It certainly feels like it, shorter evenings and colder mornings. Have we eaten breakfast in the garden for the last time this year or do we just need to get up later in the day? Pumpkins growing on the plot give that feeling of autumn, by the time these are fully grown there won’t be much else on the plot apart from the hardy winter plants that will battle through. The leaves are yet to drop from the trees, so I know it isn’t really autumn just yet, just the prelude, but it has been raining and been cold a lot. Last night recorded the lowest temperature for August since records began (which for me in the garden is July 2021) of 11c.

I prepped the ground where the potatoes were and sowed a row of chicory which have now all come up and will need thinning. I’m not sure if I like chicory or how well it will do going into the shorter, colder, wetter days, but I had the seed and though it better the seeds are in the ground than in the packet for years. On the rest of the potato bed I sowed rows of old french bean seed which expired in 2021 and so are probably not really viable for a crop but if some germinate they will be fine as green manure. Any that make it will either die off in the cold or I’ll cut them down if they start to flower.

This week we have been bringing home:

• cucumbers
• courgettes

I sowed some onion seed the other day and straight away they germinated. My plan for these is to plant them out in February or March. We had success with onion seed this year with a number of reasonable onions, a good size although smaller than those we grew from sets.