The spooky season has just landed, but there is no need to fear any gardening jobs this month because the Barnsdale Gardens team is here to help with their tips! A healthy garden is always a busy garden no matter what time of year it is, and October is no exception. Take a look below to see what you could be doing in your garden in the next few weeks!
The Barnsdale team, who are based in the gardens in Rutland, offer these tips for October below…
Collect sweet pea seeds
After a superb flowering season of sweet peas and having collected the seed from early-flowering varieties, now is the time to do the same with the later flowering ones. You can collect the pods and then remove the seeds in the comfort of your greenhouse. These late flowering varieties can be stored in paper bags to be sown in February.
Harvest potatoes
When lifting spuds it is best to separate them out into perfects and imperfects, so that only those that have no damage are stored and damaged ones can be eaten first. Clean each tuber as they are lifted then leave the skins to dry before bagging them up into strong paper bags and storing them in a cool, dry place.
Hold back with your secateurs
The Barnsdale team like to leave flower heads and some foliage on particular perennials at the end of the season when their flowers or foliage have passed their best.
There are a certain number which can have a second coming. Plants such as Eryngium, Echinops, Rudbeckia, Echinacea, Verbena bonariensis, Helenium, Thalictrum, Veronicastrum, Sanguisorba, Sedum, Agapanthus, Clematis, to name but a few. All these have interesting heads or seeds that look great covered in autumnal cobwebs and dew, and then the frost. So don’t get too excitable with your secateurs and leave some of these to add to the winter interest in your garden.
Protect onions
You wait all summer for rain and then just as you’re trying to dry your onions it appears! The team stack theirs on trays and then manufacture something that they can pop on the hotbox cloche over the top. The onions don’t then get rained on and still continue to dry by being exposed to the breeze.
Storing pumpkins
Try cutting the foliage back at the end of August, in order to allow lots of light and air into the pumpkins, to harden and dry the skins. Then you can bring them into a frost free greenhouse until they are ready to be used.
Harvest tomatoes To ripen
As the light level drops the speed of tomato ripening will slow down dramatically, so before it turns too cold you need to get them inside. Harvest them, wrap them individually in a piece of tissue paper or newspaper and pop in a drawer. If you don’t have the time to individually wrap them, then pop them in a cool drawer and cover with a sheet of newspaper. Check regularly and take out those that have ripened enough.
Image credit: Steve Hamilton
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