picked this week

still picking runner beans - and hoping there's no frost
two small cucumbers
rocket and chard - but slugs have eaten the lettuce
cabbages - should have hearted up and been picked last winter so rather a long wait for them.

picked this week

with the threat of a frost for last Friday, we set about clearing up a lot of delicate crops.
quite a few runner beans still, the first leek from this year's sowing
not a very good beetroot harvest- they've not grown well at all. carrots are a reasonable size but not many of them - must set more seed in future.





bumper apple harvest though





lots of un-ripe tomatoes, chillies now strung up to dry

and pumpkins taking over the kitchen windowsill.

Tomatoes and their blight

We've suffered from tomato blight for years.
Always made sure the damaged plants went in the council's re-cycling bin not our home compost bins, moved where they were grown, but nothing helped and blight seemed to get earlier every year.
This year we decided to grow less plants and keep them in our small glass greenhouse and even smaller plastic one. Tomatoes have grown bigger and better but when we went on holiday we removed the cover of the plastic greenhouse and they seem to have picked up the blight spores then. Even so, it's been the best year we've had for tomatoes in a long while.

frost

after all the fuss and panic clearing tomatoes, chillies,beans, peas and apples, covering parts of the garden with fleece, picking nasturtiums and marigolds while still in flower - NO FROST!! though it's definitely colder than a week ago. the beans were still flowering this morning though some of the tomatoes don't look too well. will leave the fleece in place - over the last pumpkins and inside the greenhouse - as keeping plants a little warmer might give bigger veg.

panic!

heard via twitter that snow had been forecast for here, for the end of next week. didn't entirely believe this, so checked BBC weather who are certainly predicting frosts and night time temperatures down to 4 as early as this weekend. SO, today we brought all the large pumpkins in - still small ones left so keeping fingers crossed for them - and the ripened chillies. want to get the apple trees cleared as soon as possible - today was too wet - and need to keep an eye on the forecast, will probably clear tomato, pepper, aubergines before weekend.

picked this week

exotic sort of harvest this week - chillies, aubergines, peppers amd tomatoes



the only apple from last year's new tree and the only peach









brought two of the pumpkins in to ripen on the windowsill

runner beans are still cropping - and more importantly still flowering for now


probably the last of the peas

enough rocket and chard for salads

and some surprise potatoes of rather variable size

September garden - vegetables

last winter's January King cabbage hearting up at last!



brussels sprouts











leeks








baby aubergines in the greenhouse

September garden - flowers

a rather purple and orange flowering autumn. fuchsias, verbenas, phlox vegas lights and montbretia, calendulas and rudbeckias

sowing seed

seems a strange time of year for it but we've been sowing seed this last week. some radish into a small patch of cleared ground. all year round lettuce, apollo spinach and offenham flower of spring cabbage in seed trays. hope to remember to set all year round cauliflower and advantage cabbage in a week or so. all brassicas are for overwintering. the others should crop later this year with luck.

picked over the fortnight since holidays

a few exotic sort of veg ripening now - our first baby sized aubergine, first respectable sized pepper, chillies and courgette.

waiting for us on return from holiday - marrows! forgot to tell my garden-watering neighbour about the courgettes.




lots and lots of cherry tomatoes, thought the plants are looking bedraggled now.

new side shoots off the summer broccoli



and lots and lots of beans