Stephanie's Kitchen Garden Diary

Happy Halloween everyone! Congratulations if you have grown some great pumpkins this year, with the weather we've had to contend with this summer you have done very well! Now Autumn is upon us or maybe Winter has arrived early? The shorter and darker days are here too so less gardening time for all those keen gardeners out there. All I know is that it's been very chilly of late and everything is looking decidedly messy in Stephanie's Kitchen Garden, all the rain and the falling leaves have kick started our Autumn clean up with a vengeance. Read on to see what else we've been up to this month in Stephanie's Kitchen Garden we hope you will find some inspiration to get out there and get stuck in!

You can certainly feel the chill of the autumnal air now and the leaves on the trees are starting to change colour and fall, you could begin to think that there is not much to do in the kitchen now but don't be fooled by the change of season as September was a busy month in the garden with a flurry of seed sowing, harvesting and general jobs to do before the chilly weather sets in. Read on to see what Lynn has been up to this month in Stephanie's Kitchen Garden.

As I am writing this the heavens have opened and there is a roar or thunder accompanied by a crack of lightning and I am reluctant to say is this the end of summer? We certainly hope not here in Stephanie's Kitchen Garden as our plants have got plenty of life in them yet - we still need some much yearned for sunshine to ripen them off...

It feels like deja vu reading July 2011's kitchen garden update - rain, rain and more rain. Our English summers seem to be having a common theme these days and the lack of sunshine is affecting our crops but as the saying goes England in this 'green and pleasant land', us gardeners will carry on gardening and we will get a good crop of vegetables this summer!

It's been another distinctly underwhelming month weatherwise in the Kitchen Garden although the beans and potatoes in particular have defied the weather and are looking good! Unfortunately we will have to insist on some sun for our squashes and the wet and windy spring has left its legacy too - find out why and more...

'Four Seasons in One Day' sang 80's-90's Antipodean pop stars Crowded House and that's not a bad way to describe May 2012! A start to the month which seemed more akin to February was in complete contrast to a scorching finale which saw our Kitchen Garden plants - and the weeds - go mad! The weather aside, it's been a great month with the culmination an RHS Chelsea Flower Show award double! Find out more below...

It never rains but it pours! The word drought conjours up images of parched land and wilting crops but that's far from the case - and although the coldest, wettest April for decades delayed many of our Kitchen Garden planting plans, at least it topped up our numerous water butts. Find out how we've been coping with the 165% above average monthly rainfall and much more in our April edition of Stephanie's Kitchen Garden Diary...

Spring strolls into the Kitchen Garden armed with the deadly combination of warm, sunny days and cold, frosty nights - just the kind of extremes of conditions the trays and trays of seedlings in the greenhouse don't want. And it's the greenhouse where 90% of our March garden time has been spent, with a few trips outside to weed, feed and plant. Find out more about how we've coped with spring in the Kitchen Garden below...

It's the calm before the seed sowing storm in the Kitchen Garden this month with preparations for arguably the busiest gardening month of the year well underway. Lynn's been busy grappling with bags of horse manure, we've had frozen seed potatoes to deal with and the greenhouse is starting to fill up already. Find out more about February in the Kitchen Garden along with what we've got planned for March below