Winter Has Arrived

For over a week we have had rain every day, so no opportunity to get outside. Strong winds have also removed most of the leaves from the trees now. But today we have had a whole day without rain!
Last night was the first air frost of the season, so winter has definitely arrived. I love the way it leaves droplets of water on the leaves of plants like this leek.
My vegetable plot gets little sun during the winter months and so the frost can stay on the ground all day; this photo was taken at 2 pm when the temperature was well above freezing, but crystals of ice remained in a few spots.
I was able to finish some plot edgings using the recycled flagstones I have obtained. This is a section of the plot which has a slope and the soil falls off the edge. The old edging was of wood and woven willow, but was rotting so I have replaced it with these flagstones. If I was a perfectionist the top of each stone would be level with its neighbours but I'm a pragmatist - these are recycled stones of all shapes and sizes and as long as they do the job, I'm happy. Hard, hard work, I still have lots of stones left so will be working through them all winter.

Christmas Cactus

It's a dark and wet day here today - these photos were taken at 9am and I needed the flash on the camera, so we are now well and truly into the traditional wet autumn weather. I have been doing some work on the vegetable plot, mainly putting paving stones in to create new edges for the beds. It's slow work as I can only move 3 or 4 in a session due to their weight. Still, the workmen did take them up to the plot for me, which was kind. There's another pile growing outside my house now.

So here are a couple of pictures of my first christmas cactus to flower (click on them for best effect). I have four, and a few years ago they started to reduce in flowering or flower partially at the wrong time. I consulted Dr Hessayon's bible of houseplant care and realised that they weren't getting the right kind of rest period in the summer. You're supposed to put them outside, in the shade, with little water so they can rest. If I put them outside here they would be eaten by the slugs and snails, so I had to think about how I could replicate the conditions. I realised that the coolest and darkest place in the house in the summer is on top of the bookcase in the living room so I moved them there last year. Then last winter I started to give them specialist cactus food, but they still didn't flower. I gave them the same treatment this summer and - hey presto - they are looking healthy and the first two are flowering. A lovely sight in these dark gloomy days.

Autumn Odds and Ends

It's not been a very colourful autumn here - this is the best tree I could find on my travels yesterday. Most of the leaves are simply turning brown and falling off straight away or falling off green, and today's strong winds will have removed even more of the leaves. Strong winds were a feature of the spring, and caused a chill which slowed the progress of many of my fruits and vegetables.
My activities outdoors will now consist more of walking than gardening. The time between now and March is one of rest for me, with only occasional digging and other preparation works on the plot. But before I could relax, there was one last job to do.
This morning I bottled the last of my apples and the wild pears I picked a couple of weeks before. Bottling is what people used to do before freezers, it's simple and effective. Above is a jar of apples - for this you really need Kilner jars whose lid is in two pieces; a round sealing disc which sits on top and the screw top which helps keep the seal tight. You pack the fruit in the jar, cover it with a syrup (8 oz sugar to 20 fl oz water) which is at boiling point, sit the sealing disc on top (not the screw top) and put it in a cool oven (gas 2/3) on a tray lined with newspaper. It takes about an hour for the fruit to cook through, take it out, put the screw top on so that the seal makes contact with the top of the jar. Then you wait for the "click" as the cooling jar forms a vacuum seal - it happens in a minute or two. Once it has cooled, all you have to do is tighten the screw top to ensure a permanent seal.
In addition to the pounds of fruit which went straight into the freezer, here is my collection of preserves made from this year's fruit: bottled pears, plums and apples, and lots of jam - mainly redcurrant, but also gooseberry and rhubarb, raspberry, raspberry & redcurrant, and plum. I haven't bought any jam or tinned fruit in years!

Have a good weekend.

Last Courgettes

At the weekend I picked the last courgettes for this year (above). It's been a good crop, over a few months so I'm happy with that. Also in the basket is a collection of slug-nibbled chard, which I harvested from the tomato bed before clearing it (they had self-seeded, so a completely free crop). And yes, those are my wellies sneaking into the picture.

The potatoes will also be finished this week - we've been eating them since mid- June, so have had them for four months. The onions will also finish in a couple of days, a poor crop this year, like many other gardeners in this part of the world.

So I have been back to the greengrocer this week to buy onions and potatoes from Ormskirk (a local potato). Sad, but I still have more chard, leeks, parsnips, cabbages and purple sprouting broccoli from the vegetable plot to look forward to over the coming months.

Posting here will diminish now - the work consists mainly of clearing and composting beds for the winter and though you may be a keen gardener, photos of soil are really not very inspiring! I hope to be able to get all the preparation work done by the end of November - I'm well on track. Then there are other structural jobs to do, and things like buying a new apple tree. So I may not post so often now, only on interesting new things.

Recycling and clearing

For the last few weeks, a workman called David has been replacing paving outside people's houses in the village. All the roads are unadopted so we have to pay for tarmac and paving ourselves (and yes, we still have to pay council tax despite the fact we get bugger all for it). Most of mine was done for free by United (No)-Utilities last year when they dug a trench outside my house to fix an electrical fault, let's gloss over the fact that they also cut through the gas pipe to my house twice - I did get my paving done for free. So I only have a little stretch of a few flags which needed attention and I have arranged to have it done on the cheap using recycled flags instead of the new ones others are having.

At the same time, I mentioned to David that I would happily take the broken flags for use on my vegetable plot, so here is the first pile. There will be more - he started flagging outside one house in the village, then got asked to do more and more so he's been here for weeks now. Like him, a painter called Peter got a job down here 3 years ago and has rarely had a week away since. That's the way it is here - it's like the Village of the Damned, once a workman does a good job here he never escapes!
So this afternoon I started using them at the plot - the small ones first. These are going to make a good edge to a bed which was only cleared for the first time last year, so the weeds are not yet under control. You can use wood to create beds, but the wood rots and the slugs live in it, so I favour either recycled plastic beds or stone/concrete to create a barrier to the couch grass. On the left of the stones is an overgrown path, to the right is the pea bed, with spinach, chard and hundreds of weeds.
I took out the old tomato plants today, and weeding is proceeding apace now as the weather is good. I also picked some more herbs for drying - sage and rosemary here.
And here are some fennel seeds which I have brought into the house to finish drying. More gardening tomorrow in the sunshine.