Despite a garden full of builders and no indoor growing space until late July, the autumn is proving to be bountiful chez snail. One of the raised beds spent much of the early summer completely covered in building materials, but clearly the tiny potatoes remaining after last years harvest loved the conditions. We went from this:

There’s a bed somewhere under there

to this:

Not bad growth!

in a just a couple of months. Resulting in this 615g monster:

Wow!

and hopefully many more to harvest, as this was just one very close to the surface that Max would have ‘harvested’ otherwise. We will let them continue growing until the tops die back before we dig the bed over and can see our final crop.

Meanwhile, inside the limery, chillies and sweet peppers abound, tomatoes are ripening and we’ve had a couple of large courgettes from the plant sown in July,. I’ve potted up the plants from the courgette seeds sown in August and we are crossing our fingers for a few fruits from those a bit later in the autumn.

Lemon drop chilli

Bartlett’s bonnet chilli

Kaibi sweet pepper

Beefsteak tomato

Unknown variety

Nova sweet pepper

Pyramid chilli

Lemon drop chilli

It’s very green in there!

Two months after sowing

Bartlett’s bonnets

We are keeping our fingers crossed that the chillies ripen (they have started and the pyramid chillies are already hot) and that the younger courgette plants mature, but even if they don’t, we’ll have had an amazing end to the season, including a couple of months when we haven’t had to buy any sweet peppers.

As to future crops, we found this very promising ginger root in the local organic shop the other day:

A ginger root

Looking good already

It’s now been planted and we’re hoping for good things. In addition, the passionflower has taken off:

Up, up and away

And I’ve sown some more lettuce in a big tray that can be brought indoors when the weather cools. So, no shortage of fresh goodness here.