Winter is coming - or is it?

The weather should be cooling off now, as October rapidly approaches, but the temperature is going up and up - high 20s by the end of the week apparently. Which makes a bit of a joke of my starting to prepare for winter. I limed another of my mini-plots, covered it with chippings and then dug it. Hopefully this will improve the soil structure but not add too much in the way of nutrients, and the lime will bring the pH up a bit, which is just what I need for brassicas next year. (The pH was about 6.5 prior to this, i.e. just on the acid side. It should now be about 7.) Then another coating of chippings to keep the weeds down over winter, and it will be ready to go next spring. Yet another barrow-load of flints came out.....

This Sunday, October 2, I am going down to Keeper's Nursery at East Farleigh in Kent. (It's their Open Day, otherwise it's by appointment only. The owner, his wife and son came to our local gardening club last week to give a most interesting talk on growing fruit.) They have one of the largest collections of fruit trees in the country - 450 different apples, plus pears, cherries, quinces and medlars - including a lot of old varieties, which they propagate themselves by grafting, and I hope to order some for delivery bare-rooted in November/December. I shall in the meantime put up a couple of posts with wires in between along the north side of my plot, and shall try to train the trees as cordons.

Other jobs for the weekend : continue harvesting - we had some sweetcorn last weekend which were quite different to what you can buy (memo to self : plant more next year, and get them in earlier!), also bring in some more manure for my potato mini-plot next year, and put more slug pellets down round my lettuces!!

Last Saturday was our local Horticultural Society's Autumn show. I entered several classes but only won one - the raspberries. Most of the classes, and the 'Best in show', and the cup for best overall vegetables, were won by George - also an allotmenteer - with some splendid entries, including some red cabbages about a foot across and with no caterpillar holes at all. He reckons that he's never grown vegetables before, so what will happen next year when he has some experience is anybody's guess!

I've just been harvesting recently - beans, onions, potatoes, beetroot, courgettes etc - so not much to report. However, I've now dug over one of my mini-plots ready for next spring. I added about 25 barrows of horse manure (mixed with stable chippings) first, which was about 4", then dug it in. Next I will put on a couple of inches of shredded bark and leave over winter. The plot is for legumes next year, so hopefully it will be more fertile, and the soil structure should be a LOT better. I shall put manure on another of my mini-plots and dig it in for potatoes next year, the third will get general purpose fertiliser and the fourth will be limed for brassicas. Needless to say, I got a lot of flints out whilst digging, but the ground was moist so it wasn't as difficult as it might have been.

My wife and I went to Wisley yesterday - the headquarters of the Royal Horticultural Society - where everything is of course done to an exceptional standard. No chance of competing with that, but it did give us some ideas. I want to put some wires up along two sides of the plot, and train some fruit trees up them. Very decorative, a bit of a wind break, and high yielding too. And we also bought some hessian sacks to keep the glut of potatoes in....