Carrot and beetroot harvest

We've started going down to freezing temperatures at night and I wasn't convinced that repeatedly freezing and thawing was going to do my carrots and beetroots any good, and nor I wasn't sure how much protection the soil is from the frost. Anyhow, we gathered them in and they look so cool (and the carrots look surprisingly straight given that hey were growing in stony ground).

First frost and cayenne pepper success

We had our first frost of the season last night. My nasturtiums in the front garden have clearly not survived it, which made me rather worried for my back garden vegetables.

So I went out to have a look at if my cayenne peppers or bell peppers were still salvageable. The answer with the bell peppers was a resounding no, the answer with the cayenne peppers appears to be yes:

But I can't imagine they like frost, so I picked them and brought them in. Cayenne pepper strikes me as way too hot for me to eat in fresh pepper form - I can more imagine accidentally ruining a chilli con carne, so I pretty much don't dare to put them in food. Instead, I have two potential plans for them. Firstly I'm planning to include them in a Christmas wreath and secondly, we've had a spate of fox clubs chewing the ends off car aerials in our area (ours has already been partially masticated), if that starts happening again I'll be then I'll be giving fox cubs the shock of their lives with cayenne juice rubbed on the aerial.
In rather less good news, my leeks are all having to go in the bin, they have some sort of red insect in them. A search of the Internet suggests that a) the pests are allium leaf miners and b) now I have them the only remedy is disposal and crop rotation to avoid them coming up in next year's. They're in all of my leeks, so we're going to dig them up as soon as the ground becomes workably warm. The correct solution, which I've now discovered too late for this year is I should also have added a horticultural fleece from October to November as barrier protection to protect the leeks from them.

Probably an allium leaf miner

How to make leaf mould

Leaf mould is a kind a nice, rich kind of compost that you make from leaves. I went and gathered my leaves in a neighbouring street, as my garden only has one tiny tree and there aren't any trees down our road. The neighbouring road in question is a nice quiet one. This is good for two reasons: 1. fewer people pass by to give you strange looks for gathering up leaves from the pavement and street and 2. the trees haven't spent all year being polluted by vehicle fumes (conventional wisdom is that this is a bad thing for the compost you make).
So, here are the instructions:

1. Gather some leaves in a plastic bag the size of a bin liner.

I found the most efficient way of doing it was to sweep the leaves together with a garden broom, then use a dustpan and brush to grab them and deposit into the bag - more like using tongs or chopsticks than like using a dustpan and brush.
The BBC says: Oak, alder and hornbeam will soon rot down, while sycamore, beech, horse chestnut and sweet chestnut take a little longer. Leaves from conifers and evergreen plants will take between two and three years to compost and are best added in small quantities only, shredding them first to help speed up composting.
I don't have the faintest idea what sort of leaves I've gathered. Some small, red thick ones at the top of the bag and some large yellow, thin ones underneath. Given that the yellow ones had already started to rot in the road, I think the rough rule of thumb is the thicker the leaf, the longer it takes to rot.

2. Poke some holes in the bag.

My bag came with holes already in it, as it was previously the bag the council gathered garden waste in before they switched their system and they never survive more than two collections without the addition of a few tears.

3. Sprinkle on some water - not too much, you don't want them to go slimy (in fact that's what the holes in the bag are for, to let water out and stop them getting all slimy).

4. Tie up the top of the bag and leave somewhere shady and not too conspicuous for 1-3 years (1 year = low quality leaf mould, 2 years = high quality leaf mould providing you've used easy-rot leaves, 3 years = high quality leaf mould even if you used stubborn leaves.

I'm leaving mine behind the shed, at least until we get a new shed. Then I'm going to have to think of a new home for it.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness in the vegetable garden

The weather's turned misty and cast its effects across the garden. The garden's looking a lot neater, as my husband cut the lawn, neatened the edges and dug over the cucurbit patch.
It's certainly a lot neater than it was less than a month ago (the brown things in the middle of the lawn are sunflower heads that I put out for the birds, but they showed no interest).