Winter prep in the garden
Frost was threatening so I spent more or less a full day in the garden in preparation, under the careful supervision of the robin. Tactics have changed a little this year - normally I'd have stuff in over the winter but the summer was so brutal it either died or I didn't bother. I figured it's no bad thing for the soil to have the winter off.
There was still a lot out there that needed to be harvested either before the frost or just generally. I picked all the tomatoes, ready or not. The 'or not' may yet ripen, we shall see. Also cabbage, carrots, one tiny cauliflower, some beetroot, potatoes.
An important job was to sort out the salad bed. The lettuces, spring onion, and such, are done but spinach, chard, and beetroot prevail. I picked some of the larger beetroot - in that bed I mostly use it for the leaves. Yet again I have failed to grow kale. It's just too delicious for the slugs.
So I tidied up - I'm a happy 'chop and drop' person everywhere but there. My priority in the salad bed is slug avoidance and my pest control frog is no longer in residence. I had some chives elsewhere in the garden, situated before we made the salad bed, which were getting crowded by raspberries, so I transplanted them. Then added a bunch of old compost and covered the bed with a fleece-type thing.
A reasonably tidy salad bed ready for winter
In the next bed - the imaginatively named 'second bed' - the marigolds were still flowering which is wild. It was a lovely bit of colour but I'm afraid they had to go. Also to go, the pumpkin vine that had produced two golf ball sized pumpkins. I harvested the cabbage and the mini cauliflower. This weekend I'll do a quick fridge pickle. Spent a meditative hour stripping and ripping all the outer leaves and tossing them back onto the bed. The thick stalks I chopped up for the compost bin. Then I chucked the old compost from the tomato pots on top.
Though I pulled the marigolds I left the alkanet sitting in the corner. It's not quite as unruly and less generous with its seed. I know a lot of bugs like to be in there, even if slugs do also. In the tidying I displaced a lot of woodlice and encountered a few caterpillars which I either covered back up or rehomed under the alkanet. I've also got a bug hotel which I replenished with some smaller sticks from the alder and buddleia trimming.
My greenhouse is an extremely ramshackle affair. It's held together by moss, ivy, and duct tape. It also has no door. Which isn't a problem all summer. In winter it has a door made of a plastic sheet and velcro - until the wind rips it to shreds. Poor door needed some repair. All I've got in there this winter is the herbs, some baby foxgloves, strawberry cuttings. No salad or anything this year. I also tidied up some of the pots, a bit. I'll get back in there and finish tidying.
In the interests of health and safety I cleared the path to the compost bin of brambles, ivy, grass growing between the slabs, and weeds. I do not want to trip in the winter wet and put an arm through the greenhouse. That would be unpleasant.
Although an injury was incurred. You know when you're like, "Where did that blood come from? Oh, me."
It always helps to actually be outside, even if it's grey and drizzly. I listened to James Fox's Craftland: A Journey Through Britain’s Lost Arts and Vanishing Trades. And the plus side of the chill is the sky got clear and starry and it was bright and blue the next day. The first day of frost was gentle, the second was brutal. Today the shadier half of the garden stayed frozen all day. The tomato plants withered and died instantly. This will at least make it easier to pull them out, all forty of them, when I eventually get round to it. The salad bed, I am pleased to report, did not freeze.