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Garden Advice For October
October 08 2008
Autumn Colour
This month is the peak time for Autumn colour, but it needn’t be the preserve of ornamentals. Many useful plants have great autumn colour, especially Grapevines, Pears and Bluberries.
Grape ‘Boskoop Glory’ is a very useful variety for giving reliable, regular, healthy crops in our climate. It also has great autumn colour, turning a rich red/purple, as early as late August.
Pear ‘William’s Bon Chretien’ has leaves that turn a bright red. Its sport – ‘Sensation’ also develops red-skinned fruit quite early in the season, so it’s a great source of colour from Spring to Autumn.
Blueberry – most deciduous types have splendid autumn colour.
Insect Hotels
We start tidying up dead stems this month. Large hollow stems make great hibernation sites for useful insects. Tie the stems in bundles and hang them so they sit horizontally somewhere sheltered. These will be colonised by lacewings and ladybirds, ready to start munching the aphids in your garden in the spring. A good use for Japanese Knotweed stems!
Green Manures
Its not good for soil to stay bare over winter – rain will leach nutrients and air and sun will destroy organic matter. If you cant mulch it over then growing green manures is a good practice. These are annual crops sown for their nutrient creating and holding ability. Nitrogen fixers like Winter Tares or Tic Beans add some nitrogen, and bulky organic matter is provided by Annual Grazing Rye. A combination of these is sown this month and it grows over winter, to be dug in by mid April before they have a chance to flower and set seed. They will decompose in the soil to feed the summer crops that follow them.
Fruit
Carry on harvesting fruits. Store the later ripening varieties in a cold but frost free place, and do not mix earlier with later varieties, as the ethylene given off by the ripe fruit will bring the later fruits on too quickly.
When plum trees have been cleared of fruit check for broken or split branches and remove these. Treat cuts with a wound paint immediately after.
Prolong the season for Perpetual and Alpine Strawberries by covering with cloches or bringing potted plants into the greenhouse. Start planting out rooted strawberry runners.
Autumn Raspberries will keep cropping till the frosts. The usual advice is to cut back canes when they have finished, but if left these canes will often give a July crop, if the buds survive the winter.
Plan new fruit trees and bushes and decide on varieties. Although nurseries start selling bare-rooted trees and shrubs in November, they are taking orders for months ahead, and so by November some varieties may be sold out.
Apple Day
Various events will be celebrating apples around the country on the weekends leading up to the 18th – 19th. Many of these involve Apple Tasting, so it’s a great chance to try new varieties. Some events will also have Apple Identification, so a good opportunity to find out what that old tree at the bottom of the garden might be.
To find out what’s on in your area go to the Apple Day website
Vegetables
Most sowing and planting is over now, but Spring Cabbage can be planted out now, and like other brassicas should be protected with netting if pigeons are a problem in your garden. A spell of hard weather will see pigeons reduce brassica leaves to skeletons.
Tall brassicas suxh as Brussel Sprouts and Sprouting Broccoli may need staking on windy sites.
Transplant overcrowded winter salad seedlings – these will give a late winter or early spring harvest and will self -sow freely. Land Cress, Miners Lettuce and Lambs Lettuce all fall into this category, and also many people like the taste of Chickweed, a soil-hugging garden weed that can be moved into pots in the greenhouse for a grit-free crop in the early spring.
Saving Seed
Harvest ripe seed heads now. Dry these off by hanging seed heads in paper bags in a dry, airy place. Its tempting to associate dry seeds with warmth, but they survive better being stored in sealed plastic bags in the fridge, where they will stay viable for much longer.
Some vegetable seeds are naturally short-lived, like parsnips. If saving your own chose the best specimens to grow on for seed – you may not be able to eat your best parsnip, but it ensures those good genes are being passed on to future crops.
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