A lot of dead heading is needed to keep the blossom going as long as possible, at least until mid-October.
Pic 2 Calendulas, Snapdragons and Lobelias in the Snake beds.
Also, the Cannas have a great season this year and add to the subtropical and lush feeling of the Victorian bedding layouts in our garden. They started to bloom nearly three months ago. The vibrant yellow of Tagetes tenuifolia ‘Golden Gem’ created a strong edge to the formal beds.
Pic 3 Subtropical planting scheme
The heat spell we experienced in June let our Pumpkins ripe much better than in recent years and it is lovely to see how children are getting excited when seeing them.
Pic 4 Heritage varieties of Pumpkins
The last of our tomatoes are ripening indoors and we also grew a couple of Jalapeño peppers this year!
Pic 5 Plum tomatoes are still ripening
Pic 6 Jalapeño peppers are nearly there!
Few of our apple trees are cropping heavy, especially the cider apples are doing well this year. Also, the pear trees are fruiting well.
Pic 7 Heritage apple variety ‘Lane Prince Albert’, a cooking apple’, fruited well this year.
The Herbaceous Border is slowly coming to its end of the flowering season.
Anemones, Asters, Kaffir Lilies and Sedums are the last flowers blooming and we started already to cut back older perennials who finished flowering much earlier.
Pic 8 The Herbaceous Border end September
One of the nicest climbing roses in our Herbaceous Border would be ‘Blush Noisette’, an old heritage variety. It bears masses of small, scented roses which last well into autumn.
Pic 9 Rose ‘Blush Noisette’
Soon it is time to replace all summer bedding with next year’s spring bedding plants and to prepare the vegetable plots for the winter season.
We started to harvest seeds of all kinds of flowers and vegetables for the coming season, a process which will last well into October. The seeds of our heritage climbing bean variety 'Borlotto Lingua di Fuoco' from Italy, dating back to 1880, are not ripe yet and will need another couple of weeks before we can harvest them.
Pic 10 Climbing bean variety 'Borlotto Lingua di Fuoco'
The newly planted spring cabbages got a nice cover of seaweed, freshly harvested from nearby shores. This will help to establish the young plants which were raised in our glasshouse and will prevent soil erosion and the loss of important nutrients.
Pic 11 Spreading fresh Seaweed around spring cabbages
Our pigs are enjoying a nice dessert of freshly harvested beetroots, which were growing in our ornamental bedding scheme and would not be the best variety to consume by us.
Pic 12 ‘Recycling’ ornamental Beetroots!