Five buttery leaves remain clinging to the ginkgo. The withering tomato plants look like they’ve been set up as a prop for Halloween, ready to belatedly join the liquefying sculpted pumpkins on the compost. Knotted black bin bags full of leaves are piled behind the cabin. Autumn is here.
The day starts of well dreich, and is not obviously suitable for excavating a path. Since it’s a matter of lifting the turves and excavating to about 10cm dreich turns to claggy. Of the myriad animals I have caused to live with me none has so far failed to leave an imprint within the house given gritty strength by their previously visiting the now claggy garden.
Despite my best attempts and most consistent neglect the plug plants are all still having a go in the tiny plastic-covered staging. Now I’ll actually have to plant them out. Talk amongst neighbouring friends has been of saving on food bills once I start harvesting. I’ve made it clear that is unlikely. Especially at the moment, with one 2m row of landcress and 1/3 row of ruby-stemmed spinach.
My veg plot is 6x3m, with two raised beds offering around 12m2 of growing space. And two rows of herbs. I’ve yet to order two plum trees, which will be fan-trained, in fact I’m hoping for a greengage and a plum, which are x-fertile. Together with the frame they’ll also enclose the plot. The cherry is established now, this year we must have had around 6kg of fruit, and the birds fed well too. I’ve pruned it again, so that next year the fruit will be more accessible to us and with luck less accessible to the birds. I haven’t noticed if the cherry crops well every other year – I don’t think so.
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