Autumn creeps on

    Autumn is here. The length of daylight is very noticeably shorter. The chickens are being let out later in the morning and being brought in earlier in the evening. Egg laying has dropped, not unusual with less daylight and some are moulting. Average per day egg laying down to 1.4.

   In the garden the first water melon has been picked and tried and found to be ripe and delicious! There are eight more only slightly smaller than this one. Despite everything the water melons have done very well.

Blackwater Mountain water melon

    Carrots pulled, haricot vert, tomatoes and the first two chilli peppers picked. A scotch bonnet and a hot stuff. My grandson enjoyed the scotch bonnet which I think was not fully ripe. The spaghetti squash has been cut and stored. Of course the grass was mowed! Some forking and weeding done and I now thinking where to sow over winter broad beans. 

    With the onset of autumn it is time to make pickle onions.

Pickle factory 

Peeled and salted shallots

Two of the four jars of pickled onions

     Another sign of autumn with the delivery of wood for the wood burner. Two cords delivered onto my driveway and stacked by yours truly the same day. 

Harvest

      The gathering of produce from the garden continues. Haricot vert (14.5kgs so far), strawberries, sweet peppers, carrots and beetroot all taken this last week. Despite the poor start to the year the season has ended up being quite bountiful. Jack Ice lettuce seed gathered and dried haricot vert shelled and ready to try to make baked beans! The strawberries continue to surprise with another approx half a kilo picked and weather permitting there are still more berries on the plants to ripen. The grass this year does not seem to have stopped growing at all! Grass mowed once more and there has been more rain so no doubt the grass will grow again. 

   The weather has been quite acceptable for the time of year, some sun, some rain and temperatures generally upper teens.  

   The chickens continue to be chickens and the chicks are growing with one or two showing signs that they are actually cockerals. Egg laying is pretty much as it has been over the last few weeks with an average of two eggs a day this last week. It cannot be long before the new hens start to lay.

Haricot vert patch number 3!

Gathering seed

       Time to gather seed for next year. I have gathered chocolate sweet pepper seed, Jens Orange tomato seed, parsnip seed, haricot vert seed, woad seed and moss curled parsly seed. More will follow once the squash has ripened. The weather has been very good with some overnight rain but mostly sunny during the week. 

       Despite the poor start to the year as expected the autumn is proving to be very productive. The more damper cooler spring has meant crops like summer cabbage and successive sowings of lettuce and haricot have actually worked this year. The strawberries have been just amazing and some of it must be down to the wetter conditions I am sure. My experiment with the spacing out of Desiree potatoes was a success and I will be following that up next year. The sweet peppers looking so sorry for themselves earlier in the year are now coming into their own. Plenty of good sized peppers and I reckon as long the temperature holds up there will be many more. Carrots. Man, never had such a good succesive sowing of carrots. Six lots and all producing nice sized roots at a sensible interval. Have to say  a good year despite the poor start. Of course there has to be a down side and the tomatoes outside the polytunnel were all blighted and lost as they had fruits ripening. Those plants in the poly tunnel have produced a good quanity of nice sized fruits. Melons. Well, I have had better years with the 5 Dessert but the Blackwater Mountain water melons are looking good and on course for producing upto eight fruits. Onions. Not good. The onions did not like the damp conditions and a few were lost to rot. A harvest was gained but not as good as other years. Shallots were good and probably about the same as last year.

       The last of the 5 Dessert melons have now been picked and the plants are pretty much done. The strawberries continue to give, another five hundred and eight grams picked. As are the straight and round courgettes which have also done very well. Much to my surprise and pleasure the sweet pepper plants are producing well as are the aubergines. The Golden Bantam sweet corn has done well as have the three sowings of haricot vert. The haricot buerre are in flower and I am hopeful for a crop before it gets too cold. Cucumbers have been a disappointment this year with only a few produced and those have been small. Well, one cannot win on everthing! Butternut squash is good with a surprise Crown Prince plant appearing amongst them. There is one good Crown Prince squash. 

       With my youngest grandson, Toby, we went and picked blackberries. It is a good year for them and I really need to get out and pick more!

      Chickens are still not laying well and I suspect that will be the case for a few more weeks yet. Daily average this week is 2.1 eggs per day and it is an good improvement on last week.

Aubergines

Picking blackberries with Toby

Selection of sweet peppers 

Time to start fighting the hedges....

     A good week. The usual tasks of weeding and grass mowing done. The magificant 7 (this years batch of chicks) have found one of my lettuce patches, pushed their way through the netting and managed to reduce the lettuce plants to stumps! Plenty of produce picked, cut and pulled! Cauliflower (only one so far!), carrots, tomatoes, 5 Dessert melons, strawberries (over 5kgs picked so far), haricot vert, courgettes and cabbage. I decided to mow the paddocks before the grass got too long. In one it is and I will have to think again on how to reduce it! It is time to start attacking the overgrown hedges and trees. Plenty of it to do and no doubt it will be a job I will be doing throughout the winter. While admiring my butternut squash patch I came across two (one quite large) Crown Prince squash. A very pleasent surprise as I had not planted out any Crown Prince plants to my knowledge! The strawberry bed after picking 1.450kg of strawberries was weeded and mulched. There are still lots of strawberries to come. Fingers crossed the weather holds up for while. The tomato plants in the poly tunnel continue to give, Jens Orange and Noir Crimea being the most prolific.

   Egg production is stuck at an average of 1.3 eggs a day, just like last week. When there guys do decide to lay again I think I will be overwhelmed with eggs.

Poly tunnel tomatoes

Crown Prince squash

Autumn is in the air

     A week can make a big difference when you are gardening and the passing of this last week I think was one of those weeks.The signs are there in the garden and in the hedgerows. Autumn is coming. The haricot vert (1st sowing), courgettes, spagetti squash, cucumbers and melons are all showing signs of coming to their end. Lots of blackberries in the hedgerows and what apples there are are falling from the trees. Weather wise the mornings have been cool and yes the sun has shone but mostly to a maximum of around 20C. The evenings are pulling in!

Golden Bantam sweet corn

Sweet peppers aubergine haricot vert

1kg of strawberries

    At last the Desiree main crop potatoes have all be lifted. Grand total of some 131 kgs of spuds! Roughly twice as much as last year despite the blight. It has been a long time since I have had a good crop of sweet peppers. A success this season has been the no dig strawberry bed. Latest picking, a kilogram, is shown in the photograph. A few tomatoes are being picked from the poly tunnel which is a little compensation for loosing all my outside ones. Hitting a lettuce scarcity patch as one lot rapidly came to an end, the chickens decided that they fancied another lot and the third lot have only just about established themselves. As usual grass mowed although I have to say the grass does seem to have slowed up. I  guess that is because there has not been any significant rain. 

  On the chicken front average daily egg production is way down this week. Only 1.3 eggs a day. Half of last weeks average. I cannot think of any particular reason except its August and very often at this time of year a hen will stop laying. Mrs Hen has now abandoned her chicks to their fate and rejoined the cockeral and hen. 

Its coming together....

       Many plants are a week or more late in maturing this year, however, there is most definately a burst of growth going on and stuff is catching up with itself. Oh, there has been a good crop of weeds! Sweet peppers, melons, squash, pumpkins are all at last showing signs of getting somewhere! Winter leeks have been planted and the winter cabbage is well established and looking good.

VERY large beetroot from the polytunnel

Winter leeks planted out

Butternut squash

   Tomatoes have been a disaster this year being struck down by blight. Fortunately my potatoes having been planted early did not suffer so much. I have had one or two potatoes dug up rotten but not in large numbers. Lettuce, sweet peppers, haricot vert, cabbage, courgettes (oh boy how many courgettes can one eat I ask) and carrots all harvested this last week. Usual mowing of grass and weeding and the lifting of potatoes continues! I have started to gather some seeds and I managed to get a few tomato seeds from one plant that I had been given and whose tomatoes are very nice indeed! Variety Burpee.

   On the chicken front egg production has remained steady with a slight increase to 2.6 eggs a day. One of the cockerals, who we had named Mr. Angry, decided to attack the ride on mower and this time he came off second best and badly injured his leg. I had to despatch him. He was due to be culled sometime anyway as he was a very aggressive bird.

I say POMMES DE TERRE you say POTATOES

    The final figure for the weight of DESIREE potatoes lifted from my large triangle bed came to around fifty four kilos. Makes up a little for the virtual total loss of the tomato crop. All onions have now also been lifted and are drying. A reasonable crop but not what I have been used to over the last few years. I have transplanted Great Lakes lettuce and I expect that to be the last for this season.  More weeding done and of course grass cut! It looks like I am going to get some cucumbers of which I am very pleased, however, the melons, water and 5 dessert do not look too good. Haricot vert continue to crop well and are surely coming to an end! Lettuce is good and I have pulled (well my grandson pulled) some very good sized carrots. In the poly tunnel I have pulled some self seeded beetroot and they are enormous! Borscht anyone?

Desiree potatoes from the large triangle plot

   On the chicken front I have to report the loss of one hen who has been hanging in there for a while now. Otherwise egg production is 2.5 eggs on average per day.