Gardening tips for October

Week 1

- Leaves will begin to fall and should be collected to make compost.
- There are wonderful bargains to be had in end-of-season or discontinued-line pots.
- Clean down and disinfect your greenhouse, standing the plants outside. Clean the outside of the roof in particular with a long, soft brush, to maximise the winter light levels inside
- Before the weather makes the soil into mud turn the soil with the spade or rotavator
- Dry off baskets and pots of tuberous begonias under cover until the stalks fall away. Store the tubers as they are, or dry and cleaned of soil
- Loganberries and Raspberries should be planted and established plants should have the wood that has borne fruit removed to ground level.
- You may still get a crop of Radishes and Lettuces if you sow now before the weather breaks
- Once blackened by frost, dahlias can be lifted, dried off and stored in a cool, dark, airy, frost-free place. Storing them in dry sand stops them shrivelling. Tough varieties can be left in the ground and mulched
- As light levels fall on window sills, keep houseplants rather drier, to slow down growth during the winter
- Keep potted cyclamen cool and as light as possible.

Week 2

- Repair and lay new lawns, and repair paths and walkways.
- Some perennials poke through very early in the spring, and if you need to divide them, now is not a bad time. Try Aconitum (monkshood), Eremurus (foxtail lily) and Asphodeline (king’s spear). Remember Eremurus have fragile starfish roots
- Anemone beds should be got ready and the tubers planted.
- When moving evergreens after such a dry season, throw several buckets of water on them a few days beforehand to ensure the rootball is moist
- Any root vegetables, such as Carrots and Beetroot, should be lifted when their tops fade and any to be stored should be in good condition
- Onions and Turnip beds should be thinned
- Seed gatherers should collect aster, hollyhock and dahlia seeds.
- It’s a good time to plant all evergreens, but make sure that you keep them watered for a couple of months, especially in windy weather, until they can put out new roots
- Look though the nursery catalogues and order fruit stock
- Those with Figs should cut the old wood away to make room for new growth and remove the old fruit leaves
- Remember to close down the greenhouse at night, but open it wide in the morning to prevent soaring temperatures and disease
- Divide old clumps of wiry-rooted Pacific Coast irises into small clumps (Iris douglasiana, innominata, etc). Try them in sunny semi-woodland, at the foot of rhododendrons.

Week 3

- Dahlia tubers should be lifted and stored
- Gladioli corms should be lifted and stored for next year
- What is so flamboyant at this time of year as a clump of nerine bulbs, like small, lipstick-pink agapanthus? Divide them now after flowering, putting them in hot, sunny, dry soil, with the snout of the bulb just under the surface. All shades of pink and white are for sale
- Herbaceous plants may be increased by division and then replanted and the new plants moved to new positions
- Prune back to 6in any runts in first-year beech, hornbeam, hawthorn and privet hedges.They will then bush out and catch up
- Cuttings of Bouvardias, Calceolarias, Cerastiums, Periwinkles, Phloxes, Roses, Salvias, various shrubs, Verbenas should be taken
- Making new borders next year on clay soil? Dig them over roughly now, adding old compost as you go
- Sweet peas seeds should be sown

Week 4

- plants underglass need protection at night as the frosts begin to bit
- Make sure that the plants you put in the greenhouse are free from disease
- While the weather is kind, finish clipping evergreen hedges and topiary to leave clean lines on which the autumn and winter sun can play. Using secateurs, shorten back to their base any shoots that are starting to run up the hedge. This helps keep the hedge slimline and also avoids it splaying out in the long term
- Pot up Arum Lilies. After bulbs have been potted they should be shaded from strong light for a few days
- Now is the time to pot up hardy and half hardy plants for displays.

- Start preparing new borders to be planted next year: dig them over to a few spades’ depths, taking out weed roots and adding coarse, old compost or fallen leaves. If making a bed from lawn, lay the turf upside-down in the bottom of the bed, but only if it doesn’t contain perennial weeds
- Keep the ground free from weeds between the growing plants with the hoe

- Look out for weak specimens in recently planted hedges of beech, hornbeam, thorn, holly and privet. Cut weaker growth down to 20cm to make them shoot harder and to help them fill out around the bottom.

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