Octopus’ Garden: The Last Harvest

Autumn is here, and just as our plants were starting to produce it’s time of them to go.

We plucked all the green tomatoes before they freeze and go bad, and the plants are turning yellow and brown. The zucchini long since stopped producing, even though the bees were not numerous enough to fertilise them most of the summer. No bumblebees moved into the bee home I bought them, but I plan to leave it over the winter and next year, know knows?

We dug up the carrots, and found that two small and rather mutated ones had grown in the shallow pan. The butternut squashes, one of the first things I’ve ever grown from something we ate, are desperately flowering. They won’t make fruits this year. 😦

We had a good first year of gardening, all things considered. The tomatoes and potatoes produced well, and the cast iron grill we converted into a makeshift fire pit has been a real treat. We learned a few important lessons for low-cost, above-ground container gardening in England.

1. Snail defence is key. We did a poor job, and our potatoes suffered. Polish lager traps don’t tempt English slugs. They prefer a good ESB.
2. Feed early, feed often! Pots don’t have enough dirt to supply nutrients for most plants.
3. Support your plants as they grow or they will fall over and get damaged.
4. Watch out for aphids. They completely murdered our dreadnought beans. You can try to use dish soap in a spray bottle to get them off, but it might cause chemical burns on zucchini.

We’ll try again in the future. Someday, our garden will look like this! And we’ll have to can all our harvests and send them to our family/friends.