In the Kitchen Garden, recent weather has been wet and windy but much improved in the last week, drier with a touch of frost. Rainfall for the month was 287mm, 11.3 inches.
The fruit tunnel. All fruit is finally picked and most is eaten. Of the later apples, I liked Cox Self-fertile best with Sunset next; Pixie and Fiesta were not bad either. Three of the four pear trees cropped and they were all delicious with Concorde perhaps the sweetest but Conference and the very large Doyenne du Comice not far behind.
Tomatoes have now been frosted but they have cropped and tasted quite good. Cucumber, pepper and squash are now on the compost heap. It is a bit far north for squashes here but we got one from each plant and will try them earlier next year. The variety was Uchiki Kuri and it tastes and looks pretty good.
The outdoor veg are mostly past though leeks are quite good although they would win no prizes unless small size was important. Brussel sprouts look better than they have done for many the long year and the few cabbage we planted are also good. The carrot fly killed most of the parsnips but enough survived to make the effort of growing them worthwhile. Less successful in ways were the turnips and swedes which were grown through groundcover to suppress the weeds; they were planted out as small cells and those planted deep or shallow were fine but those midway had half the root below and half above the groundcover and an exceedingly narrow waist. We had similar problems with beetroot in that those which grew below the groundcover were eaten by mice. This was entirely due to me doing the planting this year because of Helen's back problems and she must plant shallower than me.
For more plant details see - This month in the garden at Ardtornish
Wildlife No unusual sightings this month but there was still plenty to be seen.
My favourite encounter of the month happened one day I was working among dense bushes in the grounds. A flock of long-tailed tits landed very close by and moved from branch to branch making their usual high pitched seeee calls but also a quiet churring which I took to being a kind of alarm call. They did this for a few minutes before flying off. I was obviously the object of their attention for some reason.
A few days ago, 9 whooper swans flew over. Migratory thrushes and blackbirds have descended on the garden in number and are feeding on the windfalls and berries. The noise of squabbling fieldfares feeding and calls of whooper swans flying overhead are very autumnal.
Bird feeders. The wet then cold weather has caused a great increase in the number of birds using the peanut feeders. After an absense, the woodpeckers are back. Blue tits, great tits, chaffinches and house sparrows are the other main users with the latter dominating the other small birds.
Here are some of my recent pictures.
Left to right and top to bottom:-
31st October, 2008.