There hasn’t been an update for two weeks and the harvests have been crazy…

So much food!

This weekend we said goodbye to the french beans, the wind did for the frame and so we pulled them up.

Last weekend we caged the chard and planted 10 cabbages (Rigoleto F1).

We also harvested 6 cauliflowers! Purple and white, I had the best dinner this weekend of cauliflower cheese, roasted carrots and green beans. There were the first leeks of the season. The caulis, leeks and kale were bought as plugs and have been so worth it. Ma who is usually against my spending has suggested that plugs for brassicas might be the way to go until we have a greenhouse or polytunnel!

After the harvesting, which took over an hour! We tidied up and did a bit of weeding on the squash beds. Then called it quits, I need to go a bit more often in the week to keep on top of the raspberries and cucumber..

Over the next couple of weeks we have lots to do. For harvesting, there are raspberries, the last of the carrots, cucumbers, cauliflowers and summer squash, the winter squash – I think at least another 10 to 12.

For additional planting for autumn/winter, we have another 10 cabbage plugs (Duncan F1) ordered as well as 40 winter lettuces (valian, brighton, winter density and navara), which should all be here and in before we go on holiday at the end of the month. Before we go away, I need to sow a bunch of stuff (black radish, radishes, coriander, pak choi, japanese greens, mustard and mixed oriental leaves) to see what we’ll get.

After holiday, we’ll need to plant all the bulbs we’ve bought (mixed chrysanthus dwarf crocuses, nutans blue bells, white and blue dutch irises, mixed alliums and tulips – double late double romance and fringed gorilla), I’ll probably move the gooseberry bushes to the new bed, move the compost bins and move the tomato beds next to the rose garden. I want to get some more rhubarb crowns for the space vacated by the gooseberries. We’ll also have to start on the changes to the winter squash beds once they are harvested and find somewhere to sow the broad beans and plant the garlic, onions and shallots for over wintering. Then there is moving the blackcurrant bushes and setting up two new raspberry beds, sorting out the support for the boysenberry, painting the shed and sorting out the roof and a water butt and finally making a patio next to the rose garden and pond.

Winter is a slower time but there is a lot of work to do, next year as well as growing all the things, I want to get on top of making compost. Part of me, the optimist part, thinks that after next season work on the plot will calm down but the part of me that’s had a plot for four years, thinks that I’ll just find another challenge, like a greenhouse or an asparagus bed. That’s the thing about gardening, the work is never done.