Through the garden gate--November

The garden is slowly settling down for the winter. As I look around there is still colour to be found, from stems, leaves starting to go over and flowers still struggling on. There were some amazing leaf colours from trees which I gazed on briefly only for them to have blown away a few days later.

I have done an autumn tidy up. Just a little one as I like to leave a lot for the wildlife over the winter. But the garden looks better for it. I love to see the seed heads of plants gone over, a reminder of their summer display.

There are still some plants which are making an attempt at flowering again, little flashes of colours amongst the foliage-- a bit of blue lavender and campanula, pink geranium and as for the Rudbekias, well they are still going strong as is the fuchsia in the front garden. The grasses are looking good, this time of year they give some welcome colour and interest to the garden borders.

I'm feeding the birds most days now and they are often to be seen perched on the fence in the morning waiting for their food. In the back garden there are groups of starlings, pigeons, doves and magpies with the occasional blackbird. In the front garden the sparrows and blue tits are active in the shrubs. 

I bought some white hellebores this week to make some Christmas pot displays on the garden bench, they seem to be becoming a popular plant for this time of year. They are lovely.

I am linking this post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post

Apple harvests

When we were on holiday in Cornwall In October we visited Trelissick gardens who were preparing for an apple weekend. The apples were set out in bowls on shelves in the old stables. There was an amazing number of different varieties. We checked them all out but couldn't find any which resembled our allotment apples which are a type of pippin. They taste like a Cox's pippin but are quite red. There was a wonderful smell of apples as we wandered around the stables looking at the displays and I thought of the apples back home on our allotment apple tree.

We've had a lot of apples this year on our allotment apple tree. Just before we went on holiday we wondered whether to start picking them, but they didn't seem ready to come off the tree when we tried twisting them so we decided to wait until after the holiday.  We returned from holiday to find the ground underneath the tree full of apples which had fallen off. Most of these were badly damaged or half eaten by birds, so we left them there for the birds to finish them off.

There were still plenty left on the tree so we set to work on picking them, wrapped them in newspaper and stored them in boxes  as we always do. They are an eating apple and I find that they don't store well so we eat as many as we can before they go off.

Over at our old house where our daughter now lives, there is a Bramley apple tree, which again has produced plenty this year and my daughter is happy for us to take as many as we want. Bramley apples store very well, so I have taken a good number to store in the shed. They will keep for quite some time. 

At this time of year we often see boxes of apples outside people's houses with notes on for people to help themselves. Then there are the friendly neighbours who call round with a big bag of apples for us. I usually accept them with a smile but groan inwardly. I don't need any more apples I have enough of my own.

Through the garden gate--October

We were on holiday in Cornwall  for the first two weeks of October, so not much was done in the garden during October. We had some lovely fine autumnal weather whilst we were in Cornwall, but the day we left was the day the storms arrived. The sea was rough, the waves were lashing against the rocks and the day was grey.

Back home the garden was full of leaves and looked overgrown, but on closer inspection it wasn't as bad as I thought, a few plants had gone over and there weren't as many leaves on the trees, but many plants now have their lovely autumn colours.

Despite the stormy weather the sunflowers are still standing, they are quite tough and difficult to get out of the ground now. I'm quite surprised that some flowers just keep on growing. There's a passion flower growing up an obelisk which keeps producing the odd flower. There are spots of yellow in the borders from the rudbekia and a white valerian which has been flowering all summer looks very happy and shows no sign of giving up.

We have been very busy since we got back from holiday and I haven't done any weeding or tidying up, but soon I will find some time to get out and do some work.

 One job I have been doing is planting spring bulbs in pots--mainly crocus and narcissus for the garden tables and hyacinths for indoor display. The hyacinths are now tucked up under the bench in the shed for a few weeks until I can bring them into the house.

I have also been emptying pots of summer bedding plants and planting them up with autumn displays of cyclamen, violas and grasses.

We visited quite a few gardens whilst we were down in Cornwall, one of them being the Lost Gardens of Heligan. They had an absolutely magnificent harvest display in the shop area.

I am linking this post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly  'Through the Garden Gate' post.

Through the Garden Gate--September

The garden is beginning to look more autumnal now. Leaf colours are changing, leaves are falling, flowers are going over. Autumn colour seems to be earlier this year, perhaps it's due to the hot summer we had. It's just over a year since we started work on our garden and I'm keen to see what it will look like through the autumn. This time last year we had only planted the trees and shrubs, but now the beds are packed full of plants so there should be much more colour.

The leaves on the witch hazel have been gradually turning red through September and the hostas are starting to go yellow.

The sweet peas have done well, but their growth started to slow down so I decided it was time to cut them down. The flower bed looks a little empty now without them.

We've had some very strong winds recently which have blown leaves from the big trees down beyond our garden all over the lawn. I've grown some massive sunflowers this year and their yellow and brown heads have been peeping over the fence. They have been much admired by neighbours. Unfortunately one of them became a casualty to the high winds and fell down onto the flower bed. I'm wondering how long the others will stay upright for.

I am linking this post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post

Clear up time

The last couple of weeks  has brought some extreme weather to our area--high winds and very heavy rain.

When we got to the allotment last week, we found one of the climbing bean wigwams had toppled over onto the path. For a few weeks now it has been leaning precariously and did fall over once before but Richard managed to hoist it back up into place. But this time I decided it was trying to tell me something--that it has had enough and was time to clear it away. There were very few beans left on it so it was cut back and thrown on the compost heap. The other beans still in the ground are slowing down so I'm sure it won't be long before they join their friend on the heap. The sunflowers which were growing in the same bed as the beans were leaning over too so those have been cut down.

 I cut the flowers off and those which were looking good are now in a vase at home. The rest of them have been left to dry out and provide a tasty treat for the birds.

Looking around the plot, there is a lot of clearing up to be done now that autumn is here. Although I am still harvesting some vegetables, there are others which have finished and can now be got rid of. Our job on the last couple of visits has been to clear some big weeds from around the plot boundaries. This weeding gets neglected a lot of the time when we are busy with other jobs, but I was determined to get them cleared. As areas were weeded we mulched them with shredded bark. A big pile of bark has been left for the allotment holders to help themselves to. There seems to have been only us using it, but we have found it really useful--and cheap of course! It has been hard work all that weeding and spreading bark, but it looks much better now and should keep the weeds away for a little while.

On the next visit to the plot this weekend I was intending to start weeding the veg beds, but there were lots more vegetables to be harvested and cleared away. The courgettes are slowing down now, I picked a few little ones and pulled up some of the plants. We also picked sweet corn and climbing beans and I found several cucumbers hiding under their leaves in the greenhouse.   I now have a big bag of cucumbers in the fridge. I finally managed to get more of the veg beds weeded. We're starting to see bare soil again.

The apples are looking lovely and will soon be ready for picking which means I need to find boxes to store them in. They will soon be all over the shed.

 There is no end to the jobs at the moment, but we are off on holiday soon and want to get as much as we can done before we go.

Cape gooseberries

It's always nice to grow something new especially when you don't know how the plant is going to develop. Earlier this year an allotment neighbour gave me a small plant which she said was a cape gooseberry. I have never grown this before so didn't know how to look after it. I repotted it into a larger pot, put it in the greenhouse, watered it regularly and watched it grow.

It grew and grew and then papery fruit cases appeared on the plant. The fruit cases start off green then turn a pale straw colour as the fruit ripens. I wasn't sure when would be the right time to pick them but the plant helped me decide as they kept dropping off. As the plant grew there were more and more fruit which dropped off all over the greenhouse staging and onto the floor.

I collected them up and tasted them. They look like tiny baby tomatoes and are a pale yellow/orange colour. They have a sweet taste but there was no enthusiasm from my family for them, so I just continue to admire the plant. The fruit in their papery cases are in a little bowl in the kitchen and I dip into it from time to time, but like my family, I too am not that impressed with them.

Through the Garden gate-- August

I'm very late doing this post, I don't know where the time went, but as have I taken photos I'll show you how our our garden has been in the last few weeks. Click on the photos to get a larger image.

It's seems like summer has gone now. But that hot weather was just a bit too much at times, so the rain was very welcome. And the threatened hose pipe ban was lifted before it even started. It was such a relief not to have to keep watering.

The newly planted raised beds around our seating area have been lovely all summer and just as I thought they had come to an end--whoosh along came some beautiful autumn colour. We can't see this part of the garden from the house or the patio so it is quite a surprise sometimes to come round the corner and be faced with all that colour.

These are a lovely crocosmia with a dark red centre and look lovely with the blue veronica, and salvia.

Geranium 'Roxanne' and Perovskia. The geranium has been flowering all summer. I think I'm going to have to move it though to the front of the border. At the back you can just see a pink climbing rose 'Zephirine Drouhin' which was new this year. It flowered early on and I was pleased to see it has put on another show.

This Hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight' is beautiful. I planted it last autumn and it has really taken off this year.

Erigeron planted in a pot, still going strong.

I don't know what this flower is, I found it growing in a pot of grass which someone gave me. It's like a small gladioli.

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