I didn't do a huge amount in the garden during August as it was so hot or so wet when I was free. However, I kept on with general maintenance such as hedge trimming, lawn mowing and weeding areas that had already been cleared. The bind weed is an absolute thug; as soon as you turn your back it grows a foot longer and entangles all the nearby plants. I spent a good half hour yesterday rescuing the hydrangea from its clutches!
I have had some successes and failures in the vegetable patch. The tomatoes have fruited heavily and I am in the process of making a batch of spicy tomato chutney, which will be followed by a batch of green tomato chutney, as the ripening of the fruit has slowed right down and the woodlice have been moving in to start devouring the fruit. Speaking of woodlice, the sweetcorn set lots of fruit which was quite slow to ripen, and when I checked inside the cobs, the little critters had made themselves new homes. I fed the lot to the compost heap. Ah well.
I had a good crop of onions and shallots, as well as spring onions and French climbing beans. The runner beans did not do well but they were in competition with bindweed, so I may try again next year and be more vigilant with the weeding. We had five very tasty carrots! The nasturtiums have flowered non-stop, and today I collected lots of green seed which is now soaking in a brine solution ready for pickling tomorrow night.
At the beginning of September I was given a large bagful of crab apples, and had an attempt at making crab apple jelly. I had done this once before and the end result was not good. This time the result was much better, coming out a beautiful shade of clear red, although perhaps not quite as set as it should be. It tastes scrumptious though. I have also picked a lot of blackberries and made apple and blackberry crumble for the freezer, and frozen the rest of the fruit to eat throughout the winter. Yummy!
This last week has seen me clear the sweetcorn patch, dig it over and replant it with seed potatoes that promise new potatoes in time for Christmas. We'll see. The patch has been covered by netting suspended on wire hoops and held down with bricks in order to keep the cats off. The cats see this as a challenge. All the fruits on the tomato plants have been harvested and are being processed into chutney to help feed my cheese addiction. General weeding has begun again, and the lawn might get mown over the weekend. It is also seed collecting season, so until last weekend I had a ragtag collection of paper bags filled with desiccated seed heads, and then spent a pleasant morning sorting them and storing them in small envelopes. Spring bulbs have appeared in the shops, so I treated myself to some crocus corms, snowdrop bulbs (Galanthus nivalis, which I have planted in pots), and some Nectoscordum or Honey Bells.
I do have a dilemma while gardening at this time of year, in that there are spider webs everywhere, home to the most beautiful garden spiders (Araneus diadematus), and I really do not want to damage them or interrupt the feasting on flies. Unfortunately I need to get to the shed, and all routes are blocked by these beauties so I shall have to be horrid to at least one of them. I had to stop cutting back the perennial sweet pea last week because I found an elephant hawkmoth caterpillar loitering in there. There has also been an abundance of hoverflies, honeybees, bumblebees, solitary bees, ants, grasshoppers, harvest men, blackfly, woodlice, shiny green flies, slugs, garden snails and banded snails (don't think that is the right name), cabbage white butterflies, moths galore, the occasional bat and a toad. Glorious!
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| Garden Spider |
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| Elephant hawkmoth caterpillar |
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| Toad |
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| Garden Tiger moth |
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| Crab apple jelly |
