lately on the lottie ... early autumn

 

Autumn is knocking at the door.
 Despite the fact that over the past few days, the temperatures by late morning /early afternoon are those of a respectable summer's day, come the evening, there is a nip in the air and in the early morning a heavy dew clothes the allotment and garden.

Autumn is harvest time and in our part of the world the farmers have already brought in their harvests of wheat and the ploughed fields now stretch as far as the eye can see; the dark soil like crumbled chocolate.


Our own harvest this year has been mixed and looking back it seems it is the fruit that has been most successful this time round.

 

The Autumn Bliss raspberries planted earlier this year produced a very good first harvest.

 

 

 The blackcurrants were plentiful, the strawberries wonderful and the plums abundant....

 

but the climbing French beans were attacked mercilessly by slugs and the leeks seem to have been munched by something which I suspect may be leek moth.

However, the Charlotte potatoes grown in big bins were delicious and we have some late beetroot and salad onions still to look forward to.

 

 

 I planted the garlic earlier in the year, so consequently the bulbs are quite small, but look ok now they have been trimmed and cleaned.

 ( much better I think to plant garlic in the autumn, so I am making a mental note to do so in the next few weeks) 

 

 

 

It seems that growing veggies always involves a bit of a battle with the elements and unwanted wildlife, but nothing compares with the satisfaction of 'growing your own'.

 

Happy gardening !