We dismantled the back trellis of beans as they were all done. There were a few undiscovered pods and one or two had dried off and had pretty purple beans inside. Mum dug over the end of the patch while I cut down all the tomatoes in next row. The blight had well and truly done for everything. I’d like to try a bigger tomato, but I do like Red Alert’s resilience in the face of blight. Come spring the supports will need a bit of WD40 to move round more smoothly, as they were quite a nuisance to fold flat.

We picked the first round of apples, just taking those that came off the branch readily. Some were huge and a number had been eaten a bit here and there. Beneath the tree was one apple that had been properly half-eaten. I wonder who had been feasting on that.

I did some deadheading, but am now pretty much going to leave the calendula to go to seed. It goes so against the grain, but I also need to leave enough time for seeds to mature and for me to then clear up before I’m no longer interested in going to the plot in the cold. The middle cornflowers have been pulled up as they were pretty much done with flower and seed production, but just the huge blackfly were still going strong.

After lunch I came back and took down all the quinoa plants, as I’d concluded from the previous ones I’d cut that there was no point in keeping them for anything indoors. I then dug over the whole bed. It was in perfect digging condition, there were just quite a lot of weeds to get rid off. Most of the inner beds are going to be like that, because I’ve not weeded for a while.