Autumn seemed to arrive on the 1st September, colder nights and longer shadows. The courgettes have developed mildew on the leaves but I will leave them in place for a while longer as they still seem to be producing courgettes, which is great as the colder weather has made me won’t to make soups and courgette soup is a family favourite. I decided to dig up all my remaining potatoes and store them in my Jute bags to make space for the pumpkins and squashes that have been rapidly outgrowing their containers in the greenhouse.
This completed I continued to tidy and weed the vegetable garden. I planted out some very late lettuce and made sure to surround them with an ample circle of Slug and Snail Deterrent.
I still have a lot of spinach another soup favourite and masses of Raspberries which I am picking on a daily basis. I must make some room to plant out some Garlic and make space for the kale that I am growing. I had to pull up all the original kale plants as they had a bad attack of cabbage white caterpillars. The tomatoes in the green house are slow to ripen but then I remembered a tip I had heard it was to put a banana skin near the tomatoes and the chemical that is released from the banana will help the tomatoes ripen. The good thing is that it is working.
I am also going to sow some Calendula ( pot marigold) for next year I love to have these bright little flowers in the vegetable patch and dotted around the garden.
In the flower borders I am continuing to dead head and collect seed for next year. The Asters are the star flower in the herbaceous border with the sedums coming a close second. We have Aster novi-belgii and Aster frikartii ‘monarch’ and Sedum spectabile ‘carmen’ I seem to have inherited some plants this season that were not there last year. One is the very large Rudbeckia Herbstsonne and a pink flower Chelome obliqua . Perhaps the seed was dropped by birds or they came along with another plant. It’s always fun when this happens.
