September Cottage Garden Tour - New Runner Ducks, Tomato Harvest and Late Summer Flowers

Hello and welcome back to our cottage garden. It's time for our September tour if you can believe it. I feel like this year has gone so quickly. You've joined us on a nice sunny day, quite windy, but this is one of the few nice days that we've had recently. It's been really really cold, rainy and windy here and quite damp. The nights have been getting really really cold. We've had five degrees Celsius last night and then six degrees Celsius again tonight, so really feeling like we're transitioning into autumn now. I still feel like it's the end of summer, depends which calendar you use. A lot of people do feel that it's autumn at the moment, but to me it's the end of summer. I'm going to make the most of it for as long as I can. I have been quite poorly over September so I've spent a lot of time in bed and I haven't felt like I've been able to keep up with gardening, just been resting and trying to recover, but we have had a few new exciting projects that I'm going to show you as we're walking around the garden today and we've got some lovely late summer colours to share with you as well. After spending a lot of time resting this month though, I've been feeling a bit stagnant and really really keen to get active again, so I'm going to be exploring this with Trainwell, who kindly are sponsoring this video. I love exercising but I do find it quite hard to motivate myself to actually get to the gym and one thing I find that's tricky with exercising at home is finding the motivation to actually get up and get started when you're not surrounded by other people who are exercising and giving you motivation. It becomes especially important now the days are getting colder and as we're moving into autumn and winter I can struggle with low mood as well and I find aerobic exercise really really helpful for getting some endorphins in my brain and feeling good again. So I'm using Trainwell to put together a workout plan and one of the benefits that it's going to bring to me is an accountability buddy in the form of a personal trainer, so for me I feel like I get the benefits that I would get if I were going to the gym when I'm working out at home. Trainwell plan all of your workouts for you so there's no mental load in terms of mapping things out you just log on and follow their guide. As you progress through your workouts your personal trainer will adjust them to make sure they're always meeting your needs and if you've got particular goals like working on a specific part of your body your workouts will incorporate this too. You also might have goals like working on your mood or working on your energy levels and your fitness plan will always reflect those. When you sign up with Trainwell there's a little quiz that you take to make sure that you're best matched with a personal trainer that meets your needs and it's really important that you're working with someone you feel comfortable with. For me personally I love working with people who have a gentle and empathetic approach and I'm really really glad that this was something I was able to specify when I signed up. So if you're keen to try a personalized workout plan with your own personal trainer you can get a 14 day free trial of Trainwell using the link in my video description or by scanning the QR code on screen. Thank you so much to Trainwell for sponsoring this video. Back into our garden updates though you might have noticed that there's a new duck wandering around behind me so we've got six now. The darkest one is the newest member of the flock. She's called Jemima and we've also nicknamed her Wednesday because in the past we had a duck called Wednesday that we really loved so she's also called Wednesday the second. We've got six runner ducks now and she actually came to us through someone who follows us on social media and couldn't look after her anymore and they sent us an email. We weren't sure if it was legit at the beginning and we followed it through and turns out it was and we love her to bits so we're really glad she's joined us in the garden. Having five female ducks does mean we're going to get a lot of eggs once they start laying again in the spring so that's going to be interesting but they're currently having a break from laying while they're doing their yearly molt. We have also finished building our new duck house now which we started showing you in our previous video but it wasn't finished at the time so let's go up and have a look at that now. So here is the finished duck house and we're really really pleased with this. Our friend built it for us and it was the same friend who built the shed so you can see the style is quite similar and he's done these arched kind of windows on the front. The main reason we need this is because although we love free-ranging the ducks we do have foxes and birds of prey and the foxes have eaten some of our ducks in the past so we need somewhere where we can keep them when we aren't able to free-range them in the garden with our supervision and that's where this comes in. So he's done a really really lovely pan-tiled roof and put a skylight on there as well so that it doesn't get too dark. It just looks a lot better than the previous version that me and Aaron cobbled together ourselves in a huge rush with absolutely no expertise on how to build something like this. He's also put a new watering system in which should keep the pen really tidy over the winter when things can get super muddy. If you keep ducks you'll know that if they have an enclosure they will turn it into complete mud very very quickly. So before we used to have a paddling pool for them in there and we would just change the water regularly whereas now we have a bucket system that's partially covered so they can't swim and splash on it but they can sink their heads in flush out their nostrils and clean their eyes and have a drink and then we get them a paddling pool on the grass so that they can come out and have a swim out here. But it means that we can change the water more efficiently and keep things really clean and now that we've got so many ducks that's really important because more ducks means more mud. They've also got this stone barn behind us which is where they like to sleep and because they're a little bit scared when it's quite windy they do hide in there on a windy day. Like today they might spend a lot of time in the stone barn whereas on a calmer day they'll probably venture outside and forage and eat and chill out on the straw in this part. Now that we've doubled the size of our flock it's actually really really difficult to have the ducks on the pond without them completely trashing it so we used to swim our three on there quite regularly and the balance was right because the pond was big enough that it could kind of keep itself clean with a little bit of help from us and some aquatic plants. Now that we've got six they've eaten every tiny tiny piece of plant in the pond and really really stirred it up so it's quite sedimenty so we've taken them out of the pond for a while and we're going to let it recover and let the sediment sink back down to the bottom and try and scoop some of it out and we'll keep them on the paddling pool for the most part so that we can change the water regularly. But it does get a little bit trickier once you've got a few more ducks I think the balance just wasn't quite right but they're happy with the paddling pool so that's really great and they have got a pond at the top of the garden that they really do trash and we're happy for them to completely take over it. But that's more or less everything from the ducks let's go and harvest some vegetables and fruits from our polytunnel. So welcome to the polytunnel which I think is at its peak at the moment you can see we've got lots of tomatoes that are ready to harvest and we can get picking those shortly. I have noticed a little bit of blight in here recently and it's not surprising at all because the weather has been so damp and so cold and windy and the leaves that tend to get affected first are the ones that touch near the top of the tunnel or the plants that are nearest to the doors. I think around that they're kind of quite sheltered because blight is spread through the air so if the breeze can get past them that's when they can catch it. I've tried to prune the plants to keep a good amount of airflow in here but ultimately I think you can't really avoid it when the weather starts getting like this and it's towards the end of the season. But it's not too bad I've just been pulling the leaves off as I spot them and trying to keep the plants going and if I notice that the tomatoes themselves are getting affected I'll just start pulling all of those off and ripen them in the house. But for now it's all fine it's not too out of balance that it's becoming a major issue so everything is okay. Once I've finished my main harvest of the tomatoes and cucumbers in here it will be time to remove the plants, compost them, get a nice layer of mulch down and then get my overwintering crops of broad beans and brassicas in the ground. And I'm not overly keen on broad beans because they take quite a lot of preparation work but I use them mostly to nourish the soil, make sure we've got some roots down and return some nitrogen into the soil through the roots as well because tomatoes are hungry plants and if you grow as many as I do year on year you do need to take really good care of the soil and make sure there's lots of nutrients in there. Last year was quite miraculous we had a really really damp summer last year and managed to not get blight at all and I think we kept our tomatoes going well into October. I don't think we'll be quite as impressive this year but I'm still really really pleased especially because we had such a slow start to the year and the seedlings felt like they took ages to turn into viable plants that we could actually harvest from. So seeing them at this stage is really amazing and I will miss them I think they're one of my favorite things to grow every year in the garden and they're quite a lot of work as well so this is a really really good reward and I love seeing them like this. So the three varieties of tomato that I got here this year are Aylshire Craig which is this one here, yellow pear drop which you can see in front of me it's really obvious that's the yellow one and then also pink brandywine which is a beefsteak tomato and the pink brandywine tomatoes aren't quite ripe yet so we're not going to be picking any of those ones we'll just pick these two on this side. I do also have a variety there which I have no idea what that is whether it's a hybrid or something or it might be a plant of pink brandywine that hasn't got as many nutrients and therefore the fruits not as big don't know I'm gonna eat them anyway. We've also got cucumbers that I've grown and these are called market more I use these to make pickles with and I found that when you eat them the skins are a little bit tough they're quite spiky so I just gently brush the spikes off to get rid of those but if I'm having them in sandwiches I will peel them because I find the skins a little bit tough but they're fine to make pickles with though. So here is a small harvest from the polytunnel and you might have noticed that some of these tomatoes had actually split slightly because I'd left them on the plants too long but it doesn't make a difference to the taste and I'm gonna roast all of these on a roasting tray with a bit of oil and balsamic vinegar and then I like to mix them with some spaghetti and just have a simple tomato pasta for dinner and that will get us through quite a lot of these probably two-thirds of them and then we'll have a few left to just go in sandwiches with a bit of cheese or that sort of thing. I've got a little bit of parsley which I am a huge fan of but Aaron doesn't like it so I just use that to garnish my food and then we've got some cucumbers so enough to make a good few jars of pickles with as well so I'm really pleased with that and I love this time of year. So here is a smaller project that I've been meaning to do for absolutely ages and just never got around to doing. Finally two days ago I got on with it so I've planted some new Nepeta plants here but previously we had some lavender plants that had been in for years and years and gone really really leggy. I did try and hard prune them last year to reduce the size and make them a bit more compact but lots of them died and it just looked really really messy so finally got them out and had a lovely bonfire and burned those and now I've got some Nepeta in and this is going to be so much better because this won't go leggy it's not a woody plant I can cut it back keep it nice and compact and it should re-flower all throughout the summer maybe even through September into October as well so we should get lots and lots of flushes of flowers which will be really good for the pollinators. It's got a really nice smell and it's quite vigorous growing as well so it should kind of cover this border as it pads out over the years. It does look a little bit gappy at the moment I think I put about five plants in here in two litre buckets but give this a year or so and it should look really lovely and I can't wait to see it and repeat flower through the summer months. But it's one of those things that you end up having on your list for so long because it's not urgent and never getting around to doing so I'm really really glad that I've got this done and now I can move on to some other tasks around the garden. And it wouldn't be a monthly garden tour without me showing you the progress on our late summer border which is just starting to flower in full bloom now and it's really lovely to see the bees and pollinators on here too. So we've got the rebecchia here at the front and this variety is called Deemie and this has been flowering for at least six weeks and it's been absolutely pristine. I don't know if it's something to do with this really still and not too hot weather that the flowers have been preserved or whether it's just a really generous plant but it's gone on and on and on and it's one that I'm really pleased that I've planted. And then at the back of the border we've got I think we've got one two three four or five different varieties of Aster, not all of them are flowering yet and some of them are just starting to appear but the ones that we can see are so lovely and again I'm just really really excited to see more of this in bloom. I've managed to keep all of the tags for these so I can remember the names, not sure which is which but I will try and figure that out next time we show you around and everything is in full bloom simultaneously. But we've got Harrington's Pink, Pink Cloud, Alice Haslam and then some purple ones which I bought from East Lambrook Manor that I can't remember the name of, I'm gonna have a rummage and try and find the tag. But this border is kind of done in the style of Marjorie Fish from where I bought these Aster's from at East Lambrook Manor and I read her book recently and she writes about how she thinks a garden couldn't be complete without having Aster's in because they're such a generous flower when not much else is around. So these are really lovely and then we've got the perennial sunflower that's Lemon Queen at the back there and that's really popular with the pollinators so again it will be a little bit of time until this is in complete full bloom and I think I really thought it would be earlier than it is to be honest but patiently waiting and enjoying what we've got for the minute. In terms of the rest of the garden, in the orchard we've been starting to pick apples and make an apple pie with those. Lots of them are ready but because we've got a few different varieties we have a little bit of a staggered season which is nice because we don't get too overrun all at once so I'm just going up there whenever I fancy baking something and picking a nice basket of them and bringing them into the house but that's something that's going to continue over the next few weeks as well so we're really really lucky that we can be picking those. It's really nice to have trees that were planted by previous owners and have already become established because it means we have a reward in the garden while we're waiting for the fruits of our own labour which are generally planting up the perennial borders around the edges of the garden. But thank you so much for having a look around today and remember to subscribe if you're interested in seeing our garden develop over the months and years and we'll see you next time.