At Last!

We all breathed a collective sigh of relief when the rain finally arrived. You could almost hear gardeners up and down the country muttering, “at last” or “the garden really needed that.” It’s been hard work to keep plants thriving after such a long, dry summer, but here we are, lawns greening again, a few late blooms hanging on, and the garden refreshed.

Despite the lack of rain, it really was a fantastic summer for growing. Higher light levels mean stronger, healthier growth, and although I’ll never forget the endless watering we had to do from March through to the August bank holiday, I’d still take that kind of summer over a cloudy one any day.

August was a hectic month with activities taking place all over the hotel. As the schools open up again, the business changes, and September brings a big turning point in the kitchen garden, too. Tomatoes no longer need constant fussing: the tips are cut to stop new growth, watering has stopped, and all the plant’s energy is going into ripening its fruit. The hours saved from watering are quickly filled with harvesting — this is our most abundant time of year. Weeding and tidying are back on the list, too, as we hit the final growth spurt of the year.

And what a harvest it is. Sweet peppers are stealing the show: 'lemon dream’ and ‘tangerine dream’,  just three inches long but bursting with flavour — sweet with the faintest tickle of heat. Padron plants are so prolific that you have to check them daily in sunny weather. And then there’s the giant ‘Kapia’ peppers, red and glossy, as big as your head.

The irony of all this bounty is that I sometimes wish it arrived a few weeks earlier, to line up with the height of summer when tomatoes, melons, peppers, and salads are in peak demand. Instead, just as the days cool and people start craving heartier meals, the garden delivers Mediterranean abundance. But that’s the climate we work with.

As if there weren’t enough struggles this summer, it would have been far easier without the constant nuisance of moles. We’ve always shared the river garden with these little critters, and we usually don’t mind them too much — their molehills even provide us with fine topsoil. But this year, with the ground so dry, they went searching for moisture and life… which happened to be directly under our crops. It was as if our beds were lit up with a neon sign flashing “Food here!” in the middle of a barren desert.

The damage was frustrating: seedlings pushed clean out of the soil overnight, lying helpless on their sides; established plants suddenly wilting because a tunnel had been carved right where their roots should have been. In the end, the moles dug too deep into our patience, and we had to make the tough decision to bring someone in to remove them as the problem had simply become unmanageable. They have returned since, but thankfully not so much where we grow.

The seasons have shifted noticeably this year. Leaves are falling early, and my pumpkins had ripened by August (I’m slightly worried they might not make it to  Halloween). The drought also reduced the number I would have expected. Top fruit has been more generous: apples, pears, and plums have thrived, thanks to a calm spring that set the blossom well. Our ‘Hauszwetsche’ espalier plum trees along the wall, in particular, produced some beautiful fruit which we roasted with masala wine along with ‘Autumn bliss’ raspberries and Chantilly cream for our final Garden Gathering of the year.

Outdoors, every bed is full. Moisture-loving leeks and celeriac, transplanted back in May, are finally swelling fast after sitting tight all summer. Inside the polytunnel, it’s a different story: I’m busy sowing spinach, winter salads, parsley, chervil, fennel, chard, and spring onions for the winter and spring harvests. Some great choices for salads that are winter hardy are Red frills, salad rocket, claytonia, corn salad, land cress, and chervil.

A kitchen garden in September can be the pinnacle of a year’s work. Full beds, succulent leaves every shade of green, glossy fruit, swaying grasses, tall perennials, and overflowing flowers — none of which can be bought or replicated overnight. If you’ve been out there coaxing your patch through the heatwaves, now’s the time to pause, take it all in, and give yourself a well-earned pat on the back.