You can on longer deny that autumn is here and winter is coming quickly when you see your plot completely covered in leaves from the trees. No distinction between paths and beds, just a sea of orange and brown. I spent the first part of my visit raking these up and adding them to the compost, nearly filling in up but of course over the next weeks this will rot back down again. Once I had cleared the plot I was able to see the garlic which I planted the other week was now showing.

I had hopped to pull up some swede but I was annoyed to see that the ones that had come to something (following the caterpillars eating all the leaves) all had slugs buried deep inside. 2024 will not be a good year for swedes. Something I’ll try to do better with next year as swede is one of the winter veg that we really like eating. On the more positive side, I thought I would dig up a couple of early parsnips and these came out long and straight. Pleased with that as parsnips are another winter veg we enjoy eating.