Pushing up the daisies

Yes summer is definitely over, the strawberries are giving their last fruit, the grass is turning yellow and most importantly the bloody bindweed is dying off!!!! SO soon be time to dig over the plot where it's empty, to get some manure on it, and get in some garlic for the autumn planting. I am quite tempted to put in some shallots too, (echalotes) as I know some folk do overwinter those.
And start looking at the seed catalogues! And make the inevitable dos and donts list for 2009.
For example:

• Do plant aubergines, my neighbours got terrific crops!!
• Do set up a polytunnel for peppers and chillis and melons next year. Outdoors is just not hot enough for them.
• DO get some nicer tomato varieties, although those little Harzfeuer are very tasty.
• Do plant celery and celeriac earlier and water it well.
• Do plant loads of beetroot as we eat lots of that.
• Do plant those lovely Farador yellow courgettes and get in some real squash seeds as pumpkins do well here.
• Do plant more spuds.
• DO plant some dahlia bulbs as the neighbour has ever such nice ones, and they seem easy to grow.
  
• Do grow yellow onions from seed and put the red onions in later (April) so they don't bolt.
• Don't try lettuce again, it's a waste of time.
• Don't buy plug plant cabbage, do your own in successive sowings as you cannot eat 15 cabbages in a 3 week period... and cabbage is dead easy.
• Don't do broccoli in summer, get it in nice and early and then another planting in late June for September heads.
• Don't do those stupid Amsterdam carrots, get some good solid nantaise varieties and the Colmar Red Hearts, they give better results. Sow thickly in a polytunnel in early spring.
• Don't be afraid to try climbing beans, just get the right variety.

sigh so many things to remember... perhaps 2009 will be the bumper harvest year?

Labels: autumn, planning