With summer almost over it is time to start organising the garden for next year. For gardens bothered by slugs and snails this year a good clean out is important to find and destroy slug eggs. One way to do this is to get builders in and have them turn the whole garden upside down.
The wall behind the raised bed was the main target of the builders work. A good raised bed takes years to establish and should not be walked upon. With this upheaval the soil is now compacted. To try and aid the bed’s recovery over winter it will be necessary to add a good load of garden compost, straw and other materials in the coming weeks (post to follow / restoring a raised bed).
This is compost making time of year. Everything green in the garden is composted into the one compost bin. Autumn and spring is the main time to use the garden compost. Half of the existing compost in the bin is removed and will be used to feed the raised bed and other beds, to sit over winter (post to follow / winter composting). Now is a good time to find farmyard manure for garden beds.
Between now and the end of the year is the best time to plant onions and garlic for harvesting next May/June, just before summer crops are planted. Locating good quality garlic bulbs is important. Onions can be planted from sets (immature small onion bulbs availably locally). (post to follow / planting garlic and onions).
The last of the summer pot tomatoes and chilli peppers will be finished soon. For the tomatoes, it is a race against blight (post to follow / end of the tomato year). The chilli peppers are struggling to turn to their finish colour, partly due to the damp conditions (post to follow / end of the chilli year). All in all, this is a rather busy time of year.
