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!!
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