Retrospective – July-December 2019

The beautiful garden from mid-June began to change until it grew no more.  The heat and the drought saw to that.

In the potager it was a total disaster.  Not only did nothing grow anymore we were inundated with an infestation of small black beetles that loved brassicas.  The broccoli, sprouts, kale turned black with them overnight and after they were finished nothing remained.  It needed rain to get rid of them and that didn’t exist anymore.

The sweetcorn and beans did moderately well as I used the last of the water on them and the tomatoes.

In the rest of the garden all the autumn plants, asters, helianthus, grasses hardly got above half their size and some not even that.

Except for the day lilies which flowered their little socks off, god bless.

The knipofias did fairly well except for Prince Igor.  It grew well but no flowers!

In November it started to rain heavily and hasn’t really stopped.  Within a week all the fields around us began to green-up, within two weeks it was impossible to see that they had been brown dried up pastures.  The cows were certainly happy.

One day in early November I counted 15 parasol mushrooms.  They were everywhere.I always begin to panic by October that my yellow autumn crocuses won’t appear but no worries they arrived toward the end of the month.  .As we didn’t get a frost until November the dahlias continued on as did the crocuses.

So what will next year bring?  Hopefully some more rain during the summer months.  But certainly lots of pleasure as each plant starts to grow and then flowers.