A long overdue update

It's over a week since I last did a post and seeing as I spent part of today working on the allotment, I thought I would share some photo's of the plot. Austin helped me dig over my two largest beds, one where the pumpkin and squashes were growing and in the other bed the french and runner beans were. As we cleared the beds and weeded, we covered the ground with black plastic to smother any weeds that had any thoughts of sneaking up on me over the winter.

I have to say I lose interest at this time of year, it happened last year around this time as well, but come the spring my enthusiasm will return. I still have the following growing : curly Kale, perpetual spinach, parsnips, beetroots, Florence fennel (which are swelling nicely) and a couple of cabbages. Oh and purple sprouting broccoli and brussel sprouts, but they have to grow through the winter and hopefully we will have some sprouts for Christmas.

The best thing I ever did was grow so many flowers up there because it's so colourful and many flowers still have lots of buds to open for a while yet. I have stored all the squashes and the pumpkin in the greenhouse, where I also have more little chillies growing, in fact lot's of little chillies !

I must get that Pumpkin weighed ! it was very heavy.

The 'Pink Giraffe' Dahlia is still a lovely sight, I have three up on the plot.

Dahlias and Echinacea, grown from seed this year and still looking lovely

Covering the beds for winter.

Clearing the beds, and planning for next year.

Not so tidy, but still lots of colour.

Florence Fennel, almost ready to harvest.

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My hydrangea from the garden. faded and looking delicate and so pretty

The colour from the front, such delicate colours as they age and fade.

Colours from behind, a nice minty green, I like this better.

I have actually been spending more time working on the garden than the allotment just recently. I have widened a couple of my borders so I can plant more annual flowers such as Cosmos, I bought a packet of seeds recently that are double flowering and they look stunning, so can't wait to sow them next year. The borders already have lot's of perennials, so I thought it would be nice to add some annuals as well, especially cornflowers which looked really nice with the colours of the Cosmos this year. We also cut down a couple of large shrubs which were old and very woody, we now have to try and get the roots out.

That's about all for this update. I hope you are all enjoying your gardens and allotments and getting on with the preparations for the winter months. The best thing is the planning for next year, and looking through the seed catalogues deciding what to grow next.

Fruits of my labour.

I was away for a couple of days, and got back late this evening, so I had to go up to the plot to water the plants in the greenhouse. I have cucumbers, tomatoes, sweet peppers and all sorts of chillies growing in there. They are all thirsty plants that need lots of water, and were so dry it took me ages to give them a good soaking.

Whilst up there I picked french and runner beans and tomatoes and yellow courgettes. I swapped the beans with a friend who has masses of blackberries on her plot and her raspberries are always earlier than mine, so she said to pick what I needed, great swap !! my raspberries are just beginning to ripen very slowly.

As you can see by the photo's below I have lots of squashes around the plot. The only trouble is there are so many too close together and I don't know what some of them are.

The plot looks very full now and a bit untidy everything has grown so tall

Florence fennel just starting to to swell nicely.

One of the squashes

The sweetcorn has grown to well over 4 foot tall, you can see the squash I planted underneath it just rambling through.

Nice and ripe and this one is ready to pick.

The squash beneath the sweetcorn.

Munchkin squash

Pumpkin

I don't know if this will ripen as I grew it from a seed I saved from a squash I bought from the supermarket last year which was grown in Cyprus, so we may not have enough sunshine to ripen it.