The French bean wigwam has given us a great crop of delicious beans but has nearly exhausted itself so we will be replacing this soon with a crop to see us through the Autumn and early Winter. Elsewhere in the garden dwarf beans are still cropping well, and we are picking young, tender kale leaves, sweet rainbow carrots and the courgettes seem to double in size overnight!

Aphids and Helpful Insects

The aphid population seems to be bigger than normal this year, perhaps because of the warm, dry weather. We have had gatherings of these small, soft bodied, little pests all over the garden, especially on the sweet corn and parsnips. Our first line of attack has been to jet hose the aphids to wash them off the leaves. We have done this several times to make sure we stop them coming back and it has been pretty successful. Now the ladybirds are foraging around the leaves so we have stopped spraying and will leave it to them and visiting hoverflies to finish the job for us!