This morning I weeded the greenhouse and polytunnel. There weren’t very many in the greenhouse and what there were in the polytunnel were mostly self-inflicted — germinated seeds from the marigolds I had planted between the tomatoes. Something has been nibbling at the salad leaves in the polytunnel to the point where a few have completely disappeared. It doesn’t look like slugs though, as a couple were pulled up completely and there were leaves that had been dragged away from plants. I found a few holes burrowed into the ground around the edges of the tunnel, so I’m wondering if it might be mice. I’ve done my best to break them up and I’ll have another look tomorrow.
I checked over the chiles and peppers and found a few bits that were dying back and going mouldy. I’ve pruned those back to green stalks. I’ve really no idea what I’m doing at this point. I know some people prune their over-wintering chiles back quite hard when bringing pots indoors for the winter, but mine will not be moving from the polytunnel so I have no idea if that would be appropriate or not.
The unseasonably warm weather (12°C maximum today) continues to confuse the plants it seems. Some trees have lost their leaves already, others are just starting to get their autumn colours now it’s less than seven weeks to the end of the year, and others are still fully green and showing no signs of shedding their foliage. The sycamores in our hedges have dropped most of theirs and as it hasn’t been very windy they have just been sitting on the ground where they fell. I decided to collect them up to stop them smothering the grass over the winter. I can probably use them to mix with grass clippings next year in the compost heaps. So far I’ve filled four “dumpy” bags and there are probably enough to fill another two in the area I’ve been working on with even more elsewhere. I’ll probably run out of dumpy bags before I run out of leaves 🙂