The late Christopher Lloyd, renowned for his fabulous borders at Great Dixter, adopted a practise of taking a morning stroll around the gardens each day with his head gardener to discuss the plan of action for the day. It's a great habit to get into as often the garden itself will suggest what needs to be prioritised.
A few days ago, I went to the garden here intending to take photos for the blog. Three happy hours later I'd got photos, staked up some flopping raspberry canes, lifted (chucked) piles of overgrown nasturtiums that were shading herbs, pruned some lavender that was becoming a tripping hazard on the path, dug out some horseradish, weeded around the broccoli and cut off some old courgette leaves to make the space more manageable. I also cut back leaves to allow the tomatoes to put energy into ripening the remaining trusses and found that one of the Sungold plants had gone rotten half way up the stem so I was able to cut the plant down and save those tomatoes to make a green tomato chutney.
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I'm wondering what possessed me to put rhubarb, courgettes, globe artichoke and nasturtiums in this tiny space! Lush, though, isn't it? |
That still left me with a bit of a jungle down one end of the veg patch - and the realisation that with
Linaria (the plant edging the path, above) you most definitely can have too much of a good thing. (It's self seeded into every crack and corner in the veg patch but the bees love it.) I was also then able to look at the garden with a fresh eye this morning when I took another walk round with my neighbour Karen who helps out and also gardens the border under her window. Friday is our community gardening day, when time permits.
What we saw was new
spring growth all around: new raspberry canes, poppies flowering having completely regenerated in the past month, same with the globe artichoke, the rhubarb leaves are now as big as a
gunnera with no sign of dying off, the nasturtiums have formed a river of flowers down the path and even the cowslip is in flower (usually not seen until March). Karen reports that her daffodil bulbs are starting to sprout. While this is all utterly delightful, it shows that we can't rely on the plants knowing which season they're in; it would seem their seasonal clocks have been thrown off the beat by the chillier weather of a few weeks back, now replaced by warm t-shirt weather in early October. Better make sure to have some horticultural fleece ready when the frosts
do come!
In other news, I'm still harvesting a few raspberries, courgettes, tomatoes, radishes, salad onions, salad leaves, spinach and a few beans. The bean leaves are looking very tired so some of the beans have been cut down (roots left in the soil so the nitrogen fixing nodules can return nutrients to the soil) and any remaining pods on the others will be allowed to grow into seed beans for next year. These are the Canadian Wonder beans that I really didn't think would amount to much this year but have done wonderfully well once protected with anti-slug wool pellets.
Sugar snap peas sown at the end of summer are now flowering so pods won't be far behind. The yellow sunflowers are finished and I'll harvest some of the seeds to shell and add to salads. The others will be left for the birds.
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Yellow Pear tomatoes, Sugar snap peas, Cherriettes of Fire tomatoes Polka raspberries, physalis, courgettes |
The brassicas (broccoli, kale, romanesco cauliflowers) are growing
really well, as are the chard and beetroot. I wonder if this is due to the wool pellets around them - they help keep the slugs at bay but also leech nutrients into the soil when it rains and as they decompose. Hopefully this bodes well for early and late winter veg. The photo above reminds me that this lovely extended summer encouraged the physalis to reflower in early September; providing the pods ripen, I can greedily anticipate another two dozen Cape Gooseberries before the year ends! Oh, okay, I'll share.
Thanks to the warm, and sometimes wet, weather, there's still a rainbow of colour throughout the York Rise gardens. I particularly love the chinese plumbago (
Ceratostigma willmottianum) - I'm drawn to its startling blue flowers every time I pass, especially as it sits next to the salmon coloured pelargonium 'Pink Needles', an amazing colour contrast.
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Sunflower, Impatiens giganteum, pineapple sage Blackcurrant sage, scabious, pelargonium 'Pink Needles' Verbena bonariensis, calendula, violet Anemone, borage, plumbago |
And let's not forget the roses; there are so many more than this but you get the idea ;)
I honestly didn't think I'd have anything to write about this month but, actually, it's all come right and been rather special. Heavy rain is forecast for the next few days but, for now, me and my garden are in a good, good place.
May October be kind to us all. Caro xx
Jobs for October:
Keep on top of weeding
Clear plants as they die off
Sow seeds in pots for early spring flowers
Get ready to fleece on cold nights!
Linking up with the
Garden Share Collective over in Australia. If you want to see what's growing on in other parts of the world,
pop over to Lizzie's blog for all the links.