Holding onto Summer

Today, the low sun gave only a little snatched warmth as it spread its transient rays between the megaliths of the city. I caught a few of these lucky rays while I ate my sandwiches on the usual mooring post beside the Bridgewater Hall. The willows which overhang the canal and the floating vegetation were clinging onto their weary leaves, but with daytime temperatures barely set to reach zero, they're soon sure to drop, and ride the canal on a raft of dappled yellow. Where did Summer go?

If I were to use one word to describe this Summer, it would have to be bountiful. It was superlative in so many ways - driest, hottest, sunniest. And it kept on giving, not least on the allotment. Plentiful sunshine, paired with lots of watering and a bit of TLC, gave us a whole run of different treats - from delicious egg-sized potatoes to gleaming courgettes, and from a shoebox full banana shallots to the countless punnets of runner beans we thought would never end, and handfuls of luminous fresh raspberries. 

It's incontrovertible: Winter is coming. The gluts are over, the pear tree has shed its leaves, and there's a quietness in the air as our neighbouring allotmenteers put their plots to bed in favour of indoor pursuits, not to be seen again till Spring. 

But far from putting the plot to bed, we're holding onto Summer for all it's worth. 

After all, there's so much you can do to keep an allotment producing all year round. You can push salads well into Autumn by sowing radishes and lettuces in September.

Then just imagine the ingredients of the heartiest stew and you immediately have an idea of the sorts of things you can grow well into Winter. We have sprouts aplenty, swedes swelling up, leeks rising high, and we've only just started mining for the white gold they call parsnips. 

We have plants which will produce early next year, too - purple sprouting broccoli that should be ready in Spring; and garlic has just gone in - it needs a cold spell so that it properly 'bulbs up' in time for next Summer.

And it doesn't all have to look like a cookbook from the 1970s. This Winter, I'm trialling some late-sown daikon or mooli, a type of long white radish used in Asian recipes; and the bulbous Chinese cabbage, pak choi.

So, while the earth is settling into gentle hibernation, we shouldn't think of it as the beginning of the end, but as a slow continuation during which nothing quite stops - the turning of the hands in hopeful anticipation of Spring.