God's autumn notebook
Autumn is here again. It’s a time for gardeners to enjoy the fruits (literally) of their labours over the last year, to reflect on what went well and what went badly, and to consider how they might do things differently next year. Like many gardeners, I keep an autumn notebook in which I jot down a few thoughts at this time of year. The weather played havoc with the crops this year. “Driest Manx summer since ‘95” – that says it all. Last summer was dry too. Crops which did particularly poorly were the raspberries, blueberries, corn and medicinal plants. Crops which didn’t seem to mind the drought so much included the apples, strawberries, peas, potatoes, onions, rhubarb and Brussels sprouts. So I don’t have much to put in my gardening notebook this year, except that it was wise to hedge my bets by growing a lot of different crops with different climate tolerances. I was hoping to describe my ongoing experiments with toxic plants, but owning to not having many plants to experiment