September was a nice month here for overnight rain and sunny days. Overly warm for the season so “second spring” was very much in swing with the rapid growth of grass and weeds as well as flowers. I had a busy month so I was at the plot intermittently, mostly to pick tomatoes and other vegetables and keep my greenhouse seedlings watered.
All the seeds I sowed in August are doing great which I’m really pleased about. The green manure on my potato patch did great too.
Although I will say I saw a rat more than once picking little bunches of young mustard greens from the green manures to carry in the side of its mouth to wherever it’s nesting. The rats haven’t otherwise caused any noticeable damage to my crops but there are a lot hanging around the site atm. Thankfully none seem to be nesting on my plot but I see them up and down the lane all the time.
The squirrels have been having the time of their lives on the sunflower heads.
Green parakeets seem to be at the site every day now, they’ve been in the area for the past two years but now I think there’s at least some roosting on site. Lots of other birds have been around too. I get wrens, dunnocks, blue tits and robins on my plot while I’m there to keep me company.
At the end of September I tallied up my dried bean harvest for the year, it’s not exhaustive as I gave pods to people and didn’t save every last pod anyhow but a rough count is interesting. Cherokee Trail of Tears beans came in at 621g from 8 plants.
The cannellini bean total was 627g, not sure how many (dwarf) plants, I did staggered sowing between other things but I’m really happy with how they coped through the heat and their productivity length.
And then Greasy beans came in at 290g for 8 plants. They noticeably need a longer season than we have here in the West Midlands, which makes sense given they are acclimatised to Southern Appalachia, USA. I pulled my remaining bean plants down and deconstructed the frames over the weekend and the Greasy beans still had lots of green pods. In the UK this variety is suggested as a drought tolerant lower yield variety – for our shorter season they are lower yield but with an extra month they probably would have almost doubled their yield.
I’ve dried some amaranth but I haven’t harvested all the plants I’ve grown. I might process more but it takes space and time to dry and thresh it. I grow it mostly because it needs next to no care and looks beautiful, in a similar fashion to sunflowers.
I’ve been picking loads of dahlias and cosmos flowers for myself and others, they’ve been doing really well. The nasturtiums were thriving through Sept (and still are!) which has been a joy, I missed them through the middle of the year, they didn’t come to anything during the heat.
Coriander seeds look plentiful. I don’t think I’ve talked much about celeriac but I have 12 ish plants and they’re thriving. I was given young plants earlier this year by a neighbour and it’s my first time growing them but they’ve been easy peasy even through the adverse conditions. Looking forward to harvesting them! I’m still picking plenty of basil and parsley too.
My trials with perennial vegetables have been going well. This is the bunching onions and skirret’s first full season of growth. I had a dig down to see how the skirret roots look and there’s a nice big crown, I won’t begin harvesting until next autumn / winter. The same for the onions, they’re huge but still singular onions, so looking forward to see how they “bunch” into more onions.
I’ve ordered a small number of drought tolerant flowering plants to help next year. Mostly Salvia ‘Blue Spire’ and Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’. And I got given some Achillea filipendulina ‘Cloth of Gold’ plants from cuttings. So in October I’ve got flower beds to sort out as well as the usual crop planting.
I’m still wrestling with what to grow next year to avoid the strain of watering given the heat and drought is forecast to be worse next year. 1st and 2nd early spuds, revised hardy annual and perennial cutting flowers, and over wintering crops (snowball cauliflower, spring cabbage, garlic, broad beans) are my picks so far. Summer growing beans wise I’m currently thinking of just doing cannellini. I’ll do cavolo nero kale after the garlic comes out, I made the mistake of thinking kale wouldn’t put up with the heat but for other people it thugged out.
Tomatoes wise I’ll do Maskotka tumbling tomatoes again as they did well through the heat and are still going now. They’re prolific and taste great but have thicker skins which is a problem for some people even though it has they advantage of making them store a long time fresh. I’ll do Green Zebras again as they did okay and they’re one of my favourites, and I’m thinking of possibly getting a dwarf / determinate variety (or multiple) that will give me an earlier crop of larger tomatoes. I’ll do a full reflection on what did and didn’t work and my plans for next year later this year when I’ve had time to digest.
Haven’t ordered more water storage yet, that’s a job for this week or next.
I’m late writing this post because I’ve been doing quite a lot at the plot the last couple of weeks. I’m also cracking on with the allotment site community garden I’m doing with Taneesha, Tharaa and George, which needs it’s own blog post at some point. This is the little sign I made for it in early September (I still haven’t outlined the inner edge of the O…).
Thanks as always for reading! Take care <3
