The Nasturtiums on the allotment keep on growing and flowering even in late October. Different varieties of Nasturtium have different growth habits ranging from compact to sprawling. These are definitely the spreading type!   

 I tickled the rhubarb patch with a fork to pluck out weeds and keep the couch grass at bay. Then I added a mulch of leaves which are part of nature's bounty at this time of year. Bare earth is often regarded as a sign of a 'tidy' garden or allotment but nature abhors a vacuum and that includes bare earth. The emergence of 'weeds' is the first step to repairing the damage done by exposing the soil.

 Having said that I don't want the rhubarb patch to become overgrown so I aim to protect and build the soil with mulches. Leaves decay over winter to make an excellent soil conditioner but they are low in nutrients. I watered the mulch with comfrey tea to add NPK. This also had the effect of wetting the dry leaves which will hopefully stop them from blowing away until they get properly soggy.

 Roots and shoots part four. Green Alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens) is a plant with a deep tap root. This is a young specimen and it's already pretty long. Some plants have a mass of fibrous roots but a tap root grows straight down with smaller roots branching off. In doing so the plant can access moisture and nutrients at deeper levels and the root provides a very firm anchor.

 P. sempervirens is a widespread weed/wildflower with a mass of foliage and an abundance of small blue flowers in spring. Actually I would describe it as semi-evergreen rather than sempervirens. A prolonged cold spell may cause the foliage to die back but the tap root makes it pretty indestructible. And hard to eradicate as many gardeners have found. It's difficult to extract without snapping the root and will regenerate from what remains in the earth. 

 Actually -as I have said more than once in this diary- I like Green Alkanet. So do bees, they like it very much indeed. Certain plants resist our attempts to defoliate the planet and I place P. sempervirens in that category.

 

  It's not exactly a gravel garden but I've planted various bulbs in this old oil drum over the years. Self-seeders like Herb Robert and Purple Toadflax generally pop up too. I seem to have accumulated a number of cracked and broken terracotta pots so I smashed them up for a layer of chippings.

 

 The leaves are starting to turn but they haven't dropped en masse as yet. Green Park in central London (above) is still pretty green. The fall has probably been delayed somewhat by the wet weather we've had. It's been chilly at times but not bitingly cold and there haven't been gusty gales to shake the leaves off the branches.

 I wouldn't call this scene rural or picturesque by any means. England's green and pleasant land has long been encroached on by suburban sprawl. None the less this is an archetypal English landscape of a sort. Town meets country; in this case the outskirts of Hitchin in Hertfordshire. The ploughed field is indicative of intensive farming, the hills beyond evoke an ancient vista. The post-war housing is what the future used to look like.  

 Ivy (Hedera helix) is still in flower and still attracting pollinators. I passed a thick hedge of Ivy today and there were lots of wasps, a few flies and couple of bumblebees. Too chilly by now for honeybees.