Winter Preparations

There is definitely a sense of preparing for winter here. I spent some time in the week buying plants for tubs and putting the geraniums in to the greenhouse for the winter. It gave me a chance to look around the garden centre and work out what I wanted in the back garden



So yesterday that's what we worked on. Now that the new borders are all in place and freshly weeded we got to do the fun bit which was begin to fill them with new plants. The previous owners had favoured a japanese minimal colour look of bamboos, grasses and architectural plants. I want to create a more English country garden effect. We bought more roses, a grape vine, aqueligias, a pyracantha, wallflowers, pansies and lots of spring bulbs. A most satisfying afternoon planting it all up. I've still got an old rockery to work on - again its got too many plants that have outgrown their spacing and it needs digging back to the stones and redefining. That is going to be my autumn project as the weather allows.

Up on the plot we are harvesting the last of the summer crops before the big clear up. We've rotavated over some of the empty areas ( like where the potatoes were) so its starting to look cleaner. Tim today bought home a last butternut squash, a nice pot of autumn raspberries, the last few runner beans which will probably be used for next years seed, and a few jerusalem artichokes. There is perhaps one or two more pumpkins up there I think but that's probably it.


We're not very good at growing winter crops - the pigeons, rabbits and even the odd muntjack deer are voracious - so we've currently not got anything in there but this gives us room to think over the winter and plan effectively for next year. We aim to increase our fruit trees up the plot and are seriously considering where we'd put a polytunnel of our own. I want to look at how the whole plot is fenced as we only have part of it protected so there is enough to do over the winter in readiness for the spring.



The bees are preparing for winter too. We've been feeding them up this last month so they have plenty of stores for the times when they can't go out and there is nothing for them to forage from. They've been treated for varroa mite as part of our intergrated management of this bee pest. Today Tim fixed the mouse guard on the entrances to the hive which prevents mice thinking that a hive would be a warm and tasty winter home. All that is left to do is strap up the hives to prevent strong winter storms from toppling them and consider if we need to protect the hives from woodpeckers.

At home I'm continuing with Christmas planning and my thoughts are turning to making the cake and pudding over half term which starts at the end of next week. In the meantime its back to the knitting and tea....