Autumn

My neighbour Louis has a smallholding, and keeps sheep.  He gave me a big trailer-full of sheep manure this springtime, and I planted squashes and melons on it.  I got a decent harvest too, and I gave some to Louis.

Yesterday I collected a couple of loads of manure, and started spreading it on the veg patch, ready for Springtime planting.  We have had a very dry year here, after a very wet start to the season.   I have a well, so I was able to keep things going, but the ground is hard, and I can't dig up the potatoes that are still in the ground.

I got good crops of tomatoes, and the shallots and garlic did well, onions less so.  Plenty of squash (thanks to Louis) and French beans.  Enough potatoes too.   Runner beans were a failure; plenty of flowers but few beans, and I was disappinted by the sweet corn - I found it hard to pick it at the right time, and it came out a bit chewy and not especially sweet.  The best cob I had was the first one I picked, and that I ate raw - very sweet and juicy.  The blackbirds got most of the gooseberries, as usual.

Incidentally, Louis has some crocus flowering.  I don't know if there are Autumn flowering crocus, or they are normal Spring ones, confused by our strange weather.