As the daylight hours shorten and
nature all around us slowly winds down for the end of the season there has
still been plenty of interest in the garden. The late summer border has quite
literally flowered its socks off and the last of the bees and butterflies have
had their fill of nectar before they retire until next spring. Whilst the plants in the shadier border have
long since finished flowering and are dying back, the white anemones cheerfully
stand out demanding attention.
We have seen the trees put on a
fantastic display of colours over the last few weeks and if the latest gusts of
wind have not yet brought the leaves down, then it won’t be long before they
fall of their own accord. We have a couple of rowan trees in our garden whose
leaves turn a fantastic shade of red, they also produce berries, and within
days of taking a photograph Mr Blackbird had demolished the lot. The dogwoods
and blueberry bushes have also given us a fantastic display of deep red leaves
this year.
A lot of perennial plants in the
garden will soon stop flowering and die back, at one time this was seen to be
the time to tidy up the garden by cutting them down to the ground and disposing
of the dead plant remains. However, more and more gardeners are seeing the
benefit of leaving the plants in situ for as long as possible. The right plants
can still make the garden look good well into the new year and they can provide
shelter for small insects such ladybirds and lacewing as well as food for the
local birds.
For those of you that have tried,
you will already know that it has not been a great year for growing crops and
it has been quite a challenge. The veg from the kitchen garden has now just
about come to an end and the greenhouse has also been cleared. We did manage to harvest a few parsnips and
cabbage this month and the leeks are growing well and will be ready to start
pulling in a couple of months. It is still not too late to make use of some of
the now empty spaces, shallots and garlic will happily grow through the winter
months without requiring any attention and will be ready for harvesting next
summer.
This year in the greenhouse the
tomatoes cropped poorly and generally did not ripen, but we did manage to make
a batch of delicious tomato soup from them. We were also picking raspberries right
up until the end of October. Those fruit
that are slightly past their best are excellent for using in cakes and we have
been enjoying a Raspberry Bakewell, or two, or maybe three!
