I really love autumn, with the lovely fresh, crisp mornings and the beautiful jewel like colours of the leaves falling from the trees.

It’s also a time to reap the rewards of your garden and celebrate all the effort that you’ve put in throughout the growing year.

In the garden with Betty

Betty is my cousin, who’s not my cousin, we’ve all got family like that, right? Well, Betty and her Mum came for breakfast and besides checking out my fossil and skull collection (it’s like a tour of the National History Museum) I showed her around our garden, where she really got stuck in, harvesting some veggies for her tea.

She took home a red & a white onion, courgettes, carrot and a basil plant and not long after returning home they made bruschetta for lunch – just brilliant Betty!

Fundraising with the Young Operation Farmers

Me and the Young Operation Farmers worked both Saturday & Sunday last weekend to get everything ready for the Horticulture Show. My Grandma Barbara had planted basil seeds with a group at People First Tameside, they had already used/sold some and we picked the rest to make pesto. Some mint and bay leaves were picked too and used in the kitchen to make some delicious ‘green soup’.

Planted in July, repotted in Aug

Harvested Sept

Picked and ready for pesto

One of the best things about the group is the ‘coming together’ and making new friends, that for me has been a really fab thing. Learning new life skills, like cooking and gardening is really important too – so, we’re only 2 months in and it’s already proved a MEGA success!

Horticulture Show

I was judging the junior categories with Green Monster Artist (and pink haired), Ann. The entries were absolutely incredible and it was a really tough job, especially when it came to tasting all them biscuits and cakes!!

I’d entered a cactus in the plant category (I wasn’t judging that obviously!) and……

I won!!!!

The full team of young and adult volunteers set up all the activities outside and despite a few showers we were really busy for the 3 hour event. There was:

• herb seed planting
• plant sales
• herb ID
• paint a plant pot using recycled pop bottles
• paint a small recycled bottle to fill with apple juice
• pesto basil using our home-grown basil
• cupcakes
• apple spritzers using freshly pressed apple juice and home-grown mint
• apple juice tasting
• and finally apple pressing and I mean like, 1 tonne of locally grown apples!

and we raised £103.56!!

BBC Radio Manchester

Yesterday (Saturday 22nd Sept) I was on BBC Radio Manchester on the Phil Trow Show, with local Manc gardener, Jacqui Brocklehurst  You can catch it here until 20th October 2019. It was great to talk about my role as an RHS Young Ambassador and the Young Operation Farmer’s Project. There was a live phone in and we were asked all sorts of challenging questions, such as growing peppers, cutting back wisteria, problems with dahlias and ‘what can be grown on a small apartment balcony?‘ It was a really great experience and I was proper buzzin’ after the show!

Flowers and veggies in the garden

The garden is looking absolutely lush. The bees are visiting late flowering plants like the Michaelmas daisies and buddleia and today we saw a small copper and a red admiral butterfly on the sedum

The best news is that after years and I mean years of having no success growing decent sized sweetcorn, this year we have a bumper crop and believe you me, I can’t wait to sink my teeth into those buttery kernels – yum!

epic sweetcorn

osteospermum

white buddleia

lavender

Michaelmas daisies

Sedum

Elder berries

In the next few weeks

Big #SoupShare

I’ll be taking part in the RHS Big Soup Share on Saturday 6th October 12.30-2pm at The Kitchen in Ashton. The Big Soup Share is actually on 8-14 Oct, but we couldn’t do these dates, so we’re just a few days early!

We’re going to make our famous ‘green soup’, soda bread and cakes and again we’re raising money for projects in 2019.

We did it last year, serving soup to 500 people at the Harvest Festival and it was great fun, but I tell you what, cooking and serving food is stressful, I don’t think I’m cut out to be a chef, I’ll stick to growing the food I think!

We’re also planning our activities at Operation Farm’s annual Harvest Festival on 14th October at Hyde Park, busy, busy!

There’s one thing about autumn, that I think most people agree on and that’s going out for a seasonal walk.

I’ve enjoyed some lovely daytime and evening strolls with Buddy and my Mum & Dad recently.

I hope you’re enjoying some autumn walks and are you still harvesting crops from your garden?

Have a great week guys!