Rainy day

It seems odd to be posting about a rainy day when we've had one of the longest and hottest summers on record. But it's nice to have the change.

We're now at the tail end of the season and things are starting to die off. Firstly the courgettes have just about run out of steam.

There are just a few left buried in the dead foliage.

Then the petunia troughs have finished.

Mind you, one of them did succumb to the high winds we had recently and fell over.

Not a major issue though. Just stand it upright and throw the dead petunias in the compost. We have more than enough seeds.

The courgettes were sorted out into those destined for food, those destined to become "Georges" (ie seeds for next year) and those to be given away to anybody who wants. We simply leave them of the water tank lid next to our plot and people can help themselves as they walk past.

We also grabbed a few of the remaining cherry tomatoes and thought we'd dig out some spuds from bags and buckets for dinner tonight. But we weren't happy with the quality of the spuds. A lot of them that we dug out were the tiniest spuds you've ever seen.

We barely got a decent plate's worth from 3 buckets and a bag. I think we might have a reason for that. Normally we find bags to work better than ground spuds. They're certainly easier to harvest anyway. However, as we have already mentioned in the past, we're on London Clay soil. Now we've put a lot of organic material into the soil, but that still doesn't solve the problem of the fact that the clay is there. Being bags and buckets, they're raised off the ground, where they can dry out and more to the point, they can be hit by the sun.

Emptying out the buckets, the soil at the very bottom was like rock. I suspect what has happened is that the long hot summer has baked the clay into bricks, thereby hampering the growth of the potatoes.


The leaves are turning brown now, and starting to fall. So it's time to think about winter crops, and covering the beds ready for next year. Well some of the leaves are brown. The Blueberries are starting to turn bright red which makes a nice splash of colour on a dreary day.

Time to head for home and a nice hot cup of tea.