Late Autumn in the Garden – The big tidy-up

Late autumn is a strange season of conflicting emotions for me. To be honest it’s my least favourite time of the year.

I know we have the spectacular colourful displays from the trees, as their leaves blaze with fiery reds, golds and coppers. And when they first drop to the ground, dry and crispy, I can’t resist the temptation to run through them kicking them up in the air.

But once on the ground they become soggy and slimy!

I find it rather depressing as the garden starts dying back and everywhere looks a mess!

But it’s necessary! We all need a rest, even the garden.

I’m much happier once all the decay is tidied away onto the compost heap. It might be bare, but it’s now ready for next season to begin. And it doesn’t take long before the first bulbs push their way up, and we’re off again!

Which brings me to the most optimistic job of the year, planting spring bulbs.

So time to stop wallowing and find some jobs to do.

Planting spring bulbs

Deciding which of the beautiful coloured flowers to buy, is one of those ‘kiddie in a sweet shop’ moments. The catalogues are full of all shapes and colours, and I want them all!

Reining myself in, I check my pots to decide which can be freed up for bulb planting.

I don’t replant my tulip pots every year, just when I feel they’re not looking good anymore. When I do finally dig them out, I pop them into the garden. I’m trying to mix up as many colours as possible, to recreate an effect I saw in a magazine of Dunsborough Park, and their tulip meadow.

I was due to replenish quite a few of my tulip pots this year, especially the dolly tubs. But due to my reoccurring bad back, they’re going to have to wait until next year.

This means I only have two pots to plant up. A gorgeous new blue one, I’m like a magpie with blue, it just draws me to it. And a large pot, that’s been planted with mint for a few years and is now root bound.

Taking the mint out, I chop it into lots of pieces and repot it ready for new homes next year.

Scrapping the long list of bulbs I made earlier in the season, I go back to my favourite combo of purple and orange lily tulips. Using Purple dream and Ballerina. An easy job for my still sore back.

Late Autumn Leaves

This year’s autumnal trees have been better than I’ve seen for a long time. Mainly due to the incredibly mild temperatures and lack of wind.

Whilst driving around in late November the contrast of the golden leaves against such a vivid blue sky, meant I had to stop and take some photos.

This was all brought to an abrupt end though when storm Arwen hit on the 27^th November. Unprecedented 98mph winds, not only blowing all the remaining leaves off, but sadly taking a huge number of trees down too. Parts of the country were so badly affected that they lost power for days. Bringing into question, how on earth would we manage if we were totally reliant on electricity?

Back in our garden, one of the most spectacular autumn displays come from the two blueberry bushes. They blaze bright red. A plant that gives such bright colour, and pounds of fruit that can be made into muffins, is surely a must have!

Autumn Flowers

Before the storm, the flowers have also benefitted from the unseasonally warm weather. The late summer/early autumn flowers continued all through October and into November.

My pink, ‘Mary Rose’ has been astonishing, with the amount of blooms it’s produced. It really has gone on and on.

The bright pink Penstemon ‘Garnet’, (a new purchase this year) is still flowering as I write this, in December!

When the yellow winter jasmine came out, we still had one last, precious flower on the white summer jasmine.

Those of you that read about my trials and tribulations growing Angelica ‘Gigas’, will know quite how excited I was, to spot it growing at the back of the woodland border in November.

Fuchsias are known for their hardiness, but it still delights me when I trot off down to the compost bins in winter, passing the common pink one, and the white ‘Hawkshead’ variety.

Chelsea Autumn Crocus

I do feel I was incredibly restrained on my first ever visit to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

To only come away with three small purchases!

Agapanthus ‘Black Magic’ bought from Hoyland plant centre.

Nerine bulbs ‘Prince of Orange’ and autumn flowering Crocus Colchicum ‘autumnale’ bought from Jacques Amand.

I wasn’t sure where to put the large autumn crocus bulb, so I just popped it into a pot.

Lo and behold it emerged in all its strangeness. You can see why they call them naked ladies, having no leaves.

I now just have to find a little space in the white garden for them.

What no Figs!

As I recently had some feed back about our wonderful looking produce. It’s only fair to share the disasters, as all gardeners experience them!

Our well loved fig tree, that finally started producing delicious figs last year, has produced zero this year.

It was literally covered in fruit, brought on by the exceptionally good weather leading up to….. Easter weekend.

Good Friday and Easter Saturday, hot enough to need sun cream, Easter Monday snow!

This led to all of the figs dropping off, very disappointing.

But all was not lost, as they grew back. Only to disappoint again when they did not ripen in time, and started to fall off again!

There were a handful left on, when we had our first snow of the season last week. Fingers crossed for next year.

The Raised Veg Beds

We grow most of the veg in four raised vegetable beds. These each have different groups of veg in them. They’re swapped around every year, to stop any pests specific to that veg group from building up, it’s called crop rotation.

Squash – Legumes

As with everything this year the summer squashes (courgettes etc) were later finishing. Once cleared away to the compost heap, the bed was ready for the next crop.

The legume family (beans & peas) follow the squashes. After advice from a neighbour, I sow my broad beans in the autumn. They went in a little later than usual, but I’m sure they’ll be fine.

Legumes – Brassicas

Once this years beans had been collected for drying from the Legume bed. It was cleared, and the purple sprouting broccilli I sowed back in July went in. This is now the brassica bed for the next twelve months.

Brassicas – Roots

This years brassica are cleared away and it becomes the Roots bed. I immediately planted some garlic cloves after they had started to sprout in the fridge.

I also bought some autumn onion sets, white ‘Radar’ and red ‘Winter’, from Marshalls. This is new for me as I’ve never tried growing onions at this time of year.

Roots – Squash

Beetroots are the main crop grown in this bed. When they come to an end we manure the bed, ready for the greedy summer squashes next year.

The beetroots have done really well this year and at the moment we still have some growing. So the manuring will have to wait until they’ve finished.

Berries and beautiful Skies

So as we leave autumn behind and head off into winter, I won’t pretend to be sorry to see it go. But I will leave you with two attractive things from my melancholy season. Colourful berries and stunning skies.