We didn’t have much luck with runner beans, but they did have a bit of a second life over the last month.  Each time I have gone to dismantle the beans I have spotted some to pick and left them, this time they really did look like they had reached their end and so I took them down; picked two beans as I did.   Their raised bed has been replaced with just a normal bed, covered in manure and left until next year, leaving just one more raised bed to remove.

Being right on the edge we are covered by trees from the neighbouring land which helps keep off the wind and doesn’t get in the way of sunlight as they are north.   It does mean  the whole plot was covered in leaves when I arrived this morning and I managed to fill a whole bag of leaves which I will keep for one or two years until they have turned into something more compost like.

The clocks change next weekend which means the mornings are still quite late, at 9am the sun was still very low and it was cold.  The Christmas potatoes demonstrated this by mostly looking pretty dead under the fleece, I wonder if they have had enough growing time to give anything worthwhile, possibly not.   I wish I had got the fleece on earlier.

Sprouts have done well but are covered in white fly, so I decided now it is a bit colder I would uncover them and see what happens.   Reading on facebook groups and there is much talk about how bad white fly is this year, so maybe it is not all my fault that the sprouts are suffering so much.   A bit of a pity as there are plenty of small sprouts on the plants, just they are covered in a white ash like thing which seems to mostly fly about as you shake the plant.   I have them all a shake and the sky filled with a millions white flies.

Calabrese I thought I would be pulling up but there are small bits suitable for picking, so I did.  One of the plants had mostly flowered and so I pulled up that one.  Salad leaves and rocket have mostly gone to seed so I pulled up a lot of them too.

It was a real sunny autumn morning, but still plenty of things to take home:

• carrots – both nice straight one and some pretty wonky ones
• turnips – millions of them, some massive but most a bit more manageable
• raspberries – still one their second fruiting of the year, is that normal?
• beetroot – started pulling the end of summer sowing, small but all good – a couple of white ones today
• beet leaf – giving lots
• kale – lots of it
• leeks
• brocoli – small bits
• runner beans – the last two
• radish – the last of September sowing, did pretty well in the end, fresh radish at the end of October