Gardening tips for October 2011
The orange month
October is a very orange month, with trees like Japanese maples and witch hazels changing colour, pumpkins ripening and everything lit with low shafts of glowing autumn sun. Go out on cool, dewy mornings and you'll find beautiful orb webs strung between your plants, each with a fat ginger spider sitting in the middle of it. While I know it's illogical and I hate myself for it, I'm scared stiff of the brown, long-legged house spiders that sprint across our carpets in the evenings but I like the orb web weavers.
We owe it to ourselves to enjoy this fiery month to the full and if you don't already have some, add a few Chinese lanterns, whose ornamental pods are bright orange. My mum has always planted the winter cherry (Solanum capsicastrum) outdoors too, where it will make small bushes covered in orange berries. They often die off in a hard winter, but pop up again from seed. Quite a few of the hardy Korean chrysanths have orange flowers, with some good yellows and bronzes for contrast, so it's worth adding them to the mix.
Japanese maples are a popular group of small, dainty trees but not all of them are easy to grow and can cause their owners some heartache. Their favourite trick is to die back, which is almost always a response to less than ideal growing conditions. To be successful with them, you need to conjure up an image of their natural habitat. Picture a woodland situation on a sheltered valley side, with a fast-flowing stream at the bottom. There are tall trees overhead casting light shade and providing shelter from harsh sun, frost and wind. Beneath is the understore y of maples, flourishing in the slightly acidic, well-drained soil enriched with layers of leaf mould. By avoiding frost pockets, waterlogging and exposure to wind, frost and harsh sun you will be giving them the best chance.
I would start with the toughest of the Japanese maples, which are probably Acer japonicum and A. palmatum 'Dissectum', see if they like your garden and then try some of the others. Remember that in containers they are even more vulnerable to excessive summer heat and winter frost.
What to do now...
…… in the kitchen garden
- Plant garlic by separating the bulbs into individual cloves and setting them 5cm (2in) deep 10cm (4in) apart in rows 30cm (12in) apart. On wet, heavy soils, make ridges just above soil level and plant into these.
- Plant spring cabbage - you should be able to find plants in garden centres.Protect them from pigeons all winter and they'll give you crops from spring to summer.
- Cut away the old, fruited stems of loganberry, blackberry and hybrids. Train in the new growths neatly for the winter (they'll flower and fruit next year). Lay an 8cm (3in) thick mulch of well-rotted manure or compost over the roots.
…… in the flower garden
- Add new peonies to the garden, setting the crowns no more than 2.5cm (1in) below the surface. Cut down foliage of existing plants and mulch over their roots.
- Lift, divide and plant new clumps of lily of the valley. If you don't have any, now's a good time to invite yourself round to friends who have well-established patches of it.
- Plant new clematis into good soil. Make sure the whole area is well dug over and weeded before digging a generous planting hole. All except some species prefer to be planted deeper than they were in the pot.
…… and in general
- Sort out the greenhouse for winter. Tidy away tender crops and move tender plants (pelargoniums, cacti and succulents) to a frost-free place unless you are going to provide heating. Use the greenhouse to shelter potted camellias, agapanthus and other nearly hardy plants. And plant hardy salads into the borders.
- Cast a critical eye over shrub borders. Move badly placed young shrubs to better positions. Lighten and thin down mature thickets by cutting out up to one third of their stems, trimming near the base or to a healthy side shoot.
- Decide to leaves the tops on some herbaceous plants to leave winter outlines, seeds for birds and hollow stems for overwintering insects. But do cut down any that have toppled, or are ugly.
Q and A
Q: My indoor asparagus fern has produced tiny starry white flowers. Is this unusual?
A: Although they are called 'ferns' asparagus are not true ferns and do occasionally flower. Indoors, we usually grow the more sprawling A. densiflorus Sprengeri group or A. setaceus, which is more like the 'fern' used in carnation buttonholes.
Q: I was given some mint, which turned out to be the best I'd ever tasted. Does it vary that much and what is the best variety for minted new potatoes etc?
A: There are many different mints available and they do vary. I bet yours is a particularly tasty form of spearmint (Mentha spicata), as this is my favourite for culinary uses including mint sauce and mint tea.
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