Clearing the potager at the end of the season

Curse the weather forecast.  It’s all doom and gloom starting now. And there is an episode cevennol blowing wind and rain our way.  Yesterday was heaven – mild and sunny and fabulous. The sort of weather you want to last all season.

But it lasted just a day and I spent a lot of it fretting and getting things battened down ready for the bad weather.

A careful weeding of the hornbean hedge was replaced by raking sacks and sacks of leaves to put down as a mulch.

Luckily I had helpers. So that was great.

Paul and Alice are great volunteers. Help moving all the heavy pots into the potting shed for winter? No problem.

Collect endless sacks of leaves for the mulching project? Sure.  And Alice practised her pruning skills on my blackcurrants and whitecurrant bushes. She gets a gold star for that. (And yes we saved the prunings as hardwood cuttings for future small bushes of fruit.)

And Alice even did the usual job when you are on the potager steps; you have to take time out to give Artur a bit of a cuddle. He knows his cat people.

I have spent a few days weeding and clearing the potager beds.  So they were ready for the winter treatment.  Bare soil is anathema to this gardener.  So for winter I choose to use the mulch that I have in humungous quantities – leaves.

The oak and chestnut may not be the juiciest of specimens for creating good leaf mould. But they form a great thick blanket of protection for my precious soil.

I still have heaps of rocket in a lot of the beds. My favourite ground cover.  And the dahlias still haven’t died back and blackened.  So that particular bed will have to be sorted later next week. If it stops raining.

And the raspberries are still fruiting.  So I won’t touch them until next year.

There is plenty of weeding to do on the edges. But I have lifted the tender marjoram so that’s advance winter planning.

I could just do with a time turner so I could have about three more weeks to get it all done.

For now I’m just relieved we managed to get so much done before the appalling weather.

Does this work? I have taken a short little film of windy weather.

Here’s the still shot.

And here’s the action shaky camera adventure.

cevennol-storm

I’ve never done one of those before. You get a taste of what is shaking the house as I type.  They cheerily promise the wind (85km per hour gusts) will die down by Wednesday. Gee, thanks.  So if I have electricity. And an internet connection.  And I haven’t been felled by flying debis I’ll report on my progress.