We’ve had our first chilly mornings of the autumn this week. Early on Friday morning, the temperature got down to 2.9°C (37.2°F), and then on Sunday morning, even lower, falling to 1.7°C (35.1°F). That’s our lowest temperature since 08 April this year when the temperature fell to -0.3°C (31.5°F). I’m guessing a few places will have had a keen frost. We’ll have to see if our dahlias survived the cold mornings but in any case, I think it’s about time we lifted the tubers and put them somewhere frost-free for over winter.

The week got off to a wet start with 19.0mm (0.75in) of rain over Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. There was certainly no point visiting the allotment on any of these days as the ground was already very wet when we visited on the last Sunday in October. In any case, we had other jobs to do which Sue has covered in her blog post “No gardening this week”

However, I have made our first gardening purchase for next year. I received one of those emails from Sutton’s Seeds, a company that we occasionally buy seeds from. They had an offer of Autumn Bliss raspberry canes for £1 each but stated that the offer was only valid for 48 hours.

I had a quick check around a few other gardening sites and it didn’t seem like too bad an offer. I’ve ordered 12 canes which are scheduled to arrive before the end of December. I’ll have to make sure we have enough compost to fill some large buckets to plant the canes in when they arrive. I can be absolutely certain that the ground at the allotment won’t be suitable for planting in by then.

I’m planning on them filling up this bed next to our strawberry plant runners. I don’t think we’ll be moving these runners that were planted in late summer and autumn this year. I think we’ll leave them to grow on and produce another strawberry bed. Some late raspberries growing alongside the strawberries will give us a nice new little soft fruit area. That’s the plan anyhow.