotment.  I harvested the first of the Kalibos cabbages and this looks absolutely splendid.

 With the cabbage weighing in at the thick end of 2lb we’ll get plenty of meals out of it and the glorious weather at the moment should be helping the others to mature like this one.

Kalibos cabbage

The main job was to powerwash the back patio to clear out the moss and lichen as well as clean up the stones.  When this dries out tomorrow I’ll brush it down and will then transfer the various plants and cuttings that have been on the table to the cold frame so that we can have a sitting space again.  No doubt the sun will disappear just before we have chance to use it, but we live in hope.

A Bit of Sunshine

As the weather has been a bit brighter over the last couple of days, I have been able to catch up on tidying up the garden ready for the autumn.  As the sun broke through I took a few snapshots.  The vegetable beds are looking good and over the next couple of months, these will come into their own as we have autumn/winter crops growing here.  The brassicas are doing nicely, although the purple sprouting broccoli has rather swamped the Minicole cabbages.

Brassica Bed Aug 2011

The Kalibos cabbages, which were well set before the purple sprouting broccoli was planted out are doing much better.

Kalibos cabbage

The mesh has proved invaluable over the last couple of years in keeping out cabbage whites, but the recent wet weather has brought the slugs and snails out again, so there is some damage from them, but the plants are robust enough to cope with that now.

Lynn’s parsnip bed is looking good, so we should be fine for Christmas Dinner.  In addition the leeks are as good as we’ve had for a couple of years and a late sowing of Little Gems is looking promising for autumn salads.

Parsnips

Leeks and late lettuce

On the floral front, the front garden is looking better and the yellow/white and blue colour scheme is starting to develop although the blue provided by primulas and rosemary is not so clear at this time of year.

Catching up and Carrots

Despite a bit of a spurt of effort in the garden a couple of weeks ago, there is a feeling that the garden is slipping out of control as the continuing miserable weather has meant that desk-based (and other inside) jobs have taken priority.  However, a couple of better days at the end of this week encouraged some weeding, pruning and mowing.  We can even see out of the bedroom window again, having got round to giving the wisteria another haircut.

The carrots in the home roots bed have been rather disappointing this year, at first we got very low levels of germination and then the seedlings were rather swamped by the neighbouring parsnips.  The first few we harvested were also quite badly forked and split – no problem for immediate use, but no chance of keeping.  The forking had roots running very close to the surface so I wonder if this was down to the plants searching for water back in April/May when it was dry and we were watering to keep things alive.  The last batch however, looked rather better as shown in the examples below.  It will be interesting to see how these compare with the container grown ones that we will be harvesting next week.

Last of the garden carrots

 

A summer’s day

We have been working on tidying up the garden over the last couple of weeks and as it was a sunny day (at last) I took some garden photos including some shots of the dahlias grown from the saved seeds.

Montage of dahlias

The dahlias did not come true to the plants from which they were collected, but are a lovely mix of colours, so we will definitely repeat this exercise next year.  However, we’ll get the seeds going somewhat earlier so that we can get a feel for the likely colour before planting things out.

Given the tomato disaster at the allotment it is nice to have a back up at home and a variety that we haven’t grown before (Tamatina) is looking very good.  They have grown on nicely, look fairly productive and have quite a good flavour so this may be a variety that we use again.

Tamatinas in a bed

Tamatinas in a tub

The overview of the garden is also looking quite good – as long as you’re not close enough to see the weeds.

Back garden late August 2011

Re-planting

We got a good batch of tidying up in the back garden done today and planted out the Pak Choi and Little Gem plants that Lynn had got going a couple of weeks ago.  These were planted in the spaces left by the sugar snaps and onions that we have already harvested.  This is the first time that we have made a serious attempt at getting follow-on crops going in the garden.