Tag Archives: peas

Preparation & Performance

Spursy Bed still winning Gold

This week I learnt that plans are afoot for the 2022 Open Gardens Day in the village. I have been told the date (confidentially), but as it probably needs to go through the usual committees and organisational debates, I am not allowed to say what it is. But suffice to say, we are all excited here at the Midlife Garden to think that we might be making our debut in the biannual village event. The Open Gardens Day is an opportunity to raise money for charity, while giving villagers the chance to enjoy the gardens of their near neighbours. But we all know what it really is: it is the Village Horticultural Olympics.

With the date set for next summer I was motivated to get going on preparation for big day. Initially, I needed to take stock of the current state of the garden. Is it under control? What has grown well and what has failed?

The mid-season performance review has not been positive. Yes, visitors to the Midlife Garden have been extremely complimentary on the state of the beds but, like a British Olympian crying over gaining a bronze medal instead of a gold, I see failure all around me. The broad beans that I did not tie up properly or keep weeded; the kohl Rabi that got eaten by slugs; and the kale that has struggled under the same onslaught, until I belatedly sunk beer traps. The late and lacklustre crops of cosmos and sweet peas and the negligible numbers of sugar snap and ordinary peas. It has not been a classic year. The review reads like the inquest into British Rowing. Ok, millions of lottery funds leading to five 4th place finishes and a lack of gold medals sounds might sound more serious in comparison to the Midlife Garden – but your opinion would change if you could see how the bindweed has clogged the echinacea or saw the total failure of this year’s Rudbeckia Marmalade.

While underperforming athletes are pointing to tough lockdown training conditions, in the Midlife Garden we have had to contend with the weird weather of a cold dry April, followed by a wet and windy May and then flaming June. Plants have struggled to adapt. But ultimately, I need to take a long hard look at my systems and procedures. I need to improve my funding and support for these plants and apply my experience to plan and monitor performance.

In short: I need to be more like The Old Man. Suddenly his insistence on slavishly doing things to a strict and regimented timetable seems laudable, contrasting with my approach which at times borders on laisser-faire.

But the impending announcement of an Open Gardens Day has provided fresh impetus in my gardening. In my thirties I used to run regularly, but rarely for the sake of getting fit: I needed a goal over and above the simple essential of BEING fit. Which is why I regularly entered half marathons and even one wet and windy marathon in Dublin (finishing time: 3 hrs 43 minutes, thank you for asking). Training for an event was what kept me focused and committed. So now, in a summer in which I have been, at times, going through the motions in horticultural terms, I find I have something specific to plan for, and I need to get going.

So, biennials are frantically being sown (a month late) and more hardy annuals are being purchased for autumn planting. It seems a long way off, but time will fly, and as Auden wrote:

“We are left alone with our day, And the time is short and History to the defeated May say alas but cannot help or pardon”.

Grow, Grow, Grow

I was as excited as any other birdwatcher when I read about the Bearded Vulture that has been spotted in the Peak District and Yorkshire. Also known as a Lammergeier, this is only the second time such a bird has been spotted in Britain this century. Which makes it almost as rare as a Cabinet Minister telling the truth. Or a Special Advisor admitting an error. It is thought that this is a juvenile Lammergeier that has simply got a bit blown off course – admittedly by a few thousand miles. The bird obviously thinks that we still live in a Europe of open borders and no distrust of foreign immigrants. Oh, the naivety of youth.

When I was a naive youth, the Lammergeier was top of my must-see list of birds on the occasions when our family French camping holidays took us to the Pyrenees. We saw lots of other eagles and vultures, but never a Lammergeier. It would be amazing to spot one, but I will not be making the trip to Yorkshire to try and see it. Even without the lockdown restrictions having been lifted (for those of us who abided by them in the first place) I will not be leaving the garden for any of length of time at the moment. Because this is the time of the year when the hard graft finally pays off. It is the time of the year when my parents would say that there was no way they could go on holiday, because the peas will need picking, then the beans, the courgettes and all the other veg that they grew on an industrial scale.

And I now understand their sentiments. The scale of my veg and flower patch is nothing to compare with theirs. Mrs B and I are not interested in the long hours of blanching and bagging veg which my parents engaged in, to enable them to freeze enough greens to see them through the winter. But we currently have more peas, sugar snaps, courgettes, kale, carrots and runner beans and french beans than we could shake a big Tory Lie at. Not to mention salad leaves, cucumbers and, this week, the first tomatoes in the greenhouse.

The sighting of a rare vulture in Britain is a relief from the other depressing news (although it also brought into focus the illegal persecution of birds of prey such as the hen harrier on nearby grouse moors). Being in the garden has also provided solace for me and Mrs B. The flowers are looking particularly fine at the moment and Josh’s Spursy Border is performing far better than I had any right to expect in its first season.

All this has happened not because we made any spurious promises or deadlines, or pretended we had seeds in stock when, in fact we had not. We did not double count plants or make up random straplines like “We will get digging done” or “pick, pick, pick”. No: we just got on with it.

And now, like the Lammergeier in Yorkshire, who must have been a bit tired after its long journey over half of Europe, we will take stock and enjoy the fruits of our labour.

We’re Gonna Build a Wall…

Onion defences

The major structural engineering works in the garden this spring have revolved around defence – or perhaps I should pronounce that DE-fence.  You see we are facing a crisis, an invasion from migrants.  Migrant cats.  They are sweeping across our borders destroying our bird life and threatening our gardens with their illegal activities, cat nip dealing and violence.  We must repel this invasion.

OK, not an invasion and not a national crisis. And no drug trafficking, but why let the truth get in the way of policy-making? And I guess cats have rights too. And while they are not actually destroying all the bird life they’re probably taking the occasional tit. But what these cats are doing is crapping in my well-tended veg patch. I say cats – it seems to be just the one, with a particularly poor diet, judging by the liquid nature of its deposits. But it leads to one of two consequences. Either I clear it up before tending the garden or, if I am too slow, I have to watch as my Labrador does her morning “poo patrol” and eats whatever feline faeces she can find.

I am not sure which I find more disgusting.

So the solution, to borrow an idea from across the Pond, was to BUILD A WALL. But not just one wall – more like a series of barricades which could be built without recourse to Congress or any other budgetary authorities. So, using some spare chicken wire, canes and fruit netting we have sectioned off the veg beds with instantaneous results: no more cat poo. The dog is disappointed – she still patrols the garden every morning on the off-chance, which reassures me that the cats have not been back. And the netting might even have kept the sparrows from eating the young pea plants too, so it’s a win-win.

Plenty of peas and no poos: success. We’re making the Garden Great Again.  Now, how do we get the cats to pay for the wall…

Pre-season training

Basil?!

We are into March. The days are lengthening.  The February seeds have germinated and are looking sprightly: the race to produce those early tomatoes has started and the chillis are up too.  We need to make sure they are in good shape for the summer ahead.

The change of month means that I can now allow myself to open those packets of veg and flowers seeds that advised sowing from March onwards.   Having a greenhouse is a boon at this time of the year, but before the seedlings graduate to this I have been starting some in the warmth of the spare bedroom before putting them in the conservatory which is no more than a giant leaky cold frame at this time of the year, but still marginally warmer than the greenhouse at night.

It’s not all seeds in trays, though:  I’ve sown a couple of rows of peas and sugar snaps in the raised beds.  The peas will once again be Hurst Greenshaft – The Old Man’s favourite.  I keep a picture on my desk of him proudly standing alongside the Greatest Peas Of All Time.  It is something to which I can aspire.  The key might be the soil – which was a friable fecund tilth at the old place: the result of decades of cultivation.  My one year old raised beds are composed of a thin layer of compost overlaying the claggy clay topsoil I bought last spring.  I have put some well-rotted manure in with the peas but I fear it will take many more years’ work before it gets anywhere near as fertile as the last place.

We’ll wait to see if their early form is good enough to ensure good performance this season, whatever the ground..

Jalapeno Chilli
Seedlings in Cold Frame
Chilli Caldero
Others have been busy in the garden (or bird bath)
Nicotiana
Pea Trench between late leeks and early broad beans
Cosmos sown
Back Bed with daffodils

Veronica or Veronicastrum Virginicum?*

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Let ’em Dangle

I read a good article by James Wong in the Grauniad this weekend in which he gave his four top tips for beginners in the garden. I never feel like I have a great well of knowledge about gardening, although I have friends who see me as the expert in gardening, in relative terms that is, because I actually plant stuff, grow stuff and harvest or cut other stuff at the end of the process.  Although I still regard myself as a beginner in this big green-fingered world, reading James Wong’s article made me think that perhaps, in the horticultural educational ladder, I would most probably be in a position to now graduate from beginners’ to improvers classes.

James Wong says persistence is key – to not be put off by things dying on you.  Well, I think I do that.  There have been times when growing veg this summer has felt like a Sisyphean task – as successive batches of chard and peas have perished on the raised bed killing fields like ranks of yeomanry heading over the top to be mown down by slugs, sparrows or simple drought.  But I have rolled that metaphorical rock back up the hill and actually made it stick on occasion to reap the benefits in plentiful courgettes and beans, amongst other things.

Second piece of advice is to avoid worrying about weeds, which are simply flowers int the wrong place.   Using new raised beds has been a real treat this summer, especially with the dry weather so there has been little or no weeding to be done, but I have taken James’s idea to one extreme by allowing some of the random seedlings that emerged from the mudslide of the great greenhouse disaster to flourish in the warm indoor beds.  So I now have a sprinkling of zinnias and Ammi poking through the sweet peppers and tomatoes.  Why not?

Tip number three is simply to plant stuff in the ground and not bother with pots too much.  This is something I could take heed of as I am the worst helicopter parent when it comes to germinating and growing seeds.  I put them in lovingly sieved compost in individual seed trays and then check on them everyday – perhaps every hour – until they are poking through.  Then fuss over them even more watering and watching until they are bursting out of the trays and need to be potted on or planted out.  Then – to my amazement – when let loose from their molly coddled world of shop-bought compost and careful watering, planted out in the naked earth, they flourish.  Like grumpy teenagers living away from home for the first time they suddenly take flight, get on with growing up properly and become sensible members of the community.  So why not sow more seeds direct into the earth?  It might be what they really want.  Perhaps I’ll try that…

And finally Mr Wong advises using Latin names for everything.  Just get out and learn them he says:  no one really knows how Latin – a dead language – should be pronounced so no worries there.  And by using the correct Latin name you can be sure of what you are buying rather than vaguely describing the blue one of this or that flower, you can be pedantically specific.  But as someone whose school coerced him into taking Latin O-Level (My fault: I was one of only a few who actually revised for the exam in the second form) and subsequently scraped a C grade at sixteen (a “4” in today’s exciting GCSE grading), I have never been keen on the language even in horticultural use.   Until recently I would have assumed that streptocarpus was a fish flavoured throat lozenge.  But I will perhaps try the Latin way more often.  Does that include more gesticulation when I speak, suffering wild swings of emotion and using the horn on my car with impunity?  If it makes the broad beans grow, I’ll give it a shot.

I may not have been happy with being made to do latin as a schoolboy, but if things don’t go as planned, it is better to laugh than to cry.   As a latin student might have said of my designated superiors at the last educational establishment I left:

“Eos si iocus non possint pedicabo…”

 

“What a Good Year for the Courgettes…”
Peas in our Time?
The Other Side of Summer
Indoor Zinnias…
…Accidents will Happen
This Year’s Models
Pump it up…Jersey Devil
Tamp the Dirt Down

 

*With apologies to Elvis Costello

Mid-Term Reports

img_20180808_084533092Deadline for reports was about three days ago but as I no longer have someone to swear at me if I am perceived to be late or include too many ‘gramatical errors’ (sic),  I have stuck to my usual report writing schedule, by submitting mine in my own time.

No More Bull Shit – herewith the mid-term garden reports.

Beans, Broad

A good start to the term, and working hard in the early weeks, they seemed to get lazy and did not capitalise on the good work early on.  The results were, frankly, disappointing with grade E across the board (or is it 1 now?)

Beans, Runner and Green

Runners and Greens have had a good term.  It is clear that MFL and PE are their strong subjects, and they have easily adapted to the European-style heat and the need to compete in hot weather.  They need to keep on, though as there have been signs of letting up in recent weeks and some of their work has started to look a little shoddy.

Courgettes

A truly memorable term for the Courgies, with early efforts, leading to excellent results to the point of being embarrassingly good.  I have rarely seen such excellent results with undoubtedly so much more to come.  Well done – a super effort.

Peas

Another one who looked to have settled into the new year, but seemed to become distracted and unruly, never really progressing.  It appears that there was some disruption with bullying by sparrows which might have been an issue.  The second intake of peas seemed to have settled this problems with Special Needs fleece being used to provide protection, but unfortunately the late start for these and lack of nursery education has meant lower than expected grades.

Potatoes:  Swift, Duke of York, King Edward, Sarpo Mira

Spuds have had a variable term.  Swift did do well to begin with, but could have done better with a more conducive setting as a lack of resources seemed to hamper development.  The Duke of Yorks have struggled too, with their results showing a wide fluctuation from 9 to 1 in grading.  It is too early to report on King Edward or Sarpo Mira.

Salad

In general salad has a had good term, although the dry weather has affected their ability to concentrate for too long.  Too often they have complained that slugs and other bugs are distracting them and hampering their progress, but when they have established a good working routine the work produced has been of a fair quality.  There is no doubt that they could do better if they tried, particularly the chard and rocket which have had a particularly disappointing term.

Tomatoes

What an excellent set of results.  Tomatoes have been a revelation this term.  They have been excellent individually and have also shown the ability to excel in small group work as sweet millions have produced some very impressive early results with the Jersey Devils promising to submit course work of very high standard.  Mrs B, the head of tomato assessment and monitoring has been particularly impressed with this years tomato cohort and they will undoubtedly be contenders for the the “most improved” prize on speech day.

Basil

Well done to basil on yet another excellent year.  Italian has been a strength of this year’s intake – “molto bene!”

Squash: Crown Prince and Blue Kuri Kabocha

Squash have been very active this term, bordering on the unruly, although they have seemed to settle into the new premises.  The work produced has been extensive, though it remains to be seen how focussed and concentrated this has been and how this is actually going to translate into favourable results: i.e. good sized ripe squashes.

Kohl Rabi

Kohl Rabi were late starters this term with a lack of nursery time leaving them behind other veg in the early years group.  Only time will tell if they are able to make this up but they are trying their best, with an A1 for effort, despite the distractions of cabbage white butterflies.

Kavolo Nero

Early work was hampered by the bullying sparrows while their later efforts have seen no homework handed in for weeks due to the destructive influence of cabbage white butterflies.  Between times there have been some excellent pieces of work and when the butterflies have gone there might perhaps be more good work to come.

Mixed Ability Class: Carrots, beetroot and chard

This has been the best ever intake of carrots.  They have been well-mannered and orderly and have delivered excellent results showing the way to beetroot and chard which have sadly failed all their exams so far.  Beetroot tried re-sits later in the summer but once again succumbed to exterior distractions.  Chard appears to be doing better in working towards some re-takes in the autumn for which we hold out high hopes. While this, along with the success of carrots shows that the standard of gardening is at times excellent, overall  there is a feeling that it “Requires Improvement”.

Next report deadline: some time in late summer / autumn-ish.

 

“Lack of early years education stunts intellectual growth”
Second attempt for peas
Heads of School material
Potatoes – needing to try harder
Kohl Rabi – late developers
Top of class
Kav Nero – showing signs of getting back on track
Mixed ability salads
Excellence in French and Running
First peas – failed to graduate

The Birds, The Birds

Male-Blackbird-Singing
Blackbird on a wire.  Well, fruit tree actually.

One of my former flatmates had a phobia about birds flapping anywhere near her.  I thought of her recently when we found a jackdaw in the shed when we were clearing out the Old Man’s place the other day.  One of my brothers screamed like a girl when he opened the door and onlookers would have been amused to watch four men in their mid-to-late 50s (I’ll be kind to my eldest sibling) flapping more than the startled bird as it – and they – tried to get out of the door.

Trapped birds seem to be a theme this week, as I found a black bird in the new greenhouse hiding under the basil and tomatoes.  I ushered the relieved bird to the exit and got on with weeding, picking out side shoots and cutting salad.

But then things got more sinister as, in a scene lifted from Hitchcock, I visited the greenhouse a few days later to check on my (now ripening) tomatoes.  The Sweet Millions are my little darlings – they are being produced in burgeoning numbers.  Under my careful direction they are my leading actors in the annual greenhouse summer blockbuster.  But the dismay and horror (the horror!) I felt when I stepped into the greenhouse, like Tippi Hedren into the old farmer’s house, to find a scene of devastation and lying in a corner, behind the basil, the red eviscerated remains of my cherry tomatoes.

Cut to the next scene as, with the symphonic score rising in a crescendo, I ran breathlessly from the scene, unable to scream or even explain what I had witnessed as I got into my old ford truck and drove away.

Ok, so perhaps I over-dramatise.  There were no dead bodies in the greenhouse – it was only a couple of tomatoes that had been eaten.  I was not so upset that I screamed but I did utter an expletive, which Tippi would not have been allowed to do on-screen.  Nor did I  jump into my Ford truck:  the only car in the vicinity was Mrs B’s Honda Civic.  And I probably did discuss the situation with the only sentient being in the vicinity – Ella the Labrador – as I tried to work out what had been eating my tomatoes.

She did not have much to contribute to the discussion.

In retrospect it is obvious, but in the absence of smashed glass, or birds impaled on the windows, it was not entirely clear who was harvesting the tomatoes twenty-four hours prior to me picking them.  It did finally dawn on me later when I saw another blackbird in the greenhouse.  This bird clearly knew exactly how to get in and out, and it’s motivation was obvious as the remains for more nearly ripe toms were left on the soil.

Birds have been a problem this year.  In addition to the usual attacks from pigeons, sparrows have destroyed my pea crop and the blackbirds had also had a good go at the blueberries and raspberries.  So now, in addition to the soft fruit being covered in netting, the greenhouse has netting draped over the roof and door to deter any airborne invasion.

The tomatoes are ripening nicely but I remain wary of flocks of birds gathering on the wires, in the trees, peas or anywhere near the greenhouse.

 

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The evidence

 

 

Going Soft or hard?

A long dry May was rudely interrupted at the end by wet weather which was very welcome in the garden. The veg beds seemed to visibly relax in the damp atmosphere and the plants all shot up as a result (except for the recalcitrant peas, of course).

Under foot the wet weather brought into sharp focus the new rules for the new house over what footwear should be used in which conditions. Like a new season in F1 racing there are fresh combinations of treads to be used when venturing out to the garden. Here they are:

  1. Hyper soft (slippers).  Should only be used indoors.  They are still occasionally used when it is very dry and you are only going on the patio or gravel.  This was a risky strategy initially because of the chicken poo that Agatha was leaving around. Now that she is back in her run, there is more opportunity for the hyper soft.
  2. Super soft (Crocs).  A choice of footwear that was mocked by my children when I bought some Croc-type plastic shoes.  Now they are noticeably in demand when the kids are home, as they are handy for nipping into the veg patch to get some salad or perhaps do some light watering (the shoes that is, not the kids).
  3. Intermediates (old trainers)  If heavier watering is required  and actual weeding these will take more wear and tear than the lighter Crocs.
  4. Hards (Hiking boots).  These have the grip and robustness necessary for the heavy digging and can see you through a whole afternoon in comfort.
  5. Wets, or Chunkies as they used to be known (wellies).  For the winter rain or summer thunder storms, wellies are still the standard for grip, comfort, and – above all – dryness on the vegetable circuit.

So the right treads for the right conditions – perhaps with a two stop strategy if you change from hyper soft to super softs to wear them to the shed to then put on your wets before taking the dogs for a walk. Woe betide anyone who gets chicken shit on their hyper softs and treads it back on to the living the room carpet.

There will be more than grid penalties for that kind of misdemeanour.

 

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“Gentlemen, start your weeding”

End of an Era

The snow returned on the weekend of the 17th / 18th March. This time it fell benignly and softly, covering everything overnight in a thick white insulating layer.

And overnight my father finally passed away: quietly and peacefully in his sleep. The falling snow created an atmosphere of tranquility and peace. His much-loved garden, the one that I had naively blundered around in and tried to maintain, was mothballed in a mute downy blanket. It seemed apt and the garden looked far more beautiful with its cloak of snow than it otherwise would do at this time of year.

The Old Man had become increasingly frail to the point that G had recently suggested that we might wheel him one last time down his garden.  I am glad we did not as the garden now – at this time of year – was no way for him to see it.  It was better that it remained in his mind as the veg patch on which he grew some of the best peas you are likely to see.

The creeping stranglehold of COPD had robbed him of breath and energy, and his ability to even stand, let alone walk was so diminished we were seriously thinking of trying to move him to external care in a hospice or community hospital. With this in mind it was a blessed relief when he slipped away at home, in a room overlooking the garden. The snow drifted down to cover the barren veg patch, the leafless trees and the ragged borders.  Instead all was softness and conformity as he lay quietly in bed, at ease for the first time in what seemed an age.

With his passing comes the end of an era.  He had designed and created this garden, alongside our mother and with the sometimes less than willing help of their sons.  He had lived here for 42 years.  It is difficult to imagine this 6.509 acres of Somerset not being under his control.  Even in his last 24 hours he was taking visitors and handing down instructions like the Pope or a Roman Emperor.  We waited in the kitchen while he talked to Aubrey about what he was going to do with the field this year.  He wanted to know from Jim how the garden was going, now that I had relinquished my role.  I spent a little time with him on that Saturday and was going to drop in on Sunday, but Nick’s phone call early Sunday told me it was not going to be the type of visit I had been expecting.

Instead we had to organise the confirmation of death which our good neighbourly GP friend did.  She trudged across the fields with her dog (The Old Man would have been amused by that).  The Funeral Director came to remove TOM.  I did not want to see this bit.  Dad was so peaceful in bed – I wanted that to be my final sight of him.  I had witnessed my mother leaving the house eleven years before – in a wheelchair – to die in hospital three days later.  Thankfully that indignity was not visited on The Old Man and I am pleased that he was able to pass away within sight of his garden – the garden that had given him so much pride and joy.

 

 

JMB Peas2
The Old Man and his legendary Hurst Greenshaft Peas

 

 

Big Greenhouse and excited labrador
Middle Garden and house
Lavender and Sun dial
Top Greenhouse
Pots. Hostas waiting for spring
Crab Apple with TOM’s bedroom beyond
Last leeks
Mariesii and lawn
Beech Hedge dividing Middle Garden from Veg Patch
Struggling Daffodils
Brussels Sprouts – where it all began for me
Boomerang Bed and Middle Garden

 

End of Term report

161009-21
Sunflower in the cutting patch

It’s that time of the year again when the evening chill sharpens, the leaves start to turn and we spend a fruitless Sunday morning trying to purchase Glastonbury tickets.  And it has been months since I delivered any sort of news on this blog.

Some acquaintances cannot understand the reasons for writing the rubbish I do on this page, but I find a certain sense of unburdening happening when I write.  Essentially this is no more than an open diary – in which I record what I am doing in the garden, as well as describing the antics of dogs and other companions as they illuminate my life.  If people want to read it, so be it, but having a readership of sorts does give me another reason to do it.  So as each year wheels around into another I am able to look back and build on my experiences to ensure that the next garden season will be better than the last.

So what has gone well this summer and what lessons have I learnt in the last couple of months?

My peas and beans were excellent, albeit briefly.  Next year I am promising myself I will really get the hang of succession planting.  A fortnight’s glut is not the sensible way to harvest these things.

The winter leeks were left too long and ultimately ended up like a small petrified forest with the texture of fossilised wood.  But the pigs seemed to appreciate them as they munched their way through the lot.

Elsewhere the purple sprouting, cabbages and brussels look absolutely fabulous, which is because of this year’s other wonder crop.  I had read about nasturtiums as a “sacrificial” plant to keep the cabbage white butterflies off the Brassicas and I could not believe the effect that they had.  While the nasturtiums were being lacerated, the cabbages, PSB and brussels went unscathed.  If I had been trying to cultivate a good crop of nasturtiums I might have been peeved at the shredding of the leaves, but there were still enough flowers to adorn the regular green salads – which were another success this year (an area in which I did manage to achieve some sort of succession, with salad still flourishing in greenhouse and garden).

Experience has helped me grow a good batch of onions – where the return of the Red Barron brought a good crop, that is storing well too.  The same goes for garlic – with enough to see us through the next year – and shallots, which I have not only harvested, but have also learnt to use in cookery to good effect, and not be too precious with them.

The decision to plant early or late came under scrutiny once again this year. The OM would warn against being too preciptate with my planting (“Too early for runner beans”) and – weirdly – this year there seemed some truth in his seemingly inflexible ways with regard to the tomatoes.  The early Shirley plants suffered from the extremities of cold nights and warm days and never recovered while the later Sweet Millions were excellent and we will still have a few more to harvest this week before they finally succumb to the colder nights and shorter days.  (Mrs B’s pressure to plant early tomatoes to keep up with our horticultural neghbours should, perhaps, be resisted).  The beans all did well but are another which could do with a second crop of late planters

The cutting patch for flowers proved to be abundant this year and next season, with a decent marketing strategy, we might actually sell jam jar posies and other bunches of proper British Flowers.

More recently I harvested the squashes which were a mixued bunch – but again, probably enough to see us through the winter with plenty of heart soups!  But teh stand out crop of the moment are the chillis which are still growing adn ripening in the greenhouse in abundance.

So next season will be so much better, but like a really good round of golf  it is never perfect. We will continue to practice and strive for perfection.

Red Barron Onions
Garlic
Shallots
Small crop of squashes
Pigs consuming greenery
Chillis: Hungarian Hot Wax, Bolivian Rainbow and Joe’s Super Long