Autumn begins :: Harvesting crops

October arrived this week bringing with it a mix of weather. The rainy and stormy days cleared the muggy air and then some sunshine and unseasonably mild weather. I love Autumn especially when the leaves start turning to the beautiful reds and yellows and leaves dance around the pavements in the wind. With the seasons turning came with it a signal for me to start to tidy up our courtyard garden and harvest our final few crops.

I spent time in our garden sweeping up, moving garden furniture and pots, tidying the dead plants and picking our small crop of tomatoes, chillies and potatoes left in the garden. It is quite therapeutic pulling up dead plants and preparing the space for planting bulbs and preparing the soil and our space for spring. Lugging things round and moving containers was satisfying and great exercise! Overall the garden is delivering a good crop of herbs, we had some unsuccessful radish crops and the strawberries didn’t produce much of a crop this year but it was worth trying.

Three different tomato plants delivered some lovely tomatoes, most of which I had to ripen most of them on a windowsill. 

The chillies started turning red by themselves and are waiting to be used to add to a pasta dish. I’m looking forward to seeing what flavours they produce!

I grew potatoes for the first time this year but started really late. I was unsure when to dig up the potoes as it didn’t flower. I didn't plant many seed potatoes and thought perhaps I had just grown long trailing plants! I did a bit of digging around and came out with a small crop! Mr C and I had these in one sitting, boiled with salted butter and chives from of the garden. It really was one of life's simple pleasures. I will definitely try growing potatoes again next year.

One of my fuchsias is still flowering, which started quite late this year. I love these pretty petals, they are almost like pink and purple frilly skirts. 

While I was digging around and sweeping up I spotted a few final flowers on the strawberry plant. I do love looking close up at these flowers they are so delicate.

Our garden will be quite an empty space over the next few months but I'll keep you posted on any changes or things I'm trying out in our courtyard garden.