Thursday remained dry and became only the second day out of the last sixteen without any recorded rainfall. Not only that we had plenty of sunshine, especially through the morning, with more cloud around in the afternoon.
There was a small price to pay for such a lovely day. The early morning temperature on Thursday produced our coldest morning of the autumn so far with the temperature dipping down to 3.5°C.
It was a good day for more tidying up on the plot.
The runner bean wigwams were taken down and the old sweet corn stalks pulled up and consigned to the compost heap. The wigwam canes were tied together and put into the greenhouse to protect them from the worst of the winter weather and prolong their useful life. Any large weeds were removed and the compost from the recently emptied bin was spread out over the bed. It’s been covered with some weed control fabric and with a little bit of luck the worms will get their act together and incorporate the compost into the top layer of soil. I’d like to cover the fabric too but the supply of decent horse manure has run out so I am considering using some wood chippings which are readily available on the site. The fabric and chipping will be removed in spring when the bed will need to be dug over ready for planting.
Harvesting certainly doesn’t take up much time now compared to a few weeks ago. I dug some carrots and beetroot which needed a wash to remove some soil clinging to the roots as a result of the wet weather.
The little Tom Thumb lettuces area bit of a surprise as I’d given up on them growing at all. These were planted out in the plot on 23 August and haven’t seemed happy at all.
Tom Thumb are the row on the left and some have eventually managed to produce some tiny hearts. The middle row is Webbs Wonderful which haven’t grown at all and the final row is Little Gem some of which have also produced some tiny hearts. Hopefully we’ll get some small pickings until the first frost of autumn finishes them off.
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Nice Autumnal pictures Sue, with things wrapping up for Winter. We had the first Autumn hailstones here today.
ReplyDeleteCan't take credit for all the photos, Rooko some at least were Martyn's
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