[heygrow]

Don't know about you, but this seems to have been a really short summer. Did not get started until end if May and by August it seemed to all but over. This last few weeks had just been wet, windy and cold. Had a brief respite today and got out to look at things, but feels very Autumnal.

However had good harvet of early cropping produce through the summer, it's just the late rippening stuff thst is struggling now, like rasps, sweetcorn, french beans. Even the apples are rotting on the tree!  Runners are going strong though, seem to like the wetter weather.

Hoping for a heatwave in September......

[LottyLouis]

Short summer? I'll say so...ours was half an hour one afternoon...a Tuesday if I remember rightly - and that was back in May!   

[Thrutchington]

Got to agree, been busy getting firewood sorted, had a day this week where it rained and was dark at 8pm! Hoping for a decent sept to get carrots grown.

[andimac]

Don't say that!! I'm still waiting for summer to arrive. So is most of my veg..

[Goosegirl]

To me, Autumn has a certain smell in the air and not had it yet.

[Nikkithefoot]

To me, Autumn has a certain smell in the air and not had it yet.

Agreed, sort of smoky woodsmoke, late bonfires. You know it when you smell it. Bit like Spring has its own smell. Definitely not smelt it yet.

[mumofstig]

Not the Autumn smell perhaps, but here, we've had a few nights that have been around the 8C mark - horrible temperatures - if it's still Summer 

[Charityuk]

My summer raspberries were pitiful but I have had many kilos off the autumn ones, and lots more to come.  No runner beans yet though, and only two courgettes from 4 plants!

[steved]

I think were far too tuned into the warmth aspect of summer, to me and our plants/animals its also about the length of the daylight hours just as importantly.
For example the Roe buck antlers stop growing "in velvet" and the testerone levels cause this, when the daylight hours get longer in the spring. After this , the major tree damage occurs, as the buck tries to clean his antlers on any good looking tree bark.
Perruque bucks, where uncontrollable velvet growth occurs, freguently growing over the animals eyes and getting infected, meaning a slow and painful death through the inability to eat and see danger(deer have a photographic memory) usually due to damage to the genital area, meaning lack of testerone production(barbed wire fences, unruly dogs etc)
Conversely, the coronets, which is the "flange" at the bottom of the antler, start dying when the daylight hours get shorter.
I always think of 12 daylight and 12 darkness is the end of the main growing season for the majority of our summer crops.