Late Summer Sun

Gosh what a year it has been.

I know that we love to talk about the weather but as a gardener (can I call myself that now?) I think about the weather all the time - will there be enough rain or do I need to go water? Will there be too much rain and do I need to fret about slugs eating everything. This week I am obviously thinking about this lovely sunshine and how much better I feel with some real vitamin D in my body. Although it does make working in the kitchen quite tricky, we have had to come up with some clever ways of keeping cool. It is also the first time that I have watered the garden since June, there are quite a few small seedlings in the ground that were planted out in the last few weeks and these small plants need a little help while they are settling in. Looking at the Met Office app it looks like I won’t need to worry about watering next week which means this heat will, while lovely, be short lived.

I went way, way out of my comfort zone this week as we had a little photo shoot at the garden, I tried to ignore the camera as much as possible and just use the time to deadhead all the flowers in the garden but at one point Ashleigh said ‘For Gods sake will you smile!’ so I had to pose a little with the watering cans. Will post a few pics on social media soon so that’s something for everyone to look forward to.

The garden is at its peak right now, every bed is full with produce to harvest now or later in the year and there are loads of trays sat ready to plant out when anything in the beds finishes. On Saturday 8th I was at the garden by 8.30am so I could get some weeding done before this crazy heat kicked in, I pulled all the cucumber plants out of the polytunnel as they had stopped producing and immediately filled the spaces with lambs lettuce, purslane, coriander, cavolo nero and rocket. This year I have put so much time and effort into the forward planning - succession planting - and it really is paying off. There are some spaces in the garden where the third crop is now growing and will grow overwinter. As long as I make sure plants are covered during the winter frosts (and the caterpillars don’t eat too much) we should have a fair amount of produce over the next season. Leeks, Broccoli, Chicory (3 types), Celeriac, Beetroot, Swede, Radish (Mooli & Black Radish), PSB, Squash and Salad.

Seed saving is something I am going to work on as the season progresses - the picture above shows some easy plants to start with, sweet peas, calendula and nasturtium (although the nasturtium will probably get dried and used in the kitchen rather than sown in the spring). I have some chard plants that are and maybe some beetroot that I will leave for seed. Its all a learning curve but one great thing about Real Seeds is that all the packets come with instructions of how to save seeds for next year.

There are a few projects that I need to work on over the winter to help the garden next year, I want to build a table for outside the polytunnel - somewhere to leave the seedlings when they are ready to go out and a space I can use to sow seeds which isn’t the kitchen table. I also have a lot of old bins and water butts around the garden that need to be fitted to drain pipes or positioned in better places to actually catch the rain water. Paths need to be covered in a layer of wood chip and the shed needs a massive tidy up. I am already looking forward to settling down with a notepad to write down all the seeds I need to buy and I am counting down the days till I can order/plant the spring bulbs. But not yet…. Gosh I need some more patience.