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Gardening Ideas October 2009

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You can tell a lot about the character of a person by looking around their garden. There might be wild, wayward plants left to do their own thing, or controlled, carefully guided specimens kept rigidly within bounds and forbidden to lean over lawn edges. Some gardeners love colour and fill their plots with wall to wall bedding plants, fuchsias and dahlias. Then there are those that need tranquillity, whose gardens are often entirely green, like a fern garden I visited once. Practical people don't see the point in growing things they can't eat, artistic individuals create drifts of pastel-coloured perennials and grasses and romantic sorts sigh over their roses and irises. You get lovers of gnomes and windmills who cram in as many ornaments as they can and competitive types hoping to win prizes by cultivating giant pumpkins, the longest carrots, heaviest gooseberries or widest chrysanthemums. As a hobby, there's something for everyone in gardening and we tend to be a happy, sharing bunch too.

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Garden clippings for October

......in the vegetable garden

• Plant garlic now because this onion relative needs a colder dormant period of a couple of months before it starts growing. Plant individual cloves 10cm/4in apart and 5cm/2in deep in rows 20cm/8in apart.
• Start a runner bean trench by digging it out 60cm/24in deep and wide if you can. All winter, lay your veg peelings and other compostable matter in the trench, with the odd layer of soil now and again until it is full.
• Remove yellowing leaves from plants I the cabbage family, like kales and sprouting broccoli. If they have whitefly under the leaves, spray with a solution of soft soap.

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......in the flower garden

• Check ties and supports keeping climbers to walls and perennials like late-flowering chrysanthemums and Michaelmas daisies upright. Equinoctial gales will be blowing soon and the garden needs to be ready.
• Go shopping and add some late flowering plants to your garden. You might spot the delightful toad lily (Tricyrtis formosana), obedient plant (physostegia) or black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia)
• Move herbaceous perennials and shrubs previously planted in the wrong place; they might be obscuring shorter plants or flopping over paths and edges. Large perennials can be divided now, to create larger clumps and drifts.

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......and in general

• plant bulbs now to brighten early summer. Dutch iris don't demand much space and have jewel-like flowers. Ornamental onions like Allium cristophii produce globe-like heads of purple flowers that persist as seed heads.
• Plan and create features to improve the garden such as widened, better shaped borders, creating a vista, a new path or a dividing hedge with a gate to make garden 'rooms'.
• Net ponds at the beginning of the month to catch drifting autumn leaves, otherwise they clog the water and release gases as they decay. Keeping them out helps fish and plants survive winter and saves a lot of clearing later.

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Q and A

Q: Please tell me how to care for my new goji berry planted this year.
Hamilton

A: Lycium barbarum, the goji or Duke of Argyll's tea tree thrives in full sun and well-drained soil. They're also tolerant of salt and make good seaside plants. I think they're best treated as climbers and trained up a trellis or pergola. Prune your goji if it needs it, in late winter or early spring.

Q: How do I save sweet pea seeds produced by my own plants. Should I dry them?
Monica Shorland, Devon

A: Saving seed is fun and a good way to economise! Let the pods turn brown and dry on the plants, then collect them on a dry day before they crack open. Remove the seeds from their cases and leave them in a warm, dry, airy place to dry further before popping them in a labelled envelope and then in a tin, with a little packet of silica gel. Keep in a cool, dry place. You can sow them later this month, to overwinter as young plants in frame or greenhouse, or wait until spring.

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