I put socks on yesterday. I’m probably just being a bit namby pamby, but my feet got cold. Not winter cold by any stretch of the imagination. But that shock cold when the temperatures you have been used to up until recently have you eying up anything that can remotely be used as a fan to wave air around you to enjoy the cooling effect, plummet significantly by about 5°C. This is definitely noticeable. In the reverse season when temperatures are climbing, a jump up by 5°C would be embraced as a good thing. But a jump down – not so much in the tail end of summer. The weather is all over the place right now!
But now my head is in the right place for the winter garden, making plans and sowing seed. Ordinarily in a normal summer when the hot conditions stretch seamlessly and endlessly into autumn, I am in denial about the need to start seed so soon, and invariably run late.
I have had a look at the garden plan and have decided I need to sow:
- Peas for an autumn crop.
- Salad crops to continue with the succession sowing.
- Radish can also go in now and hopefully I’ll be less busy so I can appreciate them before they go woody and hard and become goat food.
- A fresh round of brassica including kohlrabi, broccoli, cabbage – red and savoy, cauliflower, and kale.
- Loads of leafy greens such as spinach (a winter variety) wombok, bok choy and tatsoi.
- Now the weather is cooler I will put in a new row of carrots, some more beetroot and fennel and also pop in some swede. I think I have decided I don’t like turnips as much as I like swede so there isn’t really a lot of point growing them – even if they do mature faster than swede.
- It will soon be time to sow broad beans, so I’ll need to watch out for the window to open.
- To try to repeat last years winter sunflowers I will pop in some more seeds to see what I get. There is no harm in trying.
- I have a Saskatoon Berry Smokey that has been in the fridge for the chill period for way longer than it should have been so I should really give that a go, but I’m not holding out great hope… I think is starting to believe its new home is in the Artic Circle!
- I also want to take some more cuttings from about the place because I have grand plans. I took some recently, but I think the weather was just too hot to keep the soil continually moist.
Now that I have written it down it doesn’t seem like it is as enormous a task as spring sowing, and certainly not as daunting. I’ll get on to it first thing tomorrow.
Hopefully, the temperatures will rise again to give us a last hurrah before finally making its slow and steady decent across the autumn and into the chill of winter.
Come again soon – I need to fight the urge to get cozy indoors, summer isn’t over yet!
Sarah the Gardener : o)
Wow fantastic garden Sarah
Thanks so much, it is a labour of love! : o)
Looks like you painted the greenhouse door to match your office and shed! Looks good!
Thanks, I thought I would tie in the colour to the rest of the garden! : o)
Your garden is a credit to you Sarah … and don’t all gardeners need a ‘to do’ list! Slowly working on mine. Where do you get your garlic from? There seems to be a real dearth of heirloom garlic this year. Mind you, I haven’t planted it in about 2 years thanks to rust …
Thanks so much for your kind words. Because early garlic is hard to track down, I save the best of mine each season, but there are a few places online that do garlic, you just need to get in early and put your name on a waiting list. The rust is a pain, that’s why I do early garlic, to give it a good head start before the rust kicks in – through trial and error I have found the early ones have a better chance of being an edible size. I think I ended up with Early Pearl and a Purple Early and I plant mine out in April. I hope this helps. : o)
I used to plant mine out early too .. have started the hunt for some, not having much success. My friend in Melbourne had an amazing crop! I do believe I have garlic envy ..🙂