Sunday 8 October 2017

Tidying up the garden and planning for next year

I have a tendency to just tidy up the garden in autumn and miss my opportunity to plan early for next year. This year though, I've planted a few things to give the garden more interest over winter, I'm leaving things in where I don't need the space yet (and in the case of the kale and hopefully the sprouts, where the vegetables are still producing food).
What I've done is remove all the dead cucurbit leaves.
Which left practically no leaves at all.
A few days later, I cleared all the squashes from the far end of the bed so I had room to plant onions (the type that need to go in in autumn) and, in line with my plan to include more flowers and ornamental plants, in particular between the beds of different crop types, I planted a line of bunny tail grass on the far side of the onions. I also planted a line of rainbow chard on the near side of the onions. The chard might not work out. I think it's technically a bit late in the season to plant them and the seeds are past their best before. But I've seen Monty Don plant things slightly later than the packet says is possible on Gardener's World, so I figure it's worth a shot. I'm mainly planting it for its appearance. I'm not a real fan of chard, although perhaps if it's my only choice of fresh veg I might be persuaded to use it more often.
The white flower is a carrot. Carrots are usually biennials, meaning that they have a two-year life cycle and don't usually flower and produce seeds until their second year. But I let squashes grow all over these and the plants got so stressed they decided to cut their losses and flower in their first year. I'm planning to collect the seeds and cross my fingers that this isn't a permanent change and that the plants I grow from the seeds won't also flower in their first year.
I also dug up the carrots from the thin strip of bed right by the fence for soup and planted my green manure, phacelia tanacetifolia, a pretty bluey purple flower on feathery leaves that you dig in to the soil as a soil improver after you've grown it. This was also a little later than the packet says you can plant it, but given London's microclimate, I'm hopeful it will grow anyhow.
Because I started sowing next year's plants, I needed to know my rough overall plan for the garden, so I drew out the start of the plan for next year already.

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