First job this morning was manuring and then covering the quinoa bed. We used 3 bags of manure, so it works out at 1 bag per 12 sq ft or so.

Mum dismantled the beans at the front, leaving just the chard – one of which has bolted (only one!) – and the self-sown nasturtiums.

I dug up the cut down tomato plants in the narrow bed at the back and then we dug it over. With the last few tomatoes picked from the Red Alerts at the back I then cut down those plants. One of them had ridiculously fresh flowers and green tomatoes looking hopeful. I pulled up all the supports and finally tried some WD40 on them before trying to fold them flat. Sure enough, that was the answer and though it made me a bit slippery, they then folded flat no trouble at all. We then dug up the plants and dug over the whole bed.

We’ll cover the bed loosely to keep it weed-free, but I need the bed clear to have somewhere to dump all the compost while renovations are happening.

Today’s harvest was the last tomatoes, the apples that were happy to come, some chard and the only coleus I could find still remotely alive. I’m going to put it in water at home and see if it would like to be a houseplant over winter.

In the afternoon I did an amount seed-collecting. I was thinking of pulling up the dead-looking aster when I suddenly realised that the dead flowers were turning into fluffy heads with seeds underneath. I collected more seed from calendulas, flax and malope, as well as the very few borage seeds I could find that hadn’t already dropped or shrivelled. Trying to find them was all very “Any bees in this one?”. I cut down an amount of the borage to start tidying it up.

Looking at the vipers bugloss, it’s spiky enough and the seeds small enough that I won’t bother gathering seed. If it turns up of its own accord, or from new seed, then fine.

The angelonia is mostly done now, but there’s no great rush to pull it out yet. I did various pulling up of boundary quinoas, sweet peas and nigella.

I dug up all the marigolds that had been in the three tomato beds,  stuck them unceremoniously in a bucket and took them over to bed 3. They can live there until the frost comes for them, or it’s time to clear that bed and cover it.

The ledge was 90% weed free. Weed free enough, but with all kinds of nigella (and hopefully very few daisy) seedlings already coming up. I’ve now put a thick layer of compost everywhere I can on it and barring any big weeds appearing, that’s now done for winter.