Get gardening with Gillie: Autumn fruit is on the way
Autumn is coming all too fast. No sooner is the Bank Holiday over and the kids back to school then it is harvest time for a lot of fruit.
Our lovely fruit fairy has struck again (well we now know it is the gentleman across the road!).
He left me two bags of apples so half a dozen quickly got peeled, cored and sliced to make into a crumble. They have a lovely pink flesh and a sweet taste.
It is chutney time again as well. My indoor tomatoes were a washout and have been ripped out. The few green tomatoes have been saved and together with some of the apples will make a nice chutney.
My outdoor tomatoes were bush ones called Red Alert, and the crop is so heavy that the stems are breaking. We’ve been kept in salad tomatoes for weeks. Next year they will have to have a cage round them to hold them up.
I’ve seen a lot more butterflies this year which has meant a lot more caterpillars. The wind caught the net on my cabbages and perennial kale and it didn’t take long before they turned into very pretty lace. I picked leaves but left the net off.
The buddleia has been full of butterflies but the downside of that is they have gone brown very quickly. By accident James discovered that by cutting back several large branches that were growing over the hydrangea, he inadvertently gave it the “Chelsea Chop”. It quickly grew back, shorter, but started flowering much later.
I have a row of rainbow chard next to the cabbages. The taste this year is a bit milder because of all the rain. Some of it has started to go to seed but by cutting the shoots out it is still growing well.
Caterpillars have eaten some of it but have left plenty for us to eat. Curiously, they have hardly touched the ruby chard.
The least said about my Wonderberry the better. One plant survived and is quite big and there are quite a lot of small clusters of berries on it. BUT the berries a very small and the crop will not be enough to add to apples for a crumble let alone make any jam.
On the plus side by next year my currant bushes should be large enough to produce a reasonable crop.
There is still just time to sow a row of carrots and to sow kale and spring cabbage. I like to pick the kale when it is small and plant out the cabbage much closer than the recommended distance then pull alternate ones as greens leaving the others to grow on.
Spring bulbs like crocus and daffodils are in the shops and garden centres now so get them bought and in the ground.
If you want to grow hyacinths for flowering indoors over Christmas, then they must be potted up and kept in a cool dark place by the end of September.
