Autumn Clearing Jobs

I'm not sure whether it's me or not but autumn seems to be well underway this year. The weather has turned cool for early September, although we are still awaiting some prolonged wet weather. At the allotment we're well into clearing beds of their summer crops. 

The above beds have been cleared of climbing French and runner beans. Ideally I'd have liked to dig over the bed but I think the soil will be far too dry and hard for cultivating even though the beans were well watered through the summer. The only rain we get at the moment comes in dribs and drabs which does nothing for our bone dry soil. I did manage to resow one of our beds with a green manure crop. The first sowing of buckwheat in early August hadn't been successful despite our watering efforts. I've resown it with Caliente mustard and I'm hoping for better germination this time around.

One of our cardoon plants has been cut down, a couple of plum trees have been tidied up by removing some of the lower branches and Sue has given our red currants a good cutting back. They were starting to outgrow their allotted space.

Plum Tree - Marjories Seedling 

Redcurrants

Although we've spent a good deal of time cutting back and clearing beds we've still had time to do some harvesting.

Harvest Sunday, 09 September 2018

The dry weather this year has meant no blight on our potatoes and tomatoes and, whereas the potatoes have done poorly in the very dry conditions, our outdoor tomatoes have done very well. If all years could be guaranteed to be blight free I think we'd manage without greenhouse grown tomatoes. 

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett