End of 2021 Part 1

Just though I would start a review of what has been a tricky year all round.

The weather has been rather variable and although we had sun it was rather patchy and we’ve had plenty of rain. This autumn has been weird as well with unseasonal high temperatures – as an example we’ve had temperatures over 11 deg. C the last couple of days! This has meant lots of our flowering plants in containers hanging on a lot longer – so much so that I have yet to clear some of them out. I only took our hanging baskets down last week as well.

All the tomatoes have finished and the only veg left cropping are some carrots (we had some this evening fresh from the garden) – although I noticed there are still some salad leaves growing.

Here is a photo of some of the harvest from September. Tomatoes, cucumbers & climbing beans.

Some decisions about next year are already made – I’ve planted a bed of garlic and a complete bed for a change – although there has been very little action so far even though the weather has been mild. However, I haven’t planted any broad beans for next year, I think my spring sowings do just as well.

I’ll probably have more fruit in another bed as well – I’ve bought some ‘container’ type blackcurrant bushes plus some strawberry plants supposedly good for containers. At the moment I’m thinking of putting the containers in one of the raised beds so I can grow other things around then until the plants get to be bigger bushes.

More or less the last harvest – a few climbing beans, tomatoes and a pepper (there were a few more)

Having acquired a long reach cordless hedge cutter I’ve been able to trim the ivy back around the old pear tree in the middle of the garden to stop the shading of some of the beds but still leave enough foliage to allow bird nesting in the ivy coverage – the only bit I could reach on the first go was the top so at some point I’ll have to get the platform out and see if I can reach from that – the device has a sort of mini-chain saw attachment for dealing with thicker branches which I’ll need to deal with the pear branches that hove grown out of the top.

Wildlife

The trail cams have shown the foxes are still regular visitors plus the odd hedgehog until October at least.

Update and a bit more planting

Various factors have rather prevented much time in the garden recently, not least the weather which has actually been rather winter-like over the last few days especially with overnight temperatures getting down to -4degC.

However the enforced time inside has prompted me to update the garden map at last and you can see the current layout here on the ‘Garden Map’ page.

In the garden I have at least managed to plant a couple of rows of ‘The Sutton’ broad beans – the remainder of the packet I had for this year. So we’ll see how they fare – last year my early planting didn’t do so well. It did serve to remind me that I need to review my seeds – I need some more broad beans at least.

There is still plenty of clearing up to do in the garden, mostly in the flower beds though but the weather does look kinder towards the end of this week so maybe….

A New Year – Weather Still Living in the Autumn

Hi to my reader in 2016.

So what’s happened since the last post? Well apart from Christmas etc. not a lot in the garden. The weather is still totally weird with temperatures up in the teens (C) many days, although it did drop to only 2deg the other night. So I have a Osteospermum in the garden which has just flowered, plus several cyclamens in flower. It’s really bizarre and annoying as plants (and weeds) that should  have died or gone into hibernation are still growing! So plants that should have been cut down for the winter are actually producing new shoots – even some of the clematis! I’ve actually had to hold off planting some of the spring flowering plants I have in the greenhouse as some of the plants they are meant to replace are still in flower – it’s just ridiculous.

Some colder weather is promised for the next week but that doesn’t really seem like enough to turn things round.

All in all it makes what to do in the garden a bit tricky – and although unseasonably warm it hasn’t been terribly comfortable working in the garden as there has been a fair amount of rain and wind and very little sun.

I have managed to buy most of the seeds I need for my vegetable gardening however, but the flower section is still in the ‘planning’ stage.

Wildlife

The most recent trailcam videos (from December) show the hedgehog still active as well as an indication of the weather plus fox and of course several cats but nothing very unusual. The birds are going through sunflower seeds at a high rate but mainly just blue and great tits with the odd robin (and hedge sparrows on the ground).