Well it’s coming to the end of the gardening season so it’s been a time for tidying up. The best job we did this year has to be relining that pond. It was a pain at the time but once it was done there was no turning back. The fish and the plants seemed happier and we’ve even had frogs taking part in a romantic evening swim and lots of tiny frogs migrating out of the pond to the rugged area around it. That’s all got to be good!

We’ve taken the tomato plants out of the raised beds and stuck in some garlic and onions (and an old stick of celery to see if it will grow) and we’ve a lot of unripened toms sitting on the kitchen windowsill our favourite method of ripening the green fruit. We could have gone for the banana method but we’ve no bananas. Here’s a couple of ripening tricks here and how they work.

We’ve also put some metal netting/grid type things on the top of the surface to stop the pests. The most recent ones to the garden are the pigeons as we caught them red handed at the brussel sprouts tops earlier. And we thought it was the slugs! We really have to think about some netting as we wonder was it them at the cardoons as well?

And we tidied up the bed at the side, took out the corn plants that had been pilfered by rogue squirrels and now working our way down to the sunflowers. We may actually keep the stalks of the big ones and use them for support for the sweet peas or beans or something.

So if you can get some time in now for a tidy up it will save you having to do so when the weather gets colder/wetter. Oh yes, we heard on the countryfile weather forecast on Sunday there could be a frost towards the end of the week so keep them peeled. Better safe than sorry!