Well, the heavy rain at the end of last week finally did for the tomatoes remaining on plants outside. It was a double whammy. The extra water caused some fruits to split and the dampness brought out myriads of slugs and snails which gorged on them. So I rescued what I could and brought them in to finish ripening on the window sill or, if they were ripe and split, to cook them straight away.

So that's the end of the tomatoes. The kenyan beans are also finished. I have left the roots in the half barrel and am going to fork in some chicken manure pellets and try sowing some more spinach. I hope to do that in the next few days while the weather is fairly good. The runner beans are really over too and most of them I have taken down but two or three plants still had some baby beans which I couldn't bear to cut down. So now all we have left in the garden that's edible at the moment are the carrots in pots; the baby spinach (also in a pot) which is just about ready to pick the first few leaves and the courgettes in the ground which aren't doing much at present.

I have put in a few cauliflowers to overwinter. The one's I put in earlier in the year grew well but got attacked by beasties, pitted by the weather and I didn't get the hang of turning over the leaves to prevent discolouring (they kept popping open again) and apart from a couple most of the curds were inedible. I am hoping for better things this time around!

I mentioned previously that the carrots in one of the troughs had been chomped away. There were also some self-sown tagetes in the trough which were eaten and suprisingly they have shown signs of recovery. Not much sign of the carrots recovering though so I have sown more in the same trough.  

The rain also did for the gorgeous chrysanth in the pot. The dahlias seemed to stand up to the weather better but I think they could do with further tying up.

Along the retaining wall we have a lavender hedge. Usually at this time of year I remove the dead flower heads and then February/March time I cut back the plants quite hard. The plants have been there several years now and are getting quite woody so it's time to replace them. I have taken a load of cuttings from the existing plants and pushed them into a space in the garden. It's a little bit late for the cuttings but as we're on the south coast and it's quite mild I am hoping that enough of them want to root to enable me to replace the plants we currently have.

It's a tidying up the garden time of year. As some space has appeared with the end of the runner bean's and turnips I have been able to reposition my compost bins. For many years we had a couple of wooden slatted bins but when they rotted beyond use I aquired a plastic bin. I now have two of these and I have to say that I don't find them as good as the wooden ones. It is nearly impossible to turn the material in the bin. I've tried using a fork but you end up with bruised fingers. I recently bought a plastic contraption that you push into the compost to aerate it but I'm not impressed with that either. I also find that it is not very easy to get the compost out of the little access hole at the bottom. Hence the need to reposition the bins. I have now positioned them so that the access holes face directly out on to the vegetable plot to see if that works better. It does mean however that I will not be able to get compost out during peak growing time.

As I was in a tidying up mood I finally got around to dealing with the two remaining bags that I had been growing potatoes in earlier in the year. A couple of months ago the plants were begining to show signs of blight and so I removed all the foliage and destroyed it. As I didn't empty the compost soon after I was expecting that any tubers would have rotted away. So when I slit open the first of the bags I was delighted and suprised when beautiful, clean tubers emerged. The second bag had a fewer tubers but enough for a feed which was more than I had expected. Interestingly the bag with the smaller yield contained more soil based compost than the first but that may just be a coincidence.

I am pulling young carrots from the pots. They are really tasty and just need a rinse off before popping them into the pot. A few have a tiny bit of carrot fly damage. I think that the flies must have got in the last time that I thinned out.

I have planted some hyacinth bulbs in bowls for the house in the winter. I love their fragrance. I have placed the bowls in the dark in the garage and will check on them from time to time.

Well, perseverance has paid off - our first tomato! Here is a picture of it. The variety is tumbler. Mark and I ate half each. The flavour was good but the skin was a bit tough. Speaking with other friends who have had a tomato harvest this year that seems to be a common problem. Still we have tomatoes! I said previously that the Tumbler plants seem to be more robust against the blight. Typically we lost one of the Tumblers soon after. I have 5 plants left, 3 Red Alert and 2 Tumbler, Mostly they are now leafless because I am cutting off anything at the first sign of blight. I am removing the trusses from the plants that have developed blight on their stems and they are ripening well on a sunny windowsill. We have been eating the tomatoes cooked, either grilled or baked with a little olive oil and a pinch of salt, and the flavour of both varieties is superb.

The carrots seeds that I sowed in the troughs are now showing through. We got some more compost and I sowed a couple more rows in the third trough. I also put some spinach, variety Campania from Marshalls, in one of the large pots (after replaceing the top few inches of compost). These seeds are large and a jade colour so very easy to see and sprinkle thinly on the compost. They have already come through. There are sufficient seeds in the packet for several sowings. The packet says to sow February - September. I maybe able to get another sowing in this year otherwise I will wait to early next year.

There were some sage plants in the garden, one purple and two green, that had got very woody. I decided it was time to get rid of them and start again. I have taken some cuttings (3" heel cuttings) and there were a few stems which had rooted which I potted up. So we will have some new plants for the garden and to give to friends who have asked for some. I don't use the sage for cooking so much as for making sage tea when colds and sore throats strike.  I hope the colds hold off long enough for the plants to grow big enough to pick leaves from! The plants have to be replaced every few years (i had left it a bit too long this time). In future I will replace them one at a time so that we always have a decent sized plant available.

We have had a couple of pots planted with pinks either side of the front door over the summer. The flowers are coming to an end now and so last week I bought a dozen pansies in the Farmers Market in Poole which I am going to pot up to take their place. I have put a few of the pansies in one of the Ali Baba pots on the patio. The pot has quite a deep rim but one of the flowers has now popped it's head up above the rim. I see a lovely big purple flower every time I open the back door... and I have to smile.

The carrots growing in pots are the size of my little finger and so further thining out was required this week giving us more yummy baby carrots to eat! The carrots are now spaced approximately a couple of inches apart and won't need any further thinning. We just need to be a little patient and wait for them to grow a bit bigger before pulling them to eat. I had a photo for you but blogger doesn't seem to want to let me add any images today.

The Kenyan beans that were growing in the little plastic troughs have now finished. The plants have been put in the compost bin and the compost that they were growing in spread on the garden. I have planted some carrot seed in a couple of the troughs and will do so in the third when I get some more compost. As the troughs aren't that deep I have planted the spherical variety Lisa from Marshall's which is particularly suitable for pots.

The garden has been looking very thirsty, particularly the hydrangeas and runner beans, so the rain a couple of days ago was very welcome. Not so the fierce winds which have beaten everything down and blown over pots and parasol (not quite sure why I put this out as it's hardly been used all summer!). I am still persevering with the tomato plants, cutting off any sign of blight and sacrificing some trusses in the hope of saving others. This has meant that the plants are a little top heavy and/or unbalanced and so the poor plants have been blown over several times in spite of me putting bricks on the pots. I grew two varieties this year. Red Alert and the patio variety Tumbler. At the risk of tempting fate Tumbler seems to have been the more robust of the two in resisting the blight. I have had to remove some plant material but nowhere near as much as for the Red Alert plants.

All the onion have been lifted now. We have enough onions and large shallots to last us a good few months. I planted the sets in various places around the garden and it has been interesting to see the difference in the resulting onions. Those growing between strawberries next to the path in full sun have grown quite large while those just a few yards away but which are shaded for part of the day are much smaller. In fact a couple of them haven't increased in girth at all and are the same size as when I put them in.

The annual scabious are a delight with white, purple and pinky mauve flowers. The dahlias have been great as well. The flowers are not so large now and the colours not so vibrant but beautiful all the same. We have yellow Graham Thomas roses outside the back door. They are having a final flourish and are a joy to see when you step outside.

Garden News

Pond clearing and the weather have conspired to keep me from doing a great deal in the garden recently. I am now picking courgettes and beans are appearing on the Kenyan bean plants in the troughs but the tomatoes are going to need an Indian Summer. I had to remove the foliage from the potato plants growing in sacks as the leaves were showing signs of disease. I have been waiting for the weather to improve before splitting the sacks open to see what we've got. Maybe if it stays dry today I'll get to do that this evening. I have a few more seed potatoes that I was planning to start in bags but I'm now in two minds whether to or not. I'll make up my mind when I've opened the three remaining bags.

This year I tried growing spinach in a pot. I had three pickings before the plants began to bolt during the hot spell in June (remember that?!). Not a big success but I think I will give it another go over the autumn. I am also growing carrots in pots for the first time. I am growing a carrot fly resistant variety and have planted chives in the centre of the pot as a companion so that their smell will confuse the flies noses. It will be interesting to see how the carrots turn out. The pots certainly look attractive anyway.