Tag Archives: cloches

Time to get moving?

I’ve heard that it is going to snow sometime soon!

Well, I know that we’ve had a weird old world weatherwise this year but snow in October? I’m sure it’s not totally unheard of – and last year was freakish in its own way with a heatwave about this time – but I am in no way prepared for a massive drop in temperatures.

I had been planning on picking the tomatoes which look big enough, even though they are still green, this weekend. But I had intended to keep the smaller ones on the vines to see if they would grow any bigger. Perhaps I will still do that. After all, weather forecasts are frequently inaccurate. And the small ones might not come to much, anyway.

However…….

If there is an unseasonal downwards move in the weather, it looks like I will have to invest in new fleece pretty soon. I have got some lamentably thin stuff, which needs a wash, somewhere in my shed/Wendy house. This didn’t save the cauliflowers two years ago, though, so I wouldn’t want my nine lovely plants to be lost this time round, especially as they are the third attempt at propagation.

Thank goodness, on the other hand, that I discovered my all-weather cloches, which are over the turnips, spinach, some cauliflowers and half the chard. No snow is going to touch these beauties.

That leaves the pumpkins, which are totally exposed to the elements and still growing. I’ve got one reasonably big one, though it is still yellow rather than orange, and four small ones, in varying stages of smallness.

The parsley is going to be picked very soon, anyway, as I plan to freeze that in ice cubes, so that I have a supply over the winter. And the corn salad can be transported inside, if need be, as it is in a battered old wooden container. This is a legacy from the previous owner of my property, who I thought was growing chives in it, until I tried a mouthful. I think actually they were snowdrops. In any case, they didn’t taste that good, so I didn’t go for a second helping 😉

Whatever, I’m going to be a busy beaver over the coming weekend, which I understand is also Apple Weekend. So I hope we got to a local deli market I’ve not yet been to yet, even though it’s been going for over a year now. There I hope to find a stall with produce from Yorkshire Orchards, which we visited a couple of years ago for Apple Weekend for more unusual varieties of apple and pear. That was a good day out and I would do it again but am mindful of the need to continue to do less motoring that was my habit in the past :

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