Gardening Blog – New beginnings?

It doesn’t matter how many years it is since we left school, September still feels like the month of new beginnings. Down on both allotments we’re finishing harvesting the summer crops. We’ve started to clear away the old foliage and are planning for the months ahead.  One allotment neighbour already has a colourful 2015 in mind.  His rows of sweet williams and wallflowers are looking really healthy and well established.

There’s still time to sow seeds for winter leaves and salads but this really is our last chance.  I’m trying 2 different varieties of Pak Choi this autumn – ‘Tatsoi’ and ‘Choy Sum’ – and something I’ve never seen before – Japanese spinach ‘Komatsuna’. They’ll all be good sources of vitamin C and really useful in stir fries. Their seeds look identical so it will be interesting to see what appears.

Tips from the allotments:

– Keep busy with the hoe in this dry weather

– Dig the soil as you clear away the finished crops

– Get ready to dig up main crop potatoes this month

– Continue to plant out new strawberries

Elsewhere in the garden we can start to think about planting bulbs.  A Gardeners World blog has a few ideas for tulips to buy ready for November planting:

http://www.gardenersworld.com/blogs/plants/bulbs-for-autumn-planting/4972.html