Fruitful autumn

Lavender

This is my first post in a while, as life has been a little hectic. Ive been feeling a bit under the weather lately. I also got engaged, and yesterday ended up having an asthma attack and spent 5 hours in A&E lol.
In the garden things are steadily winding up towards winter. Most of the tomatoes have finished so an upcoming job will be to pull them all out and replenish the soil in the pots ready for new plants. I still do have some tomatoes that are just ripening now, so id imagine ill still be picking for another couple of weeks at least. One of the toms still with fruit is a garden peach and the other im not sure about. The fruit look to be yellow but its another of the "mystery seedlings" so we shall have to see.

Shallots

I harvested the shallots yesterday, after leaving them in the pot to cure for a week or so. Unfortunately we had some damp weather during that time so i decided to bring them under cover to finish curing. Yesterday i sat out on the swing seat and plaited them up and hung them in the garage. In spite of having three collapses of the plaits, it was a really fun job, and i felt a ludicrous amount of pride when i hung up the plait. After those three three tries i got a plait that didnt fall apart! go me!! So i now have two plaits of shallots (one rather short one cos i couldnt get it to hold together with the others), hanging up in the garage alongside the drying oregano and the lavender. The lavender is lovely and im hanging new bunches as the season progresses. Some lavenders dont hold their scent well when dried but these ones, one of which is munstead and the other foveaux blue i think, are wonderful.
I also have a couple of bunches of oregano, trimmed when, as usual the plant went crazy just before flowering. Its almost as long and lanky now as then tho, so i might just have to cut it again!
The apples are ripening apace, not yet ready to pick but many are getting some colour now. I have had one apple drop from the gala, but i dont think it was ready. Its a big apple though, so its sitting in the kitchen while i work out what i want to do with it, along with the last kilo of tomatoes. Tom sauce or passata may be on the cards, as i already have several jars of tomato relish!

Todays raspberry haul

Im also harvesting raspberries, and there look to be plenty coming. I need to fertilise them as theyre fruiting away, and id like to encourage them. Even tho they are fruiting well, theyre still only producing dribs and drabs of fruit as i only have 4 plants in total and only the golden ones are fruiting atm. Usually i get a handful a day, and rather than gobble em, im free flow freezing them so i can gather enough together to do something with them. Im not sure how well golden raspberries work in jam, but im interested to find out! I suspect the colour might be less than appealing, as it often is with yellow/white fruits, but im sure that can be fixed somehow. I dug into the base of the canes earlier in the week and took out the old and spindly canes, and i just need to tie them up again now. They have plenty of new growth at least. It all seems to be the white raspberry though. Not seeing much from the black one that is planted with it, but well see.

Veg seedlings

The seedlings are all up as well, so i DEFinately need to evict the spent tomatoes to give these guys somewhere to go.
Here we have beans at the back. These are "Patio Runner" which is supposed to be a lot smaller than the regular runner bean. I hope so as i love runner beans.
In front of that are the mini cabbages, and alongside them the caulis. The ones that havent come up yet are "Snowball" caulis, but the violet and yellow ones are all up and growing. Theres also a couple of basil "Genovese" seedlings and some coloured silverbeet, all of will be needing homes in the next week or so, so i can forsee some hard graft emptying pots and carting bags of compost lol.