Goodbye Summer.....

It's been a busy week or so, with the kids back at school I've been busy catching up on indoors jobs that had fallen by the wayside over the Summer. Unfortunately this left me with no time or motivation to blog. Thankfully, I'm getting on top of  my jobs and life is becoming more routine again *sigh*.

Squirrel returned and, despite our netting them, savaged two more corn. This meant we just had to go ahead and pick the last two or risks losing them. This did mean I could pull up what was left.

I topped the bed up with some compost, manure and fertiliser and in went a couple of young rainbow chard plants and then 3 cavolo nero. My brassicas have been pretty ravaged by caterpillars so I decided to cover this bed up to avoid these getting damaged.

I  now regret not getting finer netting because what I bought  over the Summer really didn't keep the butterflies off. I will buy the proper stuff next year. In the meantime I cobbled this together and layered up several nets in the hope that this might work. Sometimes cutting corners doesn't pay off.

The beds are going through a gradual transition into their Autumn/Winter incarnation.

Whereas the other two beds have or are being planted up with greens for the winter, these two beds are being wound down.

The one on the right has a squash that is coming along, fennel that I have left to flower and cosmos that almost dominates the whole bed (is actually just one plant!). On the left, I'm waiting for some tomatoes to finish ripening.

Once empty, I will sow green manure in one. Mainly to try and keep the weeds from overrunning the bed.

In the other (my experimental bed, experimental because I haven't a clue as to how well things will grow). I have sown half of the bed with green manure and half has got mixed salad leaves,  a very late (and cheeky) sowing of chard and parsley. I'm keeping them covered up at night and they seem to be coming up nicely.

I had planted these strawberries quite late really but had planted them in pots where I had cut out the bottom (a bit cheaper than the shop bought bottomless pots). The benefit has been that I could just move them from the raised bed and pop them onto this grow bag without making a mess or needing to re pot.

The night times are cooler, the conkers are dropping to the ground and the garden is winding down but boy, there is lots to do! It shall be a busy few weeks.

x