It had to happen eventually as we couldn’t continue the spell of months with below-average rainfall. I suppose the rather wet end to September set the ball rolling and now the pattern has set in it doesn’t know when to stop. Of course, being a gardener I’m never happy about the weather conditions, and whilst I’ve complained about the lack of rain, the recent wet weather means all the prunings at the allotment due to be burnt on bonfire night will be well and truly soaked.

As you can see from the above graphic October finished the second wettest of the last 13 years. It’s also been a lovely mild October too finishing as the second mildest since 2010 leaving the record still held by October 2017.

At the allotment, the wet weather penetrated well down into the ground and it has been possible to get some winter digging done. Hopefully, all the rain over the last few days won’t have made the ground too wet to get more beds dug over.

October also brings an end to the main harvesting season. We still have vegetables growing but these will be harvested as and when we need them. Vegetables such as leeks are better left in the ground and dug up as required.

We’ve still got some cabbages and other brassicas growing which will hopefully survive the late autumn and winter weather. We don’t have anywhere to store them at home so we’ve no choice but to leave them on the allotment at the mercy of the weather.

Last year we tried sowing some autumn sweet peas and they turned out pretty successfully producing flowers well before our regular spring sowing. Sue had collected lots of seeds from this year’s plants so we could have another go at autumn sowing.

I also planted our remaining winter onion sets in modules because I really don’t like throwing onion sets away. We might have some gaps in spring that these can fill or perhaps we’ll just have to squeeze them in somewhere  However, my big mistake was not to cover the seeds and mice found the sweet pea seeds so I had to do some resowing this time covering the seeds with plastic lids. The sweet peas germinated well and reached the top of the plastic covers and so I removed the covers. The mice came back and dug out the sweet pea seeds even though they had all germinated.

Some seeds have survived and all the seedlings are now covered with environmesh to try to keep the mice at bay. So far, after a few days, this seems to be working. I will have to sow another tray of seeds to make up for the ones that the mice have eaten.