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.