First visit to make a start on cutting down dead stalks. I shall have loads of awful grass and weeds to get rid of, so I need to make a start. The robin came to see me before I’d had time to do much at all.

By the end of my visit though, I’d cut down most of the stalks on the left hand side.

I discovered that the rat has been sharpening its teeth along the fence side of my shed, as well as a little bit by the door. So I’ve refilled the trap and cleared out the compost that has been sitting between the heap and the shed. I scraped out a bucketful, including a bunch from the bottom of the heap.

This compost has gone on as a layer on Bed 8 before the garlic is planted.

The apple tree is looking as wild as usual, but the tree surgeon is booked to give it a fright in 2 weeks’ time. I’m hoping for some drastic improvement.

The water has receded a great deal now, but I’m still being careful walking around so as not to damage the paths. Patches near the shed in particular are going to need re-seeding, but I’ve still got half a sack of seed, so that’s not a problem.

Mum covered the remaining beds, while I spent forever digging out another long parsnip. It looks like the rest of them won’t be anything like as big, and so will be much easier pull-up harvests. Bed 7 has only been half-covered, leaving the big cornflowers in place. I’m hoping to be able to move them somewhere else in better weather. Trellis bed, maybe?

The kalette plant has continued to grow, but when I pulled off a reasonably sized kalette, it turned out to be absolutely full of whitefly. So ultimately it’ll just end up on the compost heap, but it can stay standing for now in case a pigeon wants to nibble it.

We’ve managed to insert a sheet of plastic between the left-hand water butt and the wall of the shed. It’s leaning and when full it’s been leaking out of the top and running down the side of the shed. I’m concerned it’s done some damage, but that’ll have to wait until spring to be dealt with. The shed could do with being re-painted anyway.

At home, the mystery currant is just starting to show tiny signs of growth.

A Boxing Day visit. We’ve had a lot of rain, but it paused for a day or so, so I went down to the plot – and fell over in the mud before I’d even reached my gate. Before the rain we had heavy snow, which saw off the chard at last. Not much else in the garden has been defeated yet.

I shall leave the kalettes in place until the spring, but at this point I’m not convinced they’re going to do much more than this. The individual sprouts are not up to much.

I cleared the chard and covered Bed 2, and ripped up the last few candytuft plants and covered Bed 9 too. The ground was getting somewhat churned up, so I didn’t pursue too much work.

Bed 3 has more bulbs coming up in it. It still clearly needs more compost in it, but with the bulbs all in place, I can’t just dump it in. I’m hoping I can continue to gradually creep it in around them during the year.

I decided to pull up a parsnip and was delighted  to find that the first one I came to had quite a big head. It then took ages to dig up because it was so long that it went down through the compost and into the clay, reaching the current water level! I took out the little one next to it too.  The big one was 7.5″ of parsnip plus about 12″ tail; the smaller one was about 5″ long.

I’ve all but finished clearing Bed 9. A couple of candytuft remain, which will either go to the compost, or into a border if there’s an easy place for them. Then coffee and cover.

The trellis bed is also cleared up now at last. Various weeds gone and another bit of bramble cut off that turned out to be much longer on the other side than I expected.

Bed 10 is properly clear now. The cosmos roots had loosened up a lot and I took the big clumps out for compost. Other lighter bits of material have been left in the soil. I had a look under the cover on Bed 11 and nothing much has happened to all the poppies under there.

I tidied up the compost that had been kicked out and got ¾ of a bucket of good stuff. That went onto Bed 2, which is low – but barely made any difference. It needs at least another bag on it.

Bed 7 is the main remaining challenge. I think I’ll see if I can clear almost of all of it, but leave the cornflowers at the end. If I do pumpkins here, they can fight it out amongst themselves.

Over in the mess of Plum Corner is a glorious snapdragon doing its own thing. Hopefully I won’t break it next spring when I’m clearing up the mess all around it.

There were carrot tops on door mat again and, sure enough, more big holes in the carrot bed, along with loose carrot tops. In order to stop them being wasted, I’ve pulled them all up. There were a few mad ones from the second sowing, which had grown as big balls.

All the poison in the bait station had been eaten, but there’s a small hole in the compost and a load of the good compost has been kicked out against the shed. I need to scrape that out, but you’re also not supposed to disturb the surrounding area too much.

There’s been a lot of rain recently, but temperatures have dropped and have evidently been low enough that the nasturtiums and marigolds have been killed off. The cerinthe on the bug hotel has recovered from its move and looks pretty good.

I emptied the buckets that were full of rain water and have put out the stepping stones to save the mud. The first concrete slab has sunk a little under the weight of the water butts. Perhaps it can be picked up a bit next summer when the water level is lower.

I cleared half of  Bed 9. I’m leaving some of the material as green manure and some is going to the compost bin. There will be loads of morning glory next year, there’s no way around it.

The kalettes are still maturing. I’m not sure the florets will ever get particularly big, but I can leave them a while longer.

There were carrot tops and bits of carrot on the doormat when we got to the shed. That led to the discovery that a few carrots were missing and others had been chomped but ultimately left. I found some fresh rat droppings round the back of the shed, so I’ve put the bait station out again, as well as chucking a couple of loose ones down the side of the shed.

I harvested ones that had enough untouched to be trimmed and pulled up a few more too. Hopefully the rat will choose the poison over a carrot in the next week or so. It looked like there was an indentation in the hedgehog house, so I’m hoping that wasn’t the rat.

Mum and I took down the rest of the everlasting peas and I did some more autumn trimming. A lot of the perennials are being left until spring though, which is good for wildlife, but still feels very untidy to me.

After lunch I cut down all the cosmos. They were still flowering an amount, but were in my way with all their mad leaning, and I want to keep the tidying going. They have super fibrous roots which were in danger of taking all the compost with them, so I cut them, making a much smaller root ball. Hopefully what I’ve left behind in the bed will break down over the winter.

First job was to put in all the bulbs. I unintentionally left out a few sparaxis, so I’ll put those in the pots that have ended up by the shed. Bed 3 is now:

20 x Narcissi (Feb-Apr) – left, right, back
10+ x Tete a tete (Feb-Mar) – left, right, back
10 x Hotpants pink/white tulips (late Mar-May) – front left corner triangle
7 x Gavota tulips (Apr) – centre circle
8 x Sunlover tulips (Apr-May) – right and back
20 x Purple Sensation irises (May-Jun) – wider circle
30+ x Sparaxis – Jul-Aug – all over

There are certainly signs of life in the bug house, creepy crawlies and spiders. It may have a renovation next year, but I’m certainly not going to disturb anything right now. A couple of random cerinthe had self-sown in Bed 11 and I’ve moved them to the holes in the bug hotel, which had just grown grass instead of nasturtiums. They’ve self-sown everywhere at home, so hopefully they’ll do the same here.

I hoed up all the poppies in Bed 11 and spread them out over the soil. Then we covered the bed. The aim is for the poppies to turn into green manure and hopefully not be too sludgy.

I raked up the surface of Bed 8 and the open end of Bed 2 and we covered Beds 1 and 8. It’s starting to look a bit more tidied up now as the covers go on.

We cleared the bean netting entirely – except that H rang and put me out of action for 20 minutes. It’ll have to come down next time as it was pretty dark by the time we finished.

In the morning I went to the garden centre to spend some birthday money on bulbs. I also stocked up on plant food that was on offer. Then I found I still have loads in the shed, but it’s not a problem as I’m doing pumpkins next year.

Once the fog had lifted I did a shift in the afternoon. I spread office coffee grounds on beds 1,2 and 8.

I got a hedgehog house yesterday, so I hope it will encourage the hedgehog back into the plot. I tidied up the weeds under the apple tree (and got pinned to the fence by a bramble). The ground it a lovely mix of wood chip, rich soil and dead leaves. Perfect for hedgehog food.

I mixed up a bucket of straw and leaves to put inside and around the house.

I’ve done more trellis tidying and pulled up more morning glory mess. The stuff is going to be all over that bed next year. I wonder if it would like to climb up the planned sweetcorn?

As part of the tidying, I’ve put all the remaining marigolds into Bed 2 as we don’t seem to be in danger of a frost any time soon.

A long weekend for my birthday. In the morning I did lots of pull up weeding. Handfuls of weeds coming up nice and easily from the damp compost. Bed 6 has now been given a bag of compost and covered for winter.

Two bags of manure have gone onto Bed 1. It’s still pretty low, but most compost etc will be added in the spring when I can start getting the car down again. It’s a bit borderline at the moment.

All the fencing has been wound up fairly tightly and is now tucked down the side of the shed in the freshly tidied storage area.

The kalettes are still growing well and the dropping leaves are fine; they help to mature the plant. I had a little dig to look at a parsnip and found one with a reasonable top. No idea how long it is though. There’s a Liz Truss lettuce in the compost bin that doesn’t seem to have suffered at all since being pulled up.

In the afternoon I dug up the yarrow completely. I thought I might leave some of it, but I’ll put the currant in its place and I see if I like that. Some of the bulbs are peeking above the soil. It all turned over beautifully and there was lots of stuff for the birds to find.

I missed last weekend and had forgotten that I’d left the plot in the middle of a job. It’s rained a lot in the last week, so the bucket of earth we’d left out was now a bucket a mud. The poles had all been washed off quite well though.

The tomatoes were completely killed off with blight, so the first job was to cut them down and bag them up for the bin. There were a number to take home – some actually red, some that may ripen. I only trod on a few, but we’re sure to get more volunteers next year.

The kalettes suddenly look a little different. There’s a million whitefly, which appear when you touch the plant and the actual kalettes are beginning to form properly. It will be a while before they’re worth picking though.

The robin came back to see me and enjoyed the newly empty plum tomato bed. Excitingly, there were also several signs of a hedgehog having been around in the plot. I may have to think again about a hedgehog house.

In doing lot of big weed removal, I pulled up the volunteer potato in Bed 1 without seeing its foliage. So that was quite a nice surprise.

 

After lunch we finished the tidying of the side of the shed and this time we put down the weed membrane that we didn’t last time. I’ve pinned it in a few places to try and stop the weeds just coming round the edge. All the wood and the wire fencing is back in place.

The next issue is where to put all the covered fencing that’s been supporting the tomatoes. All the walls and rings and currently just stood out of the way by the apple tree. Possibly I can flatten them, tie them together and file them down the side of the shed over winter.

I’ve dug up the volunteer currant bush and put it in a pot to see if it will make it through the winter. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it at that point. Bed 3 in place of at least some of the yarrow maybe?