There must have been an amount of wind down at the plot in the last week. There were lots of pear windfalls, but there are still many more on tree. Half went straight to compost for being too rotten.

The plot looked a bit different in general. There’s a definite sense of things starting to die back, The warted gourds growing up the vine suddenly have dead leaves too. The tomatoes in Elder Corner are really suffering from the tree sucking up all the water. The fruit is still coming, but pouring buckets of water onto the bed doesn’t make any difference to the plants.

The bitter melons are still doing well. One of the bottom ones looks like it’s changing colour and there are a few little ones coming on behind.

I raked up the windfall apples from under the tree and when I went round the side of it, I saw why the tree looks so big. The branches have grown 1-2 feet from where I pruned them. I put about half a bucket of apples into the compost, along with all kinds of dry leaves and vines.

I did lots of weeding along the left hand side. I think the thistles that were all over the place were a result of next door’s pile of weeds. Could have been much worse, but I think most of those weeds were probably root spreaders.

I’ve taken up the physostegia, but not dug over the ground. I have no great confidence in the roots, but I’ve not quite made up my mind whether I’ll put something new in, or see what happens in the spring with the physostegia. I might put an everlasting pea in behind it.

Quite bizarrely there’s new gourd growth in the back bed – I think more of the odd Turk’s turbans -, including a brand new gourd on the warted gourds in bed 7, while rest of plant has either been harvested, or is well on its way.

While I’m not sure what the corn will produce in terms of a harvest, there are a few sneak peeks and I’m trying to protect what I can with leaves and dried silks.

Some of them are due for harvesting  soon – for ornamental corn it’s a matter of dried husks and hard niblets. I gave a few a press and I can’t get my nail into them. I’m in for a photography harvest glut all of a sudden.

When it comes to gourd photography I’ve had the idea of strawing down Bed 1 – or maybe 11 if the flower background remains.

My flowers were looking so good that I thought it was about time I took a little bunch home for the office.

We did a big harvest, with runner beans, French beans, a few little beetroot and a good basket of tomatoes. I also took home another bunch of gourds whose stems had dried off.