One of the action items for the weekend was to prepare the garden for autumn. The temperatures are still that of summer, but the days are increasingly shorter and most of the plants have gone to seed. Everything was looking a little worse for wear, an so interim tidy was in order.

I probably should have taken an after shot. Oh well, dark and raining now.

Rather than leave pots out with no plants in them, we bought a lidded 60 litre rubbish bin to store the soil over the winter and the plan is to periodically mix in some organic matter (kind of like a compost bin I guess). Whether this strategy is successful or not remains to be seen.

There are still some wee lettuce plants which appear to have been overshadowed by the celery. I’ve moved the seedlings into some empty space and hope we can eke out lettuce for the next few weeks – having fresh leaves for sandwiches is infinitely superior to those from the fruit + veg shop. The celery was one of those disappointing plants which we’ll probably not grow again next year – I suspect it needed much more room than is available because it is growing exceptionally slowly, or maybe we just planted it too late in the year.

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In other gardening news, remember the plant experiment?

Day 89 and I think I am losing:

Mint straggly and brown-ish (rather worse than it looks in the photo), though the rosemary seems to be trucking along nicely.

The moreton bay fig, however, is doing spectacularly:

Sadly not the most suitable thing for providing shadow for the bins, because though it would definitely hide them, it would probably also engulf the house.