With the growing season over, the plot takes on a whole new appearance. The colour and foliage has all but gone. What does remain, is the hardier spinach and chard like creatures, and of course the weeds that were missed from the first time they were spotted.

The plan was therefore to go down to the plot and start weeding and digging. I did the weeding, and some digging but not as much digging as I would like. The plot is clay, or in this weather, heavy clay. It is solid, sticky, and squelchy. The red wellington boots were covered and caked in the stuff.

I concentrated on the one bed on project othello, the second half of the plot.There are seven beds on project othello, two of which are currently occupied by cabbages. The aim is to fill a few of the others with soft fruit.

Project othello is on the right hand side of this diagram, and the bed in question has already got mint and a rochester peach tree in it. This particular bed had been full of gladiolus, tomatoes and courgettes, so was in need of a tidy up. There were quite a few clumps of grass that had sprouted across it. These were all pulled up, which was made easier by the soil being wet.

The chard is still going, as is the perpetual spinach. Neither of these likes the warmth or direct. The chard in question is bright lights and vulcan chard. Bright lights does as it suggests, lots of yellow stalks. Vulcan chard, is the red one,and always reminds me of Spock. It doesn’t bleed green, I checked. It does however make nice pasta sauce and onion bhajis.

Over the summer, the roses were in full bloom. And they are still going, some of them at least. Even those hacked down and dead headed, have new blooms coming through.