What jobs are we doing in the garden today 2016

Just got back from a week's holiday last night, so today was the usual round of harvesting, tidying up, watering and generally seeing how things had fared in my absence.

I've harvested eight cucumbers and several Beefmaster tomatoes from the greenhouse, cut two huge courgettes/small marrows (happens every year doesn't it?) and picked a load of runner beans.

There weren't too many runner beans, as we'd told our neighbour to help herself and keep picking them while we were away. She loves runner beans and always looks forward to us going away every year, I think it's one of the highlights of her summer.

I've cut all the dead leaves off the courgette plants, as they've now got their usual late summer attack of mildew. Hopefully that will keep them going for a bit longer.

Also sowed a small tray of 'Marathon' autumn calabrese, it's a bit late to be sowing them but they're a fairly fast growing F1 variety, so I should still get something from them around November or December.

 

Chopped back the strawberry leaves and planted up my elephant garlic bulbils. Last years wwere a disaster with no shows because i had allowed them to dry causing the outer shells to harden thus no shoots.
This year they soaked for a day or two then as an experiment a touch of seaweed and an aspirin were added to the mix.
About 120 + of them set to grow into mono bulbs next year hopefully

 

Due to signs of blight lifted all our King Ed spuds and got a pretty decent crop. Rampant blight on outdoor toms so they are now in the bin :-(
Emptied the 2nd year compost heap into sacks to spread in spring and then turned the past 12 month heap into the vacant space.
Oh my poor back isn't half aching !!

 

We have had very few berry pickers about this year, I myself have quite a haul, I think the reason is possibly the council not cutting the grass, it is/was thigh high, to me, it is now starting to fall and lay flat, the field is bounded on three sides by hedgerow, and laden with blackberries.
The 365 day dog walkers have established routes around the perimiter, but possibly to the casual berry picker it may look too overgrown.

 

More garlic for me. Took down the drying bulbs,off with the leaves and roots and into the net bags.
early purple white were my best and taste great. The elephant garlic mostly gave good sized mono bulbs which will be planted up again. autumn or springnot sure when yet?

 

Well, I've done very little compared to Shiney, but I have planted 4 blueberry bushes hubby bought from Lidl a few weeks ago. We've been keeping them in a 40l trug until I got around to planting them.... It's not normal to find a decent sized frog (2-3 inches across) hiding in the bottom of your trug, is it?

Not done much else... Hung out two loads of washing (feeling pleased with myself as I've managed to get some strange food staining off quite a few baby-grows, so they can be handed out to some local refugees); got the weekly shop done; done a garden poop-scoop, and now completely filled one of Izzy's mouse-digging holes, capping it with the sand/soil dug out to plant the blueberries.

Now hiding inside from the worst of the heat. Will plant out a ground-cover clematis later, along with some rhododendrons that have been waiting to go into the banking since spring!