Life on The Weald - October 2025
and a few other places
Wednesday 1 October
It was a mild start to the month with a high daytime temperature of 13C, but I didn't get any work done on our plot as I was showing a community project around the site, with the Council's allotment team, with a view to them setting up a starter beds scheme out in the community.
At home I harvested some of the chillies (Apache) growing in pots in the garden.
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| 1 October - Apache chillies |
Thursday 2 October
The mild weather continued with sunny periods and a high of 15C. The kalettes were looking healthy but little sign yet of any florets.
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| 2 October - kalettes |
In the garden at home, the quinces were ripening nicely.
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| 2 October - Quinces |
The onions were adjusting to being uncovered but still a little bent from being under the fleece. I scattered some crushed egg shells around them to deter slugs and snails.
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| 2 October - winter red onions |
Friday 3 October
Friday saw the arrival of Storm Amy, but Scotland and Northern Ireland bore the brunt with severe flooding and loss of electricity supply in some places. Fortunately we were little affected on the south coast, although there is a yellow warning for tomorrow for strong winds. The broad bean seedlings in our conservatory were beginning to look a little leggy so I put these in our cold mini greenhouse by the backdoor.
Saturday 4 October
On Saturday, there was a sad but pleasant social event. The chair of our allotment association, Kate, is moving away and many of us gathered together to say thank you and farewell. For the occasion I had baked an apple and cinammon cake and a banana, chocolate and walnut loaf. The apples had come from the plot and the bananas rescued via our Community Food Project which aims to reduce food waste by collecting and distributing items of food which is near their best by/sell by dates which would otherwise go to landfill.
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| 4 October - My apple cake and banana loaf |
Kate's shoes will be difficult to fill and I will be taking on the role of Chair at the end of the month.
Sunday 5 October
Sylvi did a valiant job clearing more encroaching brambles and collecting yet more apples! The onions, where I had removed the fleece a few days earlier, had straightened up and I removed the fleece from the second bed. I continued to tackle some of the couchgrass at the boundary of the plot.
Monday 6 October
I spent the morning with the strimmer, trying to keep down the grass and weeds invading the footpath and tackling the grass on the haulageway at the front of the plot. I was very pleased with our beetroots and lifted a few, both traditional red Boltardy but also some of the rainbow variety which are much sweeter and less "earthy" than the red ones. They are a glorious colour when cooked.
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| 6 October - cooked rainbow beetroot |
We have seen very heavy crops of fruit on all of our fruit trees and fruit bushes and a proliferation of berries everywhere. I have never before seen so many fruits on a bay tree, fat and juicy and looking like olives. Sadly they are not edible as they contain a toxic waxy substance. I'm told that this can be extracted to make candles but don't know anyone who has done this.
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| 6 October - The bay tree |
Despite the weather warnings, it was a bright sunny day. At home i had cut very short and scarified a portion of our lawn where I sowed some Yellow Rattle and mixed wild flower seeds including, cornflower, scabious, poppy, oxeye Daisy, wild clary, corn marigolds,and some fescue and dog's tail grasses.
In clearing the dying nasturtiums, I collected the seeds and after leaving them in brine overnight pickled them. They are an excellent, and some would say better, alternative to capers.
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| 6 October - pickled Nasturtium seeds (fake capers) |
In the garden, I was very proud of my dahlias which were flowering profusely.
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| 6 October - me and my dahlia! |
Tuesday 7 - Thursday 9 October
We were away for a few days in the campervan, primarily to visit the Chatham Naval Dockyard. Not only did we look at the ships and the national lifeboat collection and the historic dockyard workshops but also some familiar surroundings which had been used for the filming location of the TV series "Call the Midwife". Viewers of the series might recognise some of these locations
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| 8 October - Chatham Dockyard |
Put a blue lamp outside this one and it becomes the police station!
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| 8 October - Chatham Dockyard |
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| 8 October - Chatham Dockyard |
The industrial buildings are well preserved and the 18th century ropery (which made ropes for the rigging of Nelson's victory) is still operational, making ropes today. The ropery itself is a quarter of a mile long!
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| 8 October - Chatham: the ropery looking east |
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| 8 October - Chatham: the ropery looking west |
The Dockyard also houses the national collection of historic lifeboats. I was particularly interested to see the Grace Darling and the J G Graves of Sheffield. There are several lifeboats named after the heroine, Grace Darling, who in 1838, in her father's small rowing boat, rescued nine survivors fromn a sinking steamship. A close friend and nearby Hove resident can trace her ancestry from Grace Darling.
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| 8 October - The Grace Darling |
As my wife and her family are from Sheffield, I was intrigued to know why a lifeboat should bear this name, as Sheffield is as far from the sea as any city. Graves was an entrepreneur and public benefactor who was Lord Mayor of Sheffield and built his business empire there. Neither the museum or the National Historic Ships Register can throw any light on why a lifeboat built in Littlehampton for service in Scarborough should be named after Graves.
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| 8 October - J G Graves of Sheffield |
10 October
On our return, we were pleased to see that the stock of garlic had arrived in our allotment shop.
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| 10 October - the garlic has arrived |
We had a plentiful crop of quinces so I seized the opportunity to make quince jelly
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| 10 October - Quince jelly |
Our chilli peppers were ripening nicely...
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| 10 October - Aji Red chilli |
....the leaves had gone, but there were still apples on the tree - and even more on the ground!
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| 10 October - Apple tree |
Where I had lifted the fleece, the onions had firmly rooted and were beginning to recover and grow straight. The second planting were also now sprouting, so I lifted the fleece that was covering them.
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| 10 October - 1st planting of red onions (fleece lifted 2 October) |
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| 10 October - fleece removed from 2nd planting of red onions |
Saturday 11 October
On Saturday 11 October we went on a delightful trip with the nearby Nevill Allotment Association to the RHS Gardens at Wisley - far too many photos to show but I had to include this Achocha where the fruits were three times the size of mine! I decided it must be a different variety rather than the difference between our respective horticultural skills 🤣
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| 11 October - Achocha at RHS Wisley |
Sunday 12 - Sunday 19 October
Another period of neglect for the allotment as we set off to Spain to celebrate a friend's 80th birthday.
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| 12 October - me in heaven! (well Torrox actually) Navajas y almejas - Razor shell clams and Gallician carpet shell clams |
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| 14 October -Cómpeta - the view from my friend's back garden! |
After a few days in Torrox, on the Costa del Sol, instead of returning home, we headed to our old haunt further north on the Costa Blanca.
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| 17 October - Me in heaven - well Santa Pola actually! Vieiras (Scallops) |
Monday 20 October
After a week of Spanish sunshine with the temperature in the upper twenties we returned to England where it was cold and blustery with very heavy rain and certainly not a day for the allotment!
Tuesday 21 October
The rain eased but the ground was very wet. The onions had survived the wind and rain but would be in need of weeding soon.
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| 21 October - winter red onions |
I planted out some broad beans that I had grown in pots at home and removed the fleece from the directly sown ones.
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| 21 October - directly sown broad beans |
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| 21 October - planted out indoor-sown broad beans |
I managed to clear the front of the site from bindweed and encroaching raspberries, but in the process, dug up a lot of daffodil bulbs and bluebells which I then replanted.
Thursday 23 October
Thursday began mild but we had weather warnings that storms were on their way so I made a brief trip to the plot to pick some chard and beetroots to make a variation of my traditional spanakopita, using shop bought ready rolled puff pastry with chard in place of spinach and the addition of a layer of beetroot.
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| 23 October - fresh from the oven... |
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| 23 October - "spanokopita" with beetroot |
Sunday 26 October
Sylvi continued her relentless battle with the brambles whilst I carried on tackling bindweed, but we also lifted a few Jerusalem artichokes and picked the Turk's Turban squash.
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| 26 October - Jerusalem artichokes |
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| 26 October - Turk's turban squash |
Monday 27 October
I went to our local DIY store to get a new spool cover for my strimmer (which they didn't have) and came away with a bag of daffodil bulbs and some polyanthus plants that I didn't need! I planted the daffodils at the front of the plot together with the polyanthus. I also sowed a few more broad beans. The ground around the apple tree was covered with windfalls, most of which I left in situ but transferred the ones which had fallen on nearby vegetable beds to the compost bins.
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| 27 October - windfalls |
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| 27 October - polyanthus in the daffodil bed |
Tuesday 28 October
At the weekend, I had bought some garlic and elephant garlic from the site shop, so needed to clear a bed to plant it. This did entail removing encroaching raspberries as well as bindweed.
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| 28 October - a new bed for garlic |
Wednesday 29 October
Today was the day for planting the garlic. I had three soft-neck varieties plus a few cloves of elephant garlic.
Thursday 30 October
Sylvi was busy fixing the greenhouse which had lost a couple of panels in the recent high winds. I began to clear the dead and dying vegetation (mostly courgettes and sweetcorn) from the 3 sisters bed
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| 30 October - Greenhouse repairs in progress |
A day at home to deal with the garden. On our trip earlier in the month to Wisley I had bought a number of herbs in small pots, so this was a good opportunity to pot them on into larger pots; these included 3 varieties of Mint (Chocolate, Spanish and Basil mint) and two varieties of thyme. I still have some shrubs to pot on as well. Very little grows along the northern edge of our garden, primarily because immediately next to it our neighbour has three very large trees - a cherry, a yew and a bay tree. I bought some steel edging in order to create a deep raised bed alongside the fence to try to create a fertile area to grow shrubs or perennials. I have partially succeeded with a similar attempt at the end of our lawn with a deep raised bed where I planted hellebores and dahlias and some summer flowering bulbs such as acidanthera.
As winter approached, there is still much to be done, both in the garden and on the allotment - we are just hoping for a few dry, sunny days.
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