19 September
It’s been a disappointing year for onions - some varieties have failed completely whereas others have produced a poor crop despite this all the onions have now been gathered up. There was little chance of any more outdoor drying as the weather turned wet. A summary of our onion harvest can be found here.
22 September
At last the tomatoes in the garden greenhouse are turning red. They are over a fortnight behind those in the plot greenhouse. We’re not sure why there has been such a difference. Did the smaller plot greenhouse warm up faster or did the pear, apple trees and grapevine offer more shade in the garden greenhouse? Read more here.
All the potatoes have now been lifted. Strangely The variety Premiere seems to have been the variety most favoured by slugs - other varieties haven’t had anything like the same amount of damage. For a full summary of the results of our potato harvest see here.
The weed control fabric is still working successfully. We have removed the fabric from the carrot bed to make harvesting easier and in spite of lots of rough tugging the fabric remains intact to be used again. We’ve also removed the enviromesh from the carrots as danger of carrot fly damage should have now passed. We’re hoping that by removing the mesh early that it will stay cleaner than it has when left in place over winter.
So far we are pleased with our carrots in spite of some having produced flower stems.
25 - 30 September
The cherry tree that we ordered from Orange Pippin which we intend to grow in a container arrived exactly when they promised it would. The variety is Stella grown on a dwarfing rootstock - Gisela 5 - which should make it ideal for container cultivation. It is a two year old tree and looks really healthy. It’s been potted up into an air pot. Fingers crossed that it will go on to produce masses of cherries. To read more click here.
The apples from the tree/overgrown cordon were all harvested. They were definitely ripe and needed very little persuasion to come off the tree. We always seem to harvest the best of our apples from those growing in the garden.
The indoor cyclamen that I grew from seed have been amazing. I expected them to die down completely over summer but they have continued to grow and seem to have had a few flowers for most of the year. Maybe they are one plant that has thrived in the cool temperatures. They spent all summer on the greenhouse floor where they have fallen victim of slug and snail attack so some leaves had been munched I found a couple of snails sleeping on the outside of the pots and some tiny baby snails on the leaves. I couldn’t bring them into the house with any stowaways so the plants were tidied and repotted before taken up their autumn/winter position on a windowsill inside the house. Read more here
