Cold & Wet

Apologies for the extreme lack of updates!!  There are several reasons for this, one being that when I'm at work its always a 10-hour shift, plus commute, and I've had to pick up some extra shifts because the boss has been ill and I'm basically management when he's not there.  Another has been that its super soaking and cold right now, and really too wet to do anything in the garden right now.  But now that our first frost has finally happened (over a month later than predicted on the weather website I checked it out on in August) the rain has gone off but its extremely windy!

I fleeced a few of my plants, my almond, who went into autumn mode before any other plants, my goji berry (who still thinks its the height of summer and is producing new branches and is filled with greener than green leaves) and my blackcurrant, which is just realising autumn has appeared.  I noticed some white fungal symptoms on some of the leaves of my goji berry, and trimmed some of the branches which seemed worst effected, but I'll have to look into what it might be to stop it getting any worse.  So far the fleecing has proved to be problematic and helps the plants catch the wind and causes their pots to fall over, but thankfully the goji berry has a massive heavy pot, otherwise I would be quite worried, because its a huge plant!  Should I be fleecing my other fruit bushes?  They seem quite acclimatised, particularly the blueberry who is a gorgeous shades of red and orange.  I wouldn't have bothered with my almond, since its already pretty barky, but its still very small and having never grown one before I thought it best to be safe.

My tomatoes are STILL producing new tomatoes, but I picked the massive giants I was waiting on to ripen indoors, but they're being pretty stubborn! Much of my greenhouse doesn't seem to know its nearing winter...

Check out these triplets:

My strawberries also seem to think its perfect fruiting time...though I've heard that sometimes these are planted for a November harvest before, so maybe its normal?  They were planted late, I was hoping to try to overwinter some.

Got my new fruit bush canes planted, potted and out.  (Loganberry, Raspberry, Gooseberry, Blackberry and a new variety of Blueberry) I still have a lot of weeding to make new beds to do, and planning the beds as well as finally getting my garlic and onions out.  So hopefully lots of updates to come now its drier!