Winter salad growing

As the weather has turned colder and growing slowed down, I have moved my salad growing into the cold frame. I sowed some Sarah Raven winter salad mix a week or two ago and am pleased to see they have germinated.  I also planted some  seedlings of a frilly leaf mix bought from the garden centre.

 In the garden beds the red salad bowl lettuce is still growing well and the mustard is enormous. I tend to pick the smaller leaves as they look more attractive in a salad, but I think the larger ones are more peppery.  These have kept growing all summer, I keep wondering how much longer they will all last. I'm sure the cold will get to them soon and they will just flop. There is still plenty of watercress and just one small lettuce which I think is a butterhead variety.  Indoors I have started growing pea shoots again.  I think it's time to check out the garden centre to what salad leaves I can grow through the winter.

Plans and projects at the allotment

We've now got the most important work done on our new allotment, which means we can have a bit of a breather and ease up on the heavy work until we start with next year's projects.

My husband has now finished building the raised beds in the main part of the plot. There are 12 of them. This may seem a lot but we share the plot with our daughter so we are feeding 2 families on the produce we grow.  We also wanted to have as much if not  more growing space as we had on our old allotment.

 There are two beds where we are growing brassicas--red cabbage, brussels sprouts, sprouting broccoli, cauliflower, kale, spring cabbage and swede. Another two beds are planted with leeks and garlic. Three beds are going to be for growing fruit bushes and rhubarb. Last weekend we topped up the remaining five empty beds with manure which will rot down over the winter.

 

Also at the weekend we went over to the old plot where we cleared away the pumpkins, squash and french beans which had all gone over. We dug up the rhubarb, brought it back to our new plot and planted it up in one of the new beds. We still have  blackcurrants, gooseberries and raspberries to move to the new plot. We have the old plot until the end of the year, so we have time yet to clear the beds completely and move the  fruit bushes.

Back at the new plot my husband has been putting some cladding on the lower end of the fence to keep the weeds out.  He is also digging a border along the front fence where we want to grow some climbers and shrubs to give us some screening as it is very open and exposed at the moment.  It's not an easy job though, as there are lots of big boulders, stones and bricks below the surface.  We are getting quite a collection of rubble. I'm sure it will all come in useful in other areas of the plot eventually, but it's hard work shifting it and trying to dig. The cladding for the fence came from the old cabin which we demolished a few weeks ago. It's come in very useful for all sorts of things and there's still lots of it. Even if we can't use it all there are plenty of other allotment neighbours who have got their eyes on it.

Our plans for next year are to sort out paths between the raised beds and to clear the top end of the plot behind the grow house. The area behind the grow house is like a secret garden and my daughter and I love to spend time there cutting back the brambles and nettles, each time revealing a bit more space.  We haven't decided yet what we will do with that area.  We may have a wildlife area and perhaps one or two fruit trees.

 

Autumn projects

As soon as autumn  arrives I start to think about  projects.  Crafty projects like knitting, sewing, and baking. They are all rather cosy, domesticated activities but I tend to think of autumn as a cosy season; a time to stay indoors when the weather is too bad to go out gardening.

I'm always full of ideas for Christmas presents or decorations to make, nature projects to do with the grandchildren and much more. Although I have to say that thinking about what I would like to do is often as far as I get. 

Well we're into October now and  I'm doing quite well so far. I'm already knitting myself a sweater, and have plans for other things to knit like sweaters for the grandchildren or wrist warmers for when I'm out gardening.  I've also got some blackberry, raspberry and rhubarb gins started for drinking at Christmas. I won't post the recipe on here, if you want to know how to make it click on the link above to read my last year's blog. The rhubarb gin is a new flavour this year, but it's made in the same way. I added lemon zest and ginger. Ginger goes really well with rhubarb.

I'm feeling quite pleased with my latest nature craft project too, it's an autumn wreath. I got the idea from an article in the Sept/Oct issue of Land Love magazine.   Some of the things in the article I didn't have so I adapted it to use other plant material which was readily available from the garden or nearby hedgerows.

I used a soaked oasis ring because I find the mossy or wire wreaths a bit fiddly to use and I was short of time. It's much easier to stick twigs into oasis than wire them onto a mossy ring.  I used hydrangea heads and astilbe seed heads from the garden, rose hips, hawthorn berries and ivy berries from the hedgerow down near the allotment. I also cut some small sprigs of oak from our tree in the garden to fill it out.  I was surprised how colourful the finished result was. It should keep for a few weeks, but I can probably replace anything which goes over from time to time before the oasis finally falls to pieces.

I wasn't sure where  to hang the wreath once I'd finished it, my Christmas wreaths are always hung on the front and back doors, but I wanted this one to go somewhere in the garden.  I thought about hanging it on one of the garden gates, but finally decided on the shed. The shed is one of my favourite places and I can also see the wreath from the house.

I'm used to making Christmas wreaths so the idea of doing an autumn one was quite appealing and a little bit different.  It's a lovely way to enjoy the fruits and colours of autumn.

Autumn tidy up

This week we've had some lovely fine weather and I've been able to get out and do some gardening.  Not allotment work but garden work for a change. The allotment has taken up a lot of my time recently and much as I love being there it's been lovely to get away from it and back to the garden.

I pottered around in the sunshine with the cat and the birds for company, and wrapped up in a thick sweater and scarf with a mug of coffee nearby I was in my element. Fortunately the cat hasn't found out how to catch birds yet!

I find gardening in the autumn really satisfying work. Sweeping up leaves, clearing away debris, weeding. I love the autumn tidying up process.  I cut back any messy plant material, but leave seed heads for the wildlife to feed on during the winter. The astilbe and crocosmia seed heads are quite attractive throughout the winter and look good not just in the garden but also in flower arrangements. I'm not too hasty in cutting back as some foliage takes on some lovely colour through October. The hostas are looking good at the moment as they turn a lovely golden yellow. Soon they will flop and look really messy and that's when I cut them back.

This week I've cleared the raised beds at the top of the garden of vegetables which have finished, leaving the salad stuff which is still growing. I'm now planning what to do in those beds next year. I might use them for any veg we won't have room for at the allotment, or I might grow flowers and have a cutting border.  I will still grow salad crops, it's so easy to just pop down the garden to pick a few leaves just before a meal.

The sweet peas haven't done very well this year, so I cleared them away cutting off the ones still remaining.  I put them  in a jug on the garden table meaning to bring them in the house when I'd finished gardening, but they got left there. They still looked good viewed from the house windows.

Muddy at the allotment

 

Last week we made a lot of progress at the allotment. During the week there was soil delivered for the plot holders. It was not the best topsoil but when it's free you can't complain and with a bit of manure and compost added it will be fine. So at the weekend we were barrowing soil to our plot for our raised beds. Fortunately the soil was delivered to the car park just outside our plot so we didn't have far to barrow to.

The weather has been really wet recently which has hampered our attempts to do any work. The clay soil becomes very slippy when wet and just sticks to our boots.

The growhouse is finished, it now has a sliding door. It even has guttering and water butts. With all the rain we have had recently the water butts are now full. We may not need to water our crops but at least we can clean our wellies!

We also have two new raised beds complete with soil.

The plot still looks like a building site but we are making progress

Harvest flowers

I've had a lot on my mind this week. It was all about saying I would do something and then wishing I'd never said I would. It was all about doing a display for our Harvest Festival at church.

When it's Harvest time at church the different organisations  are always asked to decorate a windowsill or area of the church. I was asked to do the porch. I spent all week thinking about colour schemes, looking around the flower shops to see what was available, looking around the garden to see what I could cut, looking through magazines to get ideas. I asked a friend to help me who was good at flower arranging.

I wanted to do something that represented autumn.. So I thought about autumn colours and autumn in the hedgerows. I collected berried branches for an autumn harvest. There was hypericum, rose hips and a shrub dripping with berries which I found at the allotments but I don't know what its name is. There were seed heads and hydrangea. We finished off with some pears and apples arranged amongst leaves to look like windfall apples and pears.