Endings and Beginnings

October usually sees the first killing frosts here. We’ve had a few near misses already and after the heavy rains recently the plants in the field look tired, as am I. We are all ready for the end of what has been the most challenging season. Over the next couple of months we will be lifting, labelling and drying the dahlia tubers to get them into storage. Then onto new beginnings, lifting and dividing perennials, planting masses of tulips, and then new rose bushes and trees. I also need to re-lay all of the paths that were washed away in the floods. This will be a mammoth task that I am not looking forward to.

But a more satisfying task I’ve been working on this week is getting the polytunnel back into full production and ready for planting with sweet peas, ranunculus and anemones (and our veggies and herbs for overwintering). Every year our polytunnel is a place of joy in the spring and early summer producing masses of blooms which are protected from the rain and cold. But by mid summer, when my focus turns to the abundance of blooms ready in the field, the polytunnel starts to get neglected. By late summer it’s a mass of unruly spent plants which need chopping back, weeds which should have been pulled before they had a chance to set seed (which I never seem to get time to do) and roses which need a serious prune. But in autumn when I get it cleared it becomes, once more, my favourite place. I can sit and work in the polytunnel for hours regardless of the weather.

Alongside the poor weather, this year we have had a year when we’ve also been plagued with ill health. Pete’s pretty major heart op and long recovery, covid for us all, turning into long covid for Jack and shingles for me and numerous minor issues and infections. This has had a serious impact on the amount of work we’ve been able to do. So I’ve spent a lot of time recently planning ways to make the workload more sustainable for us. It has become apparent that I need to put our health and well being higher on the agenda than it has been in recent years.

There are many strategies I would like to implement to help us take it a bit more gently next year –

• Replacing one of the open ground blocks with another block of weed control fabric.
• Cutting out growing some of the hardy annuals which are time consuming to grow – I’m thinking of ditching ammi (too much disease and blackfly), bupleurum (disease), cornflowers (time consuming, difficult to process) and zinnias (temperemental, low demand compared to dahlia) and instead …..
• Concentrating on growing larger quantities of four groups of focal flowers – tulips (spring), roses (early summer), dahlias (late summer), chrysanthemum (autumn).
• Continuing to expand the shrubs and perennials side of the business to provide the ‘filler’ material for our bouquets.
• Finally put in some more seating areas to encourage us (and our local community) to stop and actually smell the roses once in a while!
• Relocating the bee hives back to the field. I find watching and listening to them theraputic, it would be good to have them close.