Evenings are drawing in quickly now.

We have to come earlier in the evening for our garden tidying, but the low sunlight makes everything look beautiful.

An evening glow in the garden.

Yes, the Jerusalem Artichokes did flower!

Heliathus tuberosus

Seen in close-up it is obvious that they are a species of sunflower.

The Asturian Tree Cabbages are growing well. Their pale green leaves look good and do not seem to attract pigeons.

Pick one leaf at a time from this unusual Spanish cabbage.

Another colourful leafy vegetable is our chicory. The leaves can be bitter, but become mellow in the colder weather.

Italian chicory or Radicchio

The radishes have almost finished flowering, and are producing succulent crunchy green pods, a tasty addition to any salad.

Radish pods can be eaten even if the radish roots are disappointing.

A Feast of Flowers!

Rain and early Autumn warmth have helped to give everything in the garden a new lease of life. Flowers are still providing lots of colour.

Clary Sage and Marigolds

Sunflower with Penstemons

The radishes, which suffered in the drought and produced few edible roots, now have a froth of beautiful white blossoms to compensate. These should be followed by tasty seed pods.

Radishes in flower

The Jerusalem Artichokes are in bud and look dramatic silhouetted in front of the pale buildings. Will they too manage to flower before it gets too cold?

Jerusalem Artichokes are still growing taller.

A sunny evening in the Garden

Sometimes it's good to sit and look at the garden as a whole. That way we can see things we hadn't noticed while we were busy doing the obvious jobs.

Taking it easy before work starts

                                                                 

From our seat, this flower bed makes an attractive picture.

  

 One of our apple trees has been leaning over badly. It needs re-staking and so it can be pulled upright.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Hammering in the stake.

 

 

Job done.

September already

Our last two Monday session were rained off, but eventually we managed to find a dry(ish) evening later in the week when we could catch up in the garden. The main job was cutting the grass edges and then general tidying.

The rain has encouraged our annual rocket seeds to germinate - in abundance!

Rocket seeds germinate quickly in the right conditions.

We also have some wild rocket in the garden. It is a perennial which we don't remember planting, but it is a tasty addition to salads, and very hardy.

Wild rocket

The Broad Ripple Yellow Currant tomatoes, which come up every year with no help at all from us, are ripening now. Tiny, but very tasty.

These plants will go on producing little tomatoes until the frost comes.

Late summer tasks

We have planted out some chicory (radicchio) seedlings.Their green outer leaves can taste bitter, but we hope they will heart up over the winter to provid succulent red and white inner  leaves for salads.

Tiny chicory seedlings.

 Dead heading flowering plants is always worth doing, to promote more flowering and to keep the garden looking tidy.

Dead heading can be quite a relaxing activity.

Salad burnet is a useful winter salad herb, as it is perennial and very hardy, almost evergreen. The young leaves have a cucumber taste, and look very attractive, as do the clusters of tiny red flowers.

Salad burnet (sanguisorba minor)

Summer days

Things seem to be rather quiet in the garden at the moment.  Runner and French beans are maturing and being harvested.  Grass edges have been neatly trimmed. Watering is still a big concern.

All hands to the tap!

The sunflowers are looking their best now.

Bees love sunflowers

Borage is a herb that self seeds so readily that we can have two crops in the same summer. Young leaves can be added to salads, where the flowers also look wonderful.  Borage is said to be the herb that was given to young Roman soldiers, for courage and comfort.  Gerard's Herbal (1597) states that the flowers "drive away sorrow, and increase the joy of the minde."

Borage - herb of courage.

After the rain - new growth.

No watering needed this week, thank goodness!
We were pleasantly surprised to see that our broad bean plants, which were almost dead after drought and black fly, are producing new growth, and maybe we'll get some beans after all.

Broad beans with a new lease of life

The flowers of runner beans "Celebration" and "Saint George" are looking very attractive at the moment.

Flowers look good, and beans will taste equally good.

It's time to pull out the old dry growth of plants like land cress which have dropped their seeds by now.
These seeds will germinate to give us salads in autumn through till next spring.

Self-seeding salad crops make life easy for us.