OUTDOORS 30

Here we go again - with a day's harvest of autumnal produce - a green lumpy squash, a few raspberries, 1-2 tomatoes, a 'hot lemon' chili, and a handful of runner beans. And again, have another similar selection from a different day of early September - beans, tomatoes, chilies, raspberries - and hazelnuts. The nuts are actually from someone else's yard - the gentleman I clean for once a week offered me some.

This brings me to my main October project - re-covering the poly tunnel. The first step is to cut down the weeds surrounding it - as you can see in this shot, there are tons of them. You can also spot some garden spiders with large webs that I have enjoyed observing near my kitchen window recently. In the meantime, I have been grabbing crops -

- a recent outburst of turnips and mooli are topping up the veg, along with the chilies and a few tomatoes. I have not got many tomatoes this year - as ants munched my seedlings. You can also spot a few autumnal raspberries. In the second shot, bramleys from the tree in the yard join the mooli, turnip, 2 spuds, and 6 green lumpy squashes collected on the 3rd day of the month.

And we are back to a range pf photos taken down the plot in early October - the first shows my old rhubarb and black compost bin up the far end - the neat patch beyond, before the fruit bushes, is where I have my broad beans, garlic and shallots planted. Since taking this picture last week, I have now dug out the rhubarb crown in 5-6 lumps and deposited it down the end where 'freebies' are put for other plotsters who might want it.

This shot shows the other clump of rhubarb at the other far end of the plot - the new crown. As you can see, it is doing well enough for me to have faith in it producing my crops for next year - so long as I surround it in horse muck and rhubarb leaves and remove weeds. Also in view are the blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes - with raspberries beyond.

my final shot for today's blog post is of my 2 blueberry bushes, my onion patch, and some dug over/weeded ground - read to grow in 2018. My aim is to remove grass/weed paths and make them all as seen above - trodden mud.