Thank goodness there isn’t an equivalent show for giant pets, or is there?

I was fascinated, it was awesome.

The winning giant pumpkin was moved around the show hall on a pallet with a pick up and weighed in at a staggering 548.8kg (that’s 1210lbs in old money), from a seed sown in April.
That’s over half a tonne! Amazing.
But it wasn’t just pumpkins on display, there were giant onions, huge tomatoes, runner beans the length of pole vaults, potatoes the size of beach balls and beetroot, Swedes, parsnips and more; each the result of months of careful nurture and hard work.

Most of the growers do it for the fun of it and for the competitive element, but the prize money is not to be sniffed at.
The overall winner won a total of £1580 in prize money and the grower of the giant pumpkin bagged £1 a lb, reaping a cheque for £1210 from the Sponsor Marshalls Seeds.

So if you need an incentive to get the kids growing, maybe that will inspire them.

I love autumn, it’s such a beautiful season and it’s the perfect time to plant.

I spent several hours at the weekend wading through a bulb catalogue, choosing the tulips I want to plant now for a spectacular spring display. I want to force some bulbs in the greenhouse to get some early flowers and I simply love to see pots of tulips breaking into colour in March and April.

I think I might order some crocus too, but the last time I planted several hundred in swaths under my birch trees, only one came up!
I realised I had provided the local vole population with a veritable winter feast, so this time I plan to sprinkle the bulbs with a little chilli pepper before planting, that should make them unpalatable and maybe allow more than one little bulb to grow and flower.
Watch this space

Having given it all some very serious thought I have realised that my bees raised too much brood who needed copious amounts of honey, which used up all the stores so that the foraging bees didn’t have enough to go and collect more.
That and a few weeks of wet weather, which stopped the nectar flow and prevented my bees from foraging, resulted in the current crisis.
I’m still not sure whether I have lost the queen bee, but I have decided to give them a fair chance and have resorted to feeding them.
The change in their behaviour has been amazing, they are now zipping around in their thousands, bringing in more food.
The sugar syrup I have been supplying is being transferred to the honeycomb and concentrated into winter stores and the bees are busy once again.
The downside is that now they are fighting for their stores as the local wasps have smelled the sugar and moved in. It’s been a fascinating phase watching the bees fight back and with a little help from me, by placing wasp traps nearby and filling in some of the holes that have provided wasp access,

I think we are winning.

Ironically I am now having to garden in my bee suit to keep the wasps from stinging me!

I live high on a hill and in a very rural part of the country, so it set alarm bells ringing as there is just so much in the garden that would not survive a hard frost.
It was certainly cold but I think we avoided the worst of the drop in temperature and all my frost tender plants survived.

It got me thinking though about all the preparation that needs doing before the first frosts arrive. I need to make some space in the greenhouse, to tidy away the plants that have grown, cropped and started to die down and to provide damage limitation methods to keep my plants through the winter.

As usual there is so much to do and not enough hours in the day!

Admittedly I’ve been away (again) for a few days and this time it was actually a short holiday! But I didn’t expect to come home to such chaos.
I left the greenhouse to its own devices. Rain was forecast anyway, so I didn’t think the plants would dry out too much and I was right. In fact they have survived perfectly well for four days on the self-watering trays installed around the greenhouse.

There are loads of fabulous tasting tomatoes in hues of red and orange, like bright light bulbs at a Christmas party, that all need picking.
Armfuls of herbs, though the caterpillars have had a feast on them all too.
The cucumbers are hanging off the vines like saucisson hanging in a French deli and the peppers and chillies are now all fattening up nicely but still a rich bottle green colour with no sign of going red.

I need to get out there and spend some time tidying it all up and harvesting, but for some reason I can’t get motivated, so it will have to wait.

It’s a Lonicera nitida hedge, which grows quickly anyway, but with all the warm weather and rain it had almost doubled in size and especially in width.

Fortunately I have an armoury of tools to deal with such problems and it didn’t take too long to cut it back. I have a pair of Jakoti hand shears, which I love, and they make cutting back light hedge growth very, very easy.
I may even take some cuttings from the clippings to extend the hedge to other parts of the garden.

Lonicera makes a great, quick growing, evergreen hedge. It roots really easily from cuttings so you can grow a new hedge very cost effectively and within a few years it can reach 6-8ft tall.
You have to prune it hard to keep it in check but it loves it, and grows back even denser and stronger than ever before.

I’d been watching my bees through the window for a few weeks now and had been concerned that they didn’t seem to be building any more comb.
Having consulted some beeks (beekeepers) that know about these things the consensus was that was normal.
I watched at the entrance and could see bees flying in and out with pollen and nectar and everything else looked fine, so I put my worries aside and continued to watch.

There were loads of bees in there and although they didn’t seem to be moving or doing much, I left them alone, waiting for a warm sunny day to open the hive and have a good look.

With all the wet weather it was a while before the right conditions arrived and when I did look inside I was in for a shock. There were thousands of bees in there all hanging off the eight honeycombs they had built but there wasn’t a drop of honey in there.
What’s more there were no new eggs, no bee larvae and no capped bees.
My bees were starving!
I couldn’t see the Queen though to be honest I was so shocked I probably didn’t look properly. If she was there she had stopped laying and there was no food to feed any babies anyway.
I thought at first something; maybe wasps had robbed the honey from the hive. But as I check them three times a day and had only seen the odd wasp, this was unlikely.
They had just used up what they had feeding their brood and had no energy left to go and get more.

I don’t want to waste a morsel so I’ve been picking and cooking and feasting on as much fresh produce as possible.

Sometimes you end up with an interesting array of produce to create a meal but the failsafe recipe that can incorporate most fresh produce is ratatouille.

With tomatoes, courgettes and onions a dash of garlic you don’t need to add anything more than a splash of olive oil to create a rich, healthy dish to eat with practically anything or even on its own.
But if you’ve a handful of beans, or a rich red pepper, or even just an aubergine, these can all be added to the mixture.

Chop it all up roughly and then reduce it down over a slow heat or roast it in the oven until the flavours have concentrated.

Delicious.

It’s not difficult to point out the quality glasshouses now available, but how to decide whether to opt for timber or powder coated aluminium, well that’s another matter entirely.
Personal taste, choice and needs come into play.
Decisions, decisions.
My advice? Take your time.
Choose the biggest and the best you can afford. Invest in ventilation, the more the better; you can’t add it as easily later on.

Position the greenhouse somewhere central or accessible so you don’t have to hike down to the bottom of the garden just to check your plants, it’s also cheaper to run electricity and water supplies into it if it is nearer the house.
You’ll spend more time in your greenhouse if you can get to it easily and often. Keep it way from overhanging trees, the leaves clog the gutters and the branches shade it when you need the light, plus trees have a nasty habit of falling down or dropping branches.
Keep the apex running east west for the best light levels and think about shading, insulation and staging before you make your final decision.
Fortunately there’s plenty of useful advice on the Internet, not forgetting the Growhouse site itself.

A greenhouse is for life not just for Christmas, choosing one is an exciting adventure so spend some time, weigh up all your options and the costs and make the right choice for you, your garden and your plants.

It’s not surprising really when you look at the pots they are growing in and the size they have grown to.
Even the best, top quality compost has a limited amount of plant food to sustain the plants.

Usually its designed to last about six weeks and although I have supplemented the plants with plenty of liquid feed, I have run out of tomato food and haven’t had a chance to get any more, so since then I’ve been using up the leftover plant food knocking around the greenhouse.
And it shows!
I am a bit surprised, but I need to take some swift action. The plants are OK, and are fruiting beautifully, but I don’t want them to be short of anything, especially the essential micronutrients, so a trip to the garden centre is in order.
There’s a risk that the tomatoes may develop blossom end rot, a disfiguring disease that can render the fruit useless, so it’s something I need to address now.
Fortunately a liquid feed applied to the foliage and compost of any starving plant will quickly restore the balance, but it’s important to remember that the plant may have suffered a check in its growth and development, so some tlc may be required for some time.