Gardening as Autumn falls




The large news up to the 8th of the month is that our grape vines have produced this year! After the work we have put in to weeding (mainly Frances); mulching (Martin), pruning (mainly Rob and Carol Ey); and netting them this is good stuff. They eat very well, although for some reason taste somewhat like feijoas!



After a very cool Summer the start of Autumn has seen a nice warm spell. This has really kicked our tomtoes along. We have gone for variety rather than the supermarket junk standard. I can't remember some of the names but the big yellow ones are Jubilee (excellent, all flesh) and the greenish ones are Black Russiians (taste nice but mainly an interesting colour).


The other activity has been preparing for the great daffodil planting event. Frances has acquired 650 bulbs of various varieties, which requires about 12 square metres of bed to be dug. I have created some more patches down the drive to extend the Wordsworthiness of last year's effect (see the last bit of http://franmart.blogspot.com/2007/08/late-update.html) but this still left a need for space for about 400 of them!

Thus we decided to create a bed up near the clothesline on a patch of lawn on which little was growing. I think that little was growing there because there was no topsoil other than some sand. This involved use of most of my larger garden tools including mattock and crowbar to break up the rock. Horse poop was then spread on top and about 50 worms relocated from the spud growing area to try to get the soil a bit better structured. (All of this was followed by an 8mm thunderstorm which was just what was required.)

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