OCTOBER UK
OCTOBER UK
SPECIAL OFFERS
- Gardening: Crocus Herbs, fruit, vegetables, plants and trees Suttons Thompson & Morgan
- DIY Bargains: Travis Perkins Big Bathroom Shop
- Stores: Coopers, PRC Direct, BargainFox
- PC'S & Appliances: CurrysPCWorld, PRC Direct
- Books: Home and Garden Bookshop, Gardening, Harpercollins, Waterstones
- Special: Hampers
General
- Buy and plant out spring flowering Bulbs
- Plant cabbage, celery, lettuce, spring greens, garlic and onion sets, and strawberries.
- Protect winter cauliflowers, parsley, late lettuce and broccoli from frost.
- Sow Broad Beans, cress and lettuce under cover.
- Order Tulips to plant out in November.
- Plant prepared bulbs in bowls for indoor display early next year.
- Grow winter flowering Amaryllis (Hippeastrum) indoors.
- Plant spring-flowering bulbs in borders and in containers.
- Cut down asparagus stalks to prevent asparagus beetle making a home there.
- Sow Green Manure - grazing rye and field beans.
- Make leafmould with healthy leaves, destroy any leaves that look unhealthy.
- Order Fruit Trees and bushes.
- Prepare the ground ready for planting Fruit Trees and bushes and weed around established ones.
- Harvest Tomatoes
- Pick autumn-fruiting strawberries.
- Finish picking apples and pears and store those that are unblemished.
- Apply greasebands to trees and stakes.
- Cut out and destroy diseased wood.
- Remove mulch and hoe round raspberry canes to expose overwintering pests.
- Propagate Conifers from cuttings
- Plant spring-flowering bulbs in borders and in containers.
Greenhouse
- Remove shading wash from the greenhouse if applied in the spring.
- Take cuttings of carnations, fuchsias, herbs and many shrubs and perennials to root in the greenhouse.
- Propagate pelargoniums
- Propagate Houseplants
Vegetables
- Continue sowing vegetables for spring - cabbages (spring and red), cauliflowers, corn sald, endive, lettuce, (cos and butterhead), onions, radishes, spinach and turnips..
- Plant out spring cabbages.
- Earth up celery and leeks.
- Sow green manures: winter tares, mustard, field beans and phacelia.
- Sow parsley and chervil for use in late winter and early spring.
- Divide and replant large clumps of perennial herbs.
- Harvest vegetables as they ripen. (It's especially important to harvest courgettes and beans while they are young and tender)
- Cut culinary herbs and dry or freeze to use later in the year.
Fruit
- Harvest your crop of tomatoes.
- Pick soft fruit and prune after picking.
- Prune espalier and cordon-grown apple and pear trees.
- Cut out fruited raspberry, blackberry and hybrid canes. Use their leaves to make leafmould unless they have leaf disease, in which case destroy them.
- Look out for caterpillars on fruit. Pick off any with leaf miner larvae or mildew on and be on the alert for slugworm damage. Set pheremone traps.
- Take nets off fruit trees and bushes after picking, so birds can peck off any pests.
- Prune raspberry canes at ground level after picking the last fruit.
- Harvest apples and pears and store. They can be prone to pests and diseases. Remove fallen leaves and dropped fruit to prevent disease.
- Examine apple and pear trees for signs of canker and prune out.
- Net grapes to prevent birds and wasps eating the fruit.
- Pick apples and pears as they ripen and store the excess.
- Apply or renew greasebands on the trunks of apple and pear trees.
- Remove and destroy any mummified fruit, edpecially plums.
Flowers
- Plant out spring-flowering biennials, including forget-me-nots, and wallflowers, in their flowering positions to give them time to establish before winter.
- Sow hardy annuals to be overwintered outdoors and in the greenhouse.
- Deadhead roses to encourage repeat flowering unless the roses are being grown for the colour and profusion of their hips.
- Cover summer bedding with several layers of horticultural fleece if frost is forecast to prolong the display a little longer.
- Lift tender perennials such as argyrannthemums, fuchsias and pelargoniums befor the first frost to be overwintered under cover.
- Deadhead regularly to encourage more flowers unless you want seeds or hips to form.
- Prune deciduous autumn-flowering shrubs over three years old as they finish flowering.
Ponds
- Tidy the pond by deadheading marginal aquatic plants and removing excess growth from submerged oxygenating plants.
- Top up garden pools to replace water lost through evaporation.
- Ensure the surface of ponds are kept clean by removing floating weeds and any slime algae.
- Clean out the pond if necessary.
- If present scoop out and collect mats of tiny-leaved duck weed and twirl hair-like blanket weed from the surface with a stick or garden cane.
- Put them in a heap on the edge of the pond overnight so any aquatic creatures can crawl back into the water. The next day add the heap to the compost heap.
- Put new aquatic plants in the pond either in the soil at the bottom or using special aquatic baskets.
- Oxygenate the pond with plants like Mash marigolds and Callitriche.
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(c) Compiled by B V & T M Wood. All rights reserved. Disclaimer