FROSTY NIGHTS AND SUNNY DAYS

Over all the UK has had some pretty awful weather in recent weeks but the last day or two is making up for it, in my garden at least.  The garden room is reaching 20+ degrees celsius in the sunshine, and I've had a very small but very welcome crop of autumn raspberries from my Polka canes.  As previous posts explain, I grow Polka raspberries as a double cropper so that I get fruit in summer and autumn.  What fruit I get in autumn depends upon the weather and the recent storms did give the canes a good old thrashing.  Still, a bit of sunshine like we have been having lately and the small green raspberries plump up, redden, and ripen.  They taste great. 

Polka raspberry

The hanging baskets are still in flower although the plants are looking a little battered and soon decreasing temperatures will put an end to them.  Meanwhile, I'm enjoying seeing them.  Also the penstemons are still flowering.  All those years I thought penstemons were such tender little things but the flowers have coped with storms, lashing rain and raging wind and you wouldn't know by looking at them that we have had anything but beautiful, temperate, weather. 

I have taken the pelargoniums into the unheated garden room and they are looking very happy and have buds as well as flowers, and signs of new leaves.  Even so, I'm being cautious with these not-so-hardy plants as the night temperatures are decreasing and I have my eye on the garden room's thermostat, watching to see how low the temperature gets in there at night.  So far it has hit 4 degrees celsius.  So, each evening I am covering the pelargoniums and the crassula ovata (Jade plant) with garden fleece.  I've also protected some of my outdoor containers with fleece, the ones holding the little Coronet apple tree, the Buddleia Davidii Nanho Blue, and three of the acers: Acer palmatum 'Phoenix', Acer palmatum 'Katsura' and Acer Palmatum dissectum Ornatum'.