Clearing up the plots

As the days get shorter, we are now spending less time at the allotments. There are still plenty of jobs to be done though, but we tend to go down just for a couple of hours with a specific job to do without having our usual lunch or cups of tea.  Beds are gradually being cleared and then weeded and manured. It's a busy time trying to get them ready for winter.

The peas and courgettes have all been cleared and the climbing french beans will soon be finished with. The cabbage beds are quite full of produce still.  Kale, Brussels sprouts, sprouting broccoli, red cabbage and Calabrese will keep us going through the winter.

The summer cabbage and cauliflowers are now all done with and we have planted some garlic where they were in one of the beds on plot 8. In the roots beds there are still plenty of beetroot and some tiny celeriac. They will probably be left there for a while.

As they start to look messy, we pull up the flowers in the cut flower beds. From a distance they look good but close to we can see that most of them are not good enough to cut now. The dahlias however are still going strong and we are cutting as many as we can before the frosts finish them off and that may not be long off now.

At the weekend we cleared all the tomatoes out of the polytunnel. I was glad to get them out and the place cleaned up because I think there are mice in there. We have found holes in the soil and teeth marks in the tomatoes which had dropped off the plants onto the soil.  It looks very empty now and we are thinking about what we can grow over the winter.  At home I now have tomatoes all over the place, so I need to make something with them.