It’s a harvest festival!
We’ve been lucky so far this autumn, with unseasonably warm days and lovely soft sunlight bathing the garden. Best of all is getting up early in the morning to find the fields surrounding us enveloped in river mist. It rarely lasts long but is so atmospheric. Harvesting crops is keeping us busy, both in the garden and kitchen. The bees have made plenty of honey, and each year we keep enough for ourselves and sell the surplus. We aren’t greedy though and make sure we leave around 14kg (30lb) of honey on each hive to feed the bees over winter.
Apples are ripening quickly and the old ‘Crimson Bramley’ tree has a heavy crop again. Some I have frozen and these will go nicely in a crumble along with blackberries, recently picked from the hedgerow and also frozen. Apple trees we planted in the orchard are now bearing fruit. The ‘Egremont Russet’ has a decent crop, as does the ‘Pitmaston Pineapple’, and I’m looking forward to eating the first of the nutty-tasting apples from the ‘Blenheim Orange’. Some of the fruit will be juiced and made into cider. We’re still picking runner beans and carrots, and there are a few more tomatoes left, too.
Sunflowers have grown to a great height. They look good along with aster ‘Harrington’s Pink’ and dahlias ‘Rip City’ and ‘Juliet’. I also grow the popular perennial sunflower helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’, which has been flowering for weeks now, and attracting many bees. Along with the autumn flowers are several grasses which I’ve been trying to plant in places where the late afternoon sun will shine through them. I haven’t quite got this right yet, but plan to plant a border just with grasses next spring.
Tales from a Country Garden 