3 October
The bed has been prepared for planting the over wintering onions sets that we hope will arrive shortly. We are going to use weed control fabric to try and keep this bed as weed free as possible. Onions don’t like too much competition from weeds which also create a damp atmosphere around the bulb that can lead to rotting. We haven’t used this method of weed control with onions before so hope it will be as successful as it seems to have been for other crops..
4 October
Despite poor pollination of the cobs - probably due to the wet weather we had a reasonable crop of cobs. To read more visit my blog post here.
5 October
It’s the time of year for adding to your collection of spring bulbs so we visited the garden centre to add to the varieties that we had already bought online. Read more here.
6 October
The bulbs destined for the blue and white border have been planted in the ground but the ones meant for the front garden bed have been planted up in pots and will be set into the bed later when I can tell where the spaces are. I don’t want to plant them on top of the bulbs already planted.
8 October
We have recently installed a new pond filter and needed a means of disguising it and so I came up with the idea of creating a living lid. Three plastic trays have been seated in a frame the sits on top of the walled area that encloses the filter and each had been planted up with sempervivums and sedums. The idea is that three trays are easier to lift off than one large tray when the filter needs cleaning. Also when being lifted, one large tray would have been more likely to break under the weight of compost and gravel. To see more photos click here.
9 October
Although much of the work on the plot is now clearing beds for over winter, we are still managing to harvest some fruit. With frost predicted I thought I’d better pick to five quince that actually managed to survive to maturity. The quince tree had lots of blossom and was full of promise in spring but like the pears the young fruitlets fell victim to our appalling summer weather.
The weather also seems to have confused the Victoria plum tree which has managed a second cropping of plums. We noticed that a few flowers formed at a time when the first fruits were ripening but we didn’t expect them to produce fruit! To read more click here
10 October
For the first time I have managed to get an orchid to flower again. The orchid that my sister bought for me last Christmas is now flowering - more on my blog here
15 October
The onion sets and some of the garlic for autumn planting have now been planted on the plot. This year we are using weed control fabric to try and suppress any weed growth in between what we hope will be our growing onions. For more click here.
Although we have had a slight frost it appears to have been selected in choosing its victims. The courgettes have been badly hit but strawberry flowers were untouched.
25 October
We now have several types of fruit trees planted in tubs in our garden - a peach, a nectarine, an apricot, a kiwi and a cherry. All are very precious to us and so to give the root ball more winter protection each of the tubs has been wrapped in several layers of bubble-wrap. More on my blog shortly.
All the trees will be left outside over winter.
We have also begun a major clean-out of our garden greenhouse and the summerhouse has been put to bed for winter. I can’t see us sitting out in the garden ‘til next spring arrives.
