Tidying up

This time of year is quite an untidy time in the garden. Leaves are all over the place and as fast as you sweep them up there are more to take their place.  The borders are full of the the heads of dead flowers and wilting foliage. It can be really damp and murky too. Clearing the vegetable plots results in boots caked in mud.

Fortunately my obsessive tidiness in the house does not extend to the garden. Here I am happy to see summer flowers fighting for space, tumbling over paths and lawn edges. In the autumn the dead flowers take on another beauty with golden tints to their leaves and interesting shapes with their seed heads.

Untidiness in the garden is also good for the wildlife. Seed heads and hollow stems provide homes for insects which then provide food for the birds. Much as we love to compost our leaves we find it impossible to keep up with the constant sweeping . Around the garden most of the leaves are left, they tend to get blown under hedge bottoms and into corners where they become homes for more wildlife like hedgehogs, frogs and toads. I find that the leaves on the lawn blow away onto the borders. I clear them up gradually through the winter or early spring. But where the paths and drives are covered in leaves we sweep up as they can get slippy.

This week I have been sorting out the cold frame which gets full of all my plant cuttings.  I have a number of echiveria plants in pots around the garden. They grow well outside in the summer but need protection in winter.  I've tried different places to store them over winter like the front porch and the allotment growhouse.  Last year I put them in the cold frame under cover and they survived, so I decided to do that again this year. I have also put some pot geraniums in there to see if they survive. I bought an aeonium this year at a plant sale. This is too tall for the cold frame so I have wrapped it in sacking and bubble wrap and put it in a sheltered corner.

One area I do clean up in the autumn is the shed. As the lawn and hedges get their last cut the mower and hedge trimmer are packed into a corner of the shed. Shelves are sorted and tidied, the jumble of canes put into some sort of order, the plant pots are cleaned and packed into boxes under the bench. The floor and bench  are swept and given a quick mop with Jeyes Fluid. All is neat and tidy, but not for long, a gardener's work is never done!

Enjoying autumn

I often think that autumn can get a bit overlooked as a season.  By the end of September many shops now are  displaying Christmas goods and gradually the preparations for Christmas start to take over. But autumn beauty lasts well into November and Autumn can so easily get lost in the run up to Christmas.

A couple of weeks ago we visited RHS Harlow Carr. It was a birthday treat for me--a walk around the gardens and lunch in Betty's Tea Room. We often have the grandchildren with us when we visit Harlow Carr, but not this time, so instead of visiting the Tree House, the Log Maze and the Log Ness Monster we were able to go anywhere we wanted.

The arboretum was a good place to go since we wanted to take in the season's colours.  We wandered along the path going further than we had before on our visits. We hadn't realised the arboretum extended as far as it did. Back in the main part of the garden the main borders were still looking good even though the summer flowers were over with. There was plenty of colour and structure from the grasses and seed heads of the dead flowers. Around the main gardens there was some spectacular colour from specimen trees.

We paid the customary visit to the kitchen garden which was looking much like our allotment with some brassicas and salad still remaining and empty beds prepared for the winter. We noticed that the big pumpkin and squash beds were now empty. Where were the missing pumpkins and squash? We found them in the greenhouse looking very colourful.  Having visited Harlow Carr in December a few times I'm sure that they  will form part of the Christmas displays. We'll be back next month to check them out.

Tree cutting on the allotments

There was a lot of tree cutting work going on at the allotments last week, organised by the council. A row of 4 sycamore trees at the back of 4 plots including our plots 8 and 10b were cut back to provide more light to the vacant plot behind. Two of the trees were  cut down and the others had the canopy raised. We were pleased because although they don't cast much shade on our plots they were a nuisance because of the leaves and seed pods.

It has made quite a difference to plot 8 by opening up the top end and giving us more light. We are now able to see over the fence to the vacant plot which is quite big. The council hope to divide it up into 4 smaller plots so we might be having new neighbours soon. Unfortunately the grandchildrens secret woodland den is not secret anymore. If you click on the link you will see how it used to be.

Although the area has been opened up more it is still not possible to use the space for growing.  We can keep it as a wildlife area and having acquired several thick pieces of tree trunk I'm sure we can make something of this space. I think the grandchildren will be able to use their imagination to create another play area or little woodland garden. I feel a project coming on!

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.

 

Autumn treasures

When our children were young I always used to take a polythene bag out with us when we went on walks.  This was to collect treasures.  You know the sort of thing, shells and pebbles if we were going to the beach, pine cones, leaves, conkers, etc on country walks. Our children have grown up now and probably outgrown that habit of collecting things. But I don't seem to have, because I still collect things when out walking.  On the other hand maybe it was me all the time who wanted to do the collecting.

I love everything about autumn, the colours, the falling leaves, the spider's webs in the hedges, shiny conkers, walking on crunchy beech nut shells, the seed heads of  summer flowers, berries in the hedgerows. And so I am often to be seen at this time of year, whether it is just strolling back from taking the grandchildren to school, on longer walks, or down at the allotment, clutching a handful of brightly coloured leaves, a bag of conkers, seed heads, rose hips, hawthorne berries.  In fact just about anything which catches my eye and looks interesting.

I press the leaves to preserve them, they can then be used for craft activities with the grandchildren. This year I have decided  to make some Christmas pot pourri so I will have plenty of natural ingredients to hand.  I might spray some of them gold.

They look good also left as they are and simply arranged in a bowl  next to a vase of berried branches for an autumn display. I have a table in the front porch where most of these 'treasures' are displayed. It's like a nature table and it changes with the seasons.

Autumn jobs on the allotment

As we move into Autumn, the work on the plot changes. No more is there a rush to get things in the ground, no more sowing, planting, staking and netting. Now we are harvesting our produce, clearing the ground, tidying up and manuring. Now is the time to start thinking about those jobs we didn't have time to do in the summer, like laying paths, cleaning out the shed, clearing that overgrown patch of ground.

The leaves are starting to fall from the big sycamore trees which overhang both our plots. Soon I will be gathering up the leaves. That's reminded me that I need to sort out the leaf bin. I recently found bindweed growing in it coming from the plant which is growing along the fence between ours and the plot next door. After I have cleared out all the bindweed roots, I will give the bin a turnover to see how well composted it is. I hope to be able to use the leaf mould to cover some of the beds over the winter. Then I will start to add this autumn's leaves to the bin. The compost bins need turning too and the manure bins will be topped up.

This week I have been pruning the gooseberries and blackcurrants. I managed not to get too many scratches from the gooseberries.  Before I tackled the pruning I first pulled up the nasturtiums which had been planted behind them to climb up the fence. They had given a lovely display through the summer but it was time for them to go and they were getting tangled up in the fruit bushes. They were easy to pull up but left a lot of seeds behind, I think we will be seeing them again next year! Having got rid of the nasturtiums and as many seeds as I could get hold of I could then see how well the climbers were doing which we had planted last year to try to cover the wire fence.  The honeysuckle, ivy and clematis are scrambling away along the fence,  the cotoneaster has berries on it which is providing both food for the birds and some welcome autumn colour. Once the fruit bushes had been pruned I weeded the fruit bed. It looks very tidy now.

There is plenty of autumn colour from the apple tree on plot 8. The tree has done really well this year after it's re staking and pruning last year. The cut flower beds are also providing colour to the plots, but they are coming to an end now. Soon we will be pulling them up.

I'm always sad to see summer come to an end, but once we are into autumn I love the colours and changes that the season brings. I love the clearing away of all the dead plants, preparing the beds for their winter sleep and having a good tidy up  It's still a busy time yet as the autumn clear up continues, but soon there will be time to slow down,  time to rest and reflect, time to think ahead and plan for next year.

Rose hips, sloes and a lovely walk

According to those who know these things, this year is a bumper year for foraging. Well there are certainly lots of blackberries about in the hedgerows. I always pick the blackberries from the lane down at the allotments. This year there have been lots and I also found some at the top of plot10b where we haven't cleared yet. I've made a mental note not to cut these down when we eventually start to clear this area.

My freezer is quite full of fruit now from the raspberries, rhubarb and gooseberries grown on the allotments this year, but I managed to find room for a few pounds of blackberries.

I mentioned before on my blog about how I like to make fruit gin and vodka with the blackberries, raspberries, and rhubarb from the plot.  The one thing I've also been wanting to make is sloe gin and as  I haven't found any sloes in the area around the allotments, we had to look elsewhere. So on a lovely sunny afternoon recently Richard and I set off walking in the direction of our local scout camp where I had been told there were plenty of sloes. It was lovely to get out walking on such a beautiful autumn day, it's quite a steep walk, but the views are fantastic. As we walked up the lane we noticed that the hedges had been cut, so if there had been any sloes here there weren't anymore. There were plenty of rose hips though, so I collected those I we walked. I like to dry these for Christmas decorations, so I gathered a bag full, leaving some on the bushes for the birds.

The path went through the scout camp and onto the fields, where we spotted what looked to be sloes in the hedge. We weren't disappointed, we picked nearly 2lbs of them. I was well equipped for foraging with plastic boxes and bags.  My rucksack was a bit heavier as we set off back over the fields.

The sloe gin is now prepared and will be ready for Christmas. I also made damson vodka using damsons from a friend's garden and gooseberry gin with allotment gooseberries, which at the moment looks a bit like frog spawn. I'm sure it will taste good.