Autumn activities are in full swing this week! We had a cold snap two nights ago, hitting a low of 2°C, so there was a lot of mad scrambling to get all the houseplants back inside that evening. Next week, we will officially start dipping below 10°C most evenings, so it is time to start clearing out the summer veggies that I know will not manage to ripen any further (I’m looking at you, underwhelming tomatoes). It’ll be nice to clean up, scale down, and rest for a bit, after the wild fluctuations this year in the garden. We’re not completely done yet, of course — I will be trying autumn/winter crops this year, so that will be an interesting challenge.

1. The potted cyclamens on our front porch and terrace are enjoying the cool damp weather. They will be transplanted to a bed under the front pines when they’re done doing their thing.

2. Harvesting continues at a good pace! I tried my hand at braiding onions for the first time and am inordinately pleased with the results. These ‘Sturon’ yellow onions will only last a couple of months at most, but I can easily use them up by then. I’d like to fill a couple of beds with longer-storing varieties next year and try to grow our year’s worth so I never have to rush to the store again. They also provide the bonus crop of onion greens in the summer, which I froze a good amount of for use in soups.

3. During a brief window of dry weather, I dug up the last two beds of Mozart potatoes and brought them into the barn to cure. This wasn’t our best year for potatoes and I know the drought affected the other two varieties we grew since they produced only small to medium-sized tubers. Mozart seemed to fare better, giving us a good amount of medium-sized tubers and several chunky ones too. It also hasn’t been affected in the least by scab or hungry bugs, which seemed to plague our Annabelles. All in all, we fell far short of the winter’s supply of potatoes I was aiming for, but have at least a month’s worth, which isn’t bad. I will be growing half my crop in potato bags next year, in the hope that it will help to combat some of those problems.

4. ‘Moonwalker’ sunflowers are giving the trees some competition! The shortest ones are about 8 feet. I had to crane my head up and photograph from several feet back to get that picture. Very pleased with the result and am going to try growing an entire row of similar-height sunflowers across the back of the cutting garden as a living screen next year.

5. I was sure that this mophead hydrangea (which came with the house, so no name) had died a few years back, but it made a surprise reappearance this autumn through the middle of some overgrown cypress branches sporting not one but four big flower heads. I’ll give it a few weeks, then move it over to the cutting garden with the other hydrangeas, where it won’t be strangled by nearby trees.

6. This wild pear popped up from the rootstock of a dead grafted tree and we’ve been letting it grow out of curiosity. It flowered the last few years, but this is the first year it has managed to set fruit too. I’m curious to try some of it in jam, especially since our domestic pear tree didn’t produce much this year.

Thanks for visiting and please do check out what the other SoSers are doing over at Jim’s page!