carrots

not exactly a bumper crop of carrots. this is all we have this year.those on the left are maincrop, fullsized carrots: those on the right are Amsterdam forcing mini-carrots.

wildlife

a day with lots of wildlife in and around the garden. several flights of geese have passed over today. a family of long-tailed tits visited again. started pruning back the birch tree in the back garden and found more ladybirds in it than I've seen all summer - some red with black spots, some yellow with black and one red with white spots. the cabbages are still crawling with caterpillars despite my efforts with a soap spray - I don't really want to kill off all of them as I like butterflies, even cabbage whites,just don't want the caterpillars.

also found these strange creepy crawlies - not sure if they are eggs from spiders or butterflies, or cocoons or what.

picked this week

lots and lots of runner beans, alderman peas -some very dried out which I've saved for seed, a couple of courgettes, one radish,a pepper,windfall apples, more broccoli side shoots and have brought in one of the pumpkins to ripen in the kitchen.

wind

the corn is rather battered this morning due to wind overnight. putting up stakes and twine to keep it standing. shouldn't be long till it's ready to harvest.

strange fruits

3 varieties of cucumber- from left - crystal lemon, marketmore and sweet crunch


some of the greenhouse plants are growing strangely - probably due to erratic watering and no fruit been picked while we were on holiday.the cucumbers are rather short but fat and some of the courgettes are growing unevenly.

strange-shaped courgette

caterpillars

have a lot of damage from cabbage white caterpillars on the brussels sprouts at the moment. they've been able to munch their way unhindered through a lot of the leaves while we've been away on holiday.I'm now trying to reduce their numbers by spraying with a soap and garlic spray - it does seem to work to a limited extent so long as I use it frequently.there are less cabbage white butterflies around now - mainly seeing speckled wood - on the verbena bonariensis.

things that have done well without us

a lot of things have continued to grow well while we were away. the runner beans are still fruiting wildly - though some have grown a bit too large and are going to be saved for seed. also,very unusually, will be saving some pea seed, from the aldermans, - these were hardly picked for the past fortnight and some have dried out on the plants - hopefully home-grown seed will give a better crop next year.

the rhubarb is still growing well

one of the halloween pumpkins is starting to ripen and change colour. the other is still green but the skin appears hard so have cut this.

the corn is growing tall and cobs are starting to develop

the chilli plants were moved outside for the holidays and despite the rain seem to be doing well

and the roses have grown a lot without us to keep them in check