The nights have really drawn in now, and it’s difficult to find time, during the week, to devote to the plot. You can’t very well go rooting up carrots or pruning back the rambling brambles in the dark, and as a result it’s starting to get a little battered.
Two of the sprout plants are now looking quite lame where they have fallen over, although they are still strong and thick enough to make walking sticks from the stems. The sprouts themselves – at the bottom of the stalks, at least – are now large enough to pick and eat, so we only need wait for the frost to set their flavour and then we can take the first of the crop. I don’t think that will be long.
But the butternut squash is more of a concern, as after a promising start it seems to have stalled. I thought that planting all 12 seeds in the packet had been rather extravagant, but it’s as well I did, as at least half have since died and of those that survived only one is truly thriving. There are two in trugs and four in the plot. Of those in the plot two have quietly withered to the point where they’re little more than yellowing sticks, and the two others are sitting around enjoying the cool autumn air but making no real effort to grow any larger than a cabbage. No actual flowers or fruits on them yet.
And so the best bet for any squash this winter lies with the prize specimen growing in a trug behind the greenhouse. That’s probably because it was planted in compost and manure rather than regular earth so it’s having a richer feed.
The tomatoes, meanwhile, have pretty much run their course. After the glut we had at the end of September things have slowed right down. There are still some green fruits on the vines, but very few are turning yellow or red, and I don’t think many of the others will be changing colour now, so we’ll have to come up with a green tomato recipe for them. I think it’s maybe time to cut them down and clear some space in the greenhouse anyway (which is currently doubling as a shed while the outhouse has a new floor laid) so I could move in that other trug-bound squash to see if a couple of degrees of warmth would chivvy it along a bit.
This marks a definite turning point in the garden, though, and a very marked end of the first growing season there, so it’s probably time to tally up the value of the fruit and veg we’ve harvested so far and draw a line under summer. Going ahead, our experiments will shift focus onto the stodgy, comfort vegetables of winter.
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