Puff! And the horticultural summer was gone. The cold weather of last week (there was frost on Saturday morning) administered the coup de grace to the crops that were already in terminal decline. So we say goodbye to courgettes, patty pan squash, French and runner beans, and tomatoes. Of course there will be some stragglers, but not enough for me to be able to add include them in the shop, so they will find themselves on my farmers’ market stall on Saturday. In their place are winter squash – recently harvested Uchiki Kuri and Delicata, with Butternut to follow in a couple of weeks. There are still sweetcorn, lovely purple sprouting broccoli and kale, Pink Fir Apple potatoes are a new addition, as are cooking apples. We are back to the mini plum tomatoes from the Isle of Wight this week.
I collected the first batch of apple juice last Tuesday, and dropped off another load of fruit to be pressed. More apple picking will follow in the next couple of weeks, so hopefully a decent stock of bottled juice will build up by the time the last apple is picked.
It’s only a couple of weeks since I bemoaned the absence of wasps and hornets this summer. Well I have seen the odd hornet in the greenhouse and on fallen fruit in the orchard, but nothing like in ‘normal’ years. The wasp situation has altered somewhat though. For a couple of weeks now I have been hearing a faint tick tick tick above my head when working in the potting shed, seemingly from behind the stack of cardboard boxes I use for the orders, but I failed to establish the source of the sound or what was making it. Then the penny dropped early last week when I saw wasps arriving and leaving at regular intervals from a gap under a tile of the sloping roof of the shed just above the door. They are very late to the party, because a colony should be well past its peak by now, but this one has really only just got going. They are causing me no harm or cause for concern, so I will live and let live.
I have a bird feeder that the tits are very grateful for, but not many other species tend to frequent it, so I scatter some seed on top of a stack of pallets for the Robins, Finches, Dunnocks and other desirable garden birds to feed on. In reality the pigeons, crows, jackdaws, pheasants, and most of all, squirrels, probably get more of it than they do, but get some they do. Anyway, regular pallet visitors are Greenfinches and Chaffinches, and there is one particular male of the latter type that is the fattest and laziest of them all. Whereas all of the other birds flit in, feed and flit off again in a space of seconds, fatty lays down on the wood and feeds from a recumbent position, staying for minutes at a time, reposing like an avian buddah. I tried to get a photo of him, but he wouldn’t cooperate. In other bird news, there has been a large flock of Linnets in the field behind our cottage recently, and whilst walking Nellie earlier today we disturbed a small flock of Yellowhammers when passing a hedge, which was nice to see.
It was my birthday yesterday, and we are about to walk down the hill for a quick half at our local before dinner to celebrate, so I’m leaving it here. The week ahead is looking very promising, with lots of sunshine and pleasantly warm temperatures, which will feel like a proper bonus after last week. I hope that you get to enjoy the autumn loveliness.
By the way, there is a video on the Moyns Park Organics Facebook page of the squash patch taken today. https://fb.watch/uCNl67SYgi/
Phil