Late September on the plot

At this point in the year we seem to spend most of our time clearing spent crops away and preparing beds for a winter rest. The plot looks relatively bare although looking more closely there is still plenty going on.

The carrots are still under the enviromesh and will be harvested throughout winter as we need them as will the parsnip planted at the end of the same bed. To  give them a little more protection these will be given a duvet of straw.

The long bed next door but one to the carrots in the photo below had been made ready for autumn onions and garlic.

Today it was planted up. Martyn mentioned in this post that we had problems sourcing the onion sets and garlic locally. 

The ammi is already flowering and shares a bed with wallflowers and sweet rocket which hopefully will put on a show next spring. More ammi and sweet rocket are planted in another bed but this time they are joined by sweet Williams.

Just in front of the plum trees are the All Gold raspberries which at the moment are cropping well.

In the photo below the clump of what looks like dock is horseradish which we really must pluck up courage to use. 

The bed in the photo below, that is now planted with sweetcorn and beetroot, which we are cropping at the moment, will later become our new strawberry bed. We still have to decide which varieties of strawberries to plant.

The leeks that are planted in the bed in the foreground will, like the carrots and parsnips, remain in the ground over winter to be harvested as required.

We have three brassica beds planted up, one of the brassica beds is home to Brussels sprouts, red and green cabbage. Although we think this bed is free of club root we have planted Crispus - a club root resistant variety of sprout which seems to do well for us. The sprouts are just beginning to form. 

We keep the netting on to protect against the marauding wood pigeons but unfortunately it doesn't help keep the clouds of whitefly away. Don't you just hate whitefly?

Planted in other brassica beds are Savoy cabbage, cauliflower, calabrese and winter cabbage. The problem with keeping them netted is that it is difficult to keep the edges of the bed trimmed. Maybe we can come up with some method to overcome this next year.

To the left, in the photo below, are the summer raspberries. The new canes have been tied to wires. We hope they will crop well next year. The runner bean frames will soon be removed as the beans are just about over. 

Between the beans are the Inca berries which as yet have fairly empty 'lanterns' so I guess we can chalk that up as a failure.

In the photo below, to the left are Joan J - autumn raspberries which are providing us with fresh berries at the moment and to the left are the Crown Prince squash. The squash leaves are dying back and the squash are just about ready to harvest and store.

The apple hedge and young apple trees are also still being harvested. Some of the fruit beds are edged with alpine strawberries. We started picking fruit from these at the beginning of June and they are still providing fruit. Production is slowing down but usually continues until the first frosts which has been as late as the beginning of November.

Trained along the side of the shed is a grapevine which was doing really well until August turned cool. Now the grapes have stopped swelling so I'm not expecting anything edible from them.

It's just the opposite story as far as the quince is concerned. The tree is fairly small. If you click and enlarge the photo two above, the quince is 'sort of' at the end of the shed. A month or so ago, although the tree was loaded, the fruits were quite small and didn't appear to be growing. 

Suddenly things took off and now the fruit are now the size expected. Last year nearly all the fruits developed bitter pit making them unusable; we are hoping this isn't repeated this year as we are looking forward to a good harvest.

Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett