Autumn planting - raspberry canes, garlic and early onions. Leaf mould

Sunday was a lovely Autumn day, quite warm.  A pair of red kites were circling low overhead for most of the afternoon.

The brassica cage is very sturdy so we are going to use it as a permanent fruit cage.  We planted 15 raspberry canes among the cabbages; 5 each of Malling Jewel, Tulameen and Autumn Bliss.

We planted 6 rows of garlic (Wight) maybe 100 cloves, and 100 early onion sets; 50 Senshyu Yellow and 50 of a red one, Electric.  They went into in shallow trenches made with the Azada, which was a lot faster than using a dibber, and we covered them with horticultural fleece to keep the birds off.

We put pile of leaf mould which had been under black plastic for a year into a plastic compost bin and will add this year's fallen leaves.  It will make good seed compost.  We use a lot of it and it is very expensive to buy.

First frost

There was some frost last last night so we had to harvest the sweetcorn. Not a big harvest, but enough for a bag each and better than we've done before.

We dug up the last row of Cara potatoes.  They were really good sized and unblemished.  We put a layer of comfrey leaves in the trench when we were planting them, so that seems to be worth doing.

We have been digging over where we have taken crops out and have been composting, adding comfrey tea to the heap before covering it with black plastic.

Fantastic potato harvest

We should have more than enough potatoes to last for months.  We have been eating potatoes since July but still harvested six hessian sacks of Cara and Pentland Javelin, and three trays of Pink Fir Aple. Some of the Pentland Javelins are huge.  The feeding with compost, chicken manure and comfrey has certainly paid off and despite the wet Summer there was no blight. Very happy.

Hottest October day ever

It has been really warm. 29.9C today and really sunny with a good forecast for the next few days.  Hopefully the sweetcorn will ripen.  It has been a cold wet Summer overall