Through the garden gate--September

It's a month or two since I contributed to Sarah's 'Through the garden gate ' post, but things are moving on in our new garden, so I thought I would share a little bit of  it with you.

September and October are lovely months in the garden as the colours change. The trees beyond our garden are taking on their autumn colours and every day the leaves are changing from green to yellow or red. Our new garden is starting to look better as we spend time working on it. I have planted up borders and this month I have been so much enjoying seeing some colour. 

I bought a hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight'. It has lovely greeny white flowers which are now starting to take on some pink tones.

We discovered another local garden centre  recently which had a sale of perennial plants. I bought a lovely yellow/orange  crocosmia which has a dark ring in the centre. This is brightening up my new border at the moment and contrasts well with a dark red grass.

Also in the border I planted some hardy geraniums which I brought with me from our old garden when we moved house. I have no idea of their name, only that they have bright pink flowers. They have no flowers at this time of year but the foliage is starting to go red and goes well with the other plants around them, giving the border a lovely autumnal look. 

 In another bed I have planted a pink Japanese anemone. It has been brightening up the border for a few weeks now.

Our garden is a little bit sparse yet, but I know it will improve as plants grow and fill out the borders. There is a lot of work still to be done, but next year it will look much better.

Thanks to Sarah at 'Down by the Sea' for hosting this monthly post.

Where did summer go?

I've read so many gardening and allotment blogs recently where people have been struggling with time to get all the work done. And that makes me feel so much better about my own allotment, which has also been neglected because of my own busyness this summer.

With all the preparations for our house move in June followed by the settling in, unpacking boxes and organising building work to be done and planning a new garden project (more about that on another blog post).  I feel that I've missed out on summer this year. Trips to the allotment have all been a mad rush and only the bare essentials done. The weeds grew and started taking  over. My plans to sow successional rows of lettuce and radish didn't happen. Neither did the sowing of purple sprouting broccoli and spring cabbage.

Its not all doom and gloom though. Earlier in the year before I got too busy, I planted potatoes and onions. I sowed seeds--peas and beans, brassicas, sweetcorn, courgettes and flowers. And although I didn't get as much in the ground as I would normally, there have been some good harvests.

At the moment I'm still emptying potato bags, cutting climbing beans and the tomatoes are all over the greenhouse. The sweetcorn is now ready for picking, there are cabbages, kohl rabi, and climbing beans. The greenhouse is full of ripening tomatoes. I have also had enough green tomatoes to make some chutney. Peering through the weeds I can see brussels sprouts, flower sprouts, kale, leeks and beetroot. Plenty of stuff for the winter months.

Last weekend I took myself down to the allotment to do some weeding. I cleared away the sweet peas and weeded the bed. I finished off clearing away the peas and broad beans and weeded that and other beds too. There are still some massive weeds in the kale bed and cabbage beds, but that's for another day. Soon I should have some time to spare to get down and start the autumn clear up. I'm looking forward to that.

Blackberries down the lane

The blackberries started ripening early this year and there have been so many too. Last year I missed out on picking them down the allotment lane, by the time I got there everyone else had got there before me and there were none left. So this year needing to stock up my freezer supplies I was determined to get my share of them. Accompanied by my grandson, whenever we went down to the allotment, we finished our allotment work by walking down the lane to fill a box with blackberries. My grandson took his rake with him so he could pull down branches for me to pick. The best ones are always just out of reach. I was the one who got scratched filling my box, he just ate the ones he picked.

On the plot I've been picking blackcurrants, red currants and gooseberries. Luckily they are in a net cage which keeps the birds off, as I'd left it a bit late before I finally got around to picking them. But I still think I lost quite a lot through them dropping off.

I was pleased to get a few more red currants this year. The blueberries were a disappointment but I think again I'd left it late to pick and many had dropped off.

My fruit freezer is well filled up now and will keep us going in fruit for the coming year. Now I need to start thinking about making jams and fruit gins.

Pulling up the onions

The onions have had a lot to put up with this year.  Soon after planting the sets, the moles moved in, that must have been a bit traumatic for them being pushed up out of the soil before they were ready, but they seemed to recover and carried on growing.

Then as time went on the weeds arrived and took over. Now I know that onions don't like competing with weeds, they like their own space, but we were busy moving house and so the poor onions got neglected, but they continued to grow.

At this time of year it's now time to harvest the onions. All around me on the neighbouring allotments I can see racks of onions drying out in the sunshine. So I decided it was time to pull my onions up. I have to say that although I did try to do a little bit of weeding in the onion patch over the last few weeks, the weeds won. So when it came to pulling them up, I had great difficulty in finding them amongst the weeds. But I managed and I was amazed to find big onions.

I laid them out to dry in the sunshine on the greenhouse staging which we dragged out from its summer storage behind the shed and also in the cold frame.

And so, despite all the trauma of bad growing conditions, the onions have done well and seem as good as in previous years. I'm pleased with my harvest.

Clearing out the pond and bog garden

The allotment pond has been much neglected in the last few months and every time I have been down to the allotment recently I have looked and thought I really must do something about it. The plants in the boggy garden around the pond needed deadheading and the weeds were growing tall around them obscuring the pond. The pond itself was completely covered in pond weed so that I couldn't see if the tadpoles were still living in there.

My time on the allotment has been limited recently so the most important jobs have been getting vegetables in the ground and looking after them.  But I recently found myself fairly up to date with the jobs and having an hour to spare I decided to tackle the pond.

I started by weeding around the pond and deadheading the plants. The irises, trollius, candelabra primroses and marsh marigolds had all gone over, so they got cut back. But the lovely pink lythrum was flowering away and I was so pleased because I only planted it last year and then earlier this year decided I had planted it in the wrong place so decided to move it. At the time I wasn't sure if I had done the right thing, but it seems to like its new place.

The rodgersia has lovely red leaves, but is still quite small. This plant should grow really tall when it gets more established.

Once the weeding and deadheading had been done I could find my way to the pond and using a small metal tea strainer I scooped the pond weed off the surface of the pond, leaving it on the stones at the side so that any little water creatures could get themselves back into the pond easily.

 I put this water soldier in a few months ago.  When I bought it from the garden centre it was quite small and I nearly bought a couple more.  I'm so glad I didn't, it has grown quite big and I have since heard that it can be quite invasive and may not be suitable in a small pond. So I will watch it carefully.

The pond and bog garden looked much better after this tidy up and peering into the water I could see that the tadpoles were still there swimming around. I was even more delighted when I spotted two huge frogs next to the pond and when I moved and disturbed them they both took a big leap into the pond and disappeared. At least I know there is plenty of wildlife in there.

Competing with moles

When we first took the allotment on  4 years ago we soon became aware that there was a mole on the plot. As well as finding little piles of soil around the plot we also saw the earth moving.  That was quite weird.  Most of the time  the piles of soil were at the edges of paths and next to the shed so we weren't too bothered.  But the mole has now decided to take over one of the big beds where this year I have been growing onions.

I often used to find soft spots in the bed as I was planting or weeding and sometimes there would be a mole hill, but never any damage to plants. This year I have been growing onions in the bed and 

soon  after I planted them I found some of them had been disturbed by the mole. After a while I decided to admit defeat as more mole hills appeared in the bed. I thought that was the end of the onions. But remarkably they seem to have survived and they have been swelling nicely the last few weeks.

This week I have planted the first lot of leeks. I always plant one lot at this time and another lot after the onions have been lifted. The first lot are usually ready for harvesting in the autumn and the others are ready after Christmas.

I always enjoy planting leeks, making a hole with the dibber, popping in the leek seedling and then topping up the hole with water. This year though it has been quite a challenge as the bed is now riddled with underground mole tracks and the ground is quite soft in places. Some of the planting holes must have gone down a long way underground as when I topped up with water the water just went down and down and down. I wonder how the mole felt about having his home flooded!  One leek seedling disappeared underground with the water. Well despite all the mole holes I still managed to plant the leeks, carefully choosing firmer ground. I just hope they don't get dug up.

Through the garden gate--June

June was a busy month for us as we moved house. No time for gardening, but now I am getting settled in our new house I am gradually starting on the garden.

So maybe you need a tour of our new garden. The front and side gardens are quite pretty and have been well maintained. There are shrubs and a few flowers. In the front garden by the front door is a hydrangea.  There are lots of flower heads yet to open. I am waiting to see what colour they are.

There is a giant scabious in the border which I have been cutting to bring in the house and add to my shop bought flowers. I don't normally buy flowers, I have always had enough to cut from the garden, so I will have to get planting so that next year I will have plants for cutting.

We brought lots of plants from our other house and I have the chance to go back for cuttings as our daughter now lives in our previous house. This could take some time though. I would like to plant up the front garden with more flowers to give it a more cottage garden look. 

One plant I have not been able to identify is this. It smells lovely and I am wondering if it is ginger mint

The back of our new house needs some work doing. It is just a lawn and it slopes. But we have plans, it is a project we will be working on for some time.

Holly the cat is settling into her new home and enjoys sitting at the kitchen door looking out at her new territory.

This monthly 'Through the garden gate' post  is hosted by Sarah at Down by the Sea