September and October in Golightly Gardens
It has been an interesting couple of weeks in the kitchen garden, mainly because we’ve had a bit of a heatwave which has had a positive effect on some of the plants.
For starters I was convinced there would be no aubergines, then this happened:
The big butternut squash ripened, but it somehow got bruised so I had to cut it down and cook the undamaged bit. There were lots of small fruits that never made it to the flowering stage, then the plant decided to throw out seven healthy looking buds – I knew there was no hope of them all ripening, one would be a miracle at this stage, so I nipped four of them out last month and hand pollinated the remaining three to see if anything grew.
The Japanese onion squash (red kuri) had the same problem of fruit buds going yellow and not opening, so only one pumpkin grew on each vine. I’ve cut them today and put them on a windowsill indoors to start the ripening process, where the skin thickens and the flavour sweetens.
Both buckets of beans were still flowering in late September, but I think we’ve had the last proper serving out of them now.
The courgettes are still going, although they’ve had a bit of downy mildew (more about this another time). I’m hoping we might get one more to grow into a marrow, but we’ll see.
The crookneck squash plants are doing well…
… so are the cucumbers, after some hand pollination to make up for their well-hidden female flowers and lack of male flowers.
The tomatoes are still a law unto themselves, so I’ve had to cut some of the fruit and put it in the sunniest spot of the garden to see if more of it will ripen. Unfortunately it does look like blight has set in to a couple of plants in the last three or four days, but our neighbours have had it for several weeks already so all things considered maybe we had a good run here compared to most.
I’ll be writing about autumn garden tasks and planting soon, and catching up with the windowsill kitchen garden too. Might have to do a short series about garden pests and diseases as well, if there’s time.
How’s your garden growing? Are you thinking ahead to next year yet?
Those pumpkins look amazing! Interesting to see the aubergines blossom too.
Cheers Emma! The aubergine flowers are so pretty, have had about 50 of them over the summer and only one of the slackers made a fruit. At least the flowers brightened up the greenhouse, I suppose.