Welcome to Gardening Tips a monthly feature providing you with hints and ideas of what to do each month in your garden. Along with a list of jobs that will enable you to enjoy and maintain your garden I will also feature a plant of the month. I have been a gardener for many years and run a small business called Pauls Garden Services.
What to do in your garden in OCTOBER
October seldom passes without some foretaste of the winter to come. We can expect the first frosts and of course British Summer time ends and the clocks go back at the end of the month. The 21st October is known as Apple day and a number of events are being held around Suffolk. Typically at these events you can see an enormous range of apples to get inspiration for a variety to plant in your garden. Usually there is a chance to taste , juicing , cider making and walks in an orchard.
Pauls Jobs for the Month
Flower Garden
- Plant spring bulbs. The earlier you plant bulbs the better, for the soil is still warm and getting the roots established before the weather closes in will help them fight wet and rot . Think of buying just a few varieties in large numbers. Some of the Spring bulbs to consider are daffodils, hyacinths, crocuses, snowdrops, fritillaries and lilies.
- Cut back all of the tall shrubs such as lavatera and buddleia.l Now is the time to take hardwood cuttings from buddleia, flowering currants and forsythial
- Keep deadheading dahlias
- Clear old leaves from hostas
- This is a good time to take fuchsia cuttings. Cut them around 15cm from the shoot tip then make a clean cut just below a leaf joint. Trim away the lowest leaves and insert several cuttings around the edge of a pot. Keep at a temperature of around 18-20c.
Paul’s Plant Of The Month – Asters
Asters come in a wide range of colours, including pink, purple, magenta and red. They grow well in flower beds and rock gardens. They grow well in full sunlight or partial shade. Asters will bloom in autumn and should be cut back in late winter once all of the foliage has died. Water the soil well throughout the following summer and asters will continue to bloom annually. All asters are best divided in spring as new growth starts. Lift and then use two back-to-back forks to split the clump. Discard old woody pieces.
General Maintenance
- Forget the gym and get yourself a good workout by raking and sweeping fallen leaves. Even on the coolest of days this will work up a sweat . Leafs are great for composting and if you don’t have a compost bin put them in a bin bag with a few holes in it and next year you will have some valuable leaf mould to feed your plants.
- A nice mucky job to do if you have a pond is to remove all of the black sludge that forms at the bottom. It is worth doing to improve the oxygen in the water. Pile the rubbish on the side of the pond to allow any wildlife the chance to return to the water before adding it to the compost.
- Continue to tidy your garden borders by removing dead flower stems and weeds
Lawn Maintenance
- By the end of the month you will probably have given your lawn its final cut of the year. After this it is a good time to give the grass a good scarifying with a lawn rake to pull out dead grass and moss.
- This is a good time to apply an autumn fertiliser to improve root growth.
E. burygardener@talktalk.net
T. 07952 938010
