Jobs to do in the Garden in October
With shorter days and colder temperatures fully kicking in now is the time to properly prepare plants, lawns and crops for the harsher conditions of autumn and winter. Think about wrapping plants with fleece, insulating your greenhouse and topping up lawns with a winter feed to keep them healthy until the new year.
– Use frost fleece to protect half-hardy plants from cold temperatures.
– Wrap glue bands around the trunks of apple, pear, cherry, and plum trees to protect them from moths, ants, earwigs, and other crawling insects.
– As night temperatures drop, insulate your greenhouse glass with bubble wrap to help protect your plants.
– Before bringing any plants into the greenhouse for winter, thoroughly inspect them for pests or diseases.
– Give your greenhouse a deep clean and disinfect it to remove debris that harbours pests and diseases, allowing more light to plants over the winter.
– To increase your harvest, use cloches to cover salad plants.
– Trim shrub roses now to prevent wind rock damage. Prune rambling and climbing roses once flowering has ended, and loosely tie stems to supports using plant ties. Clean up any fallen leaves to prevent diseases like black spot.
– Cut back the fruited stems of blackberries and autumn raspberries, leaving only green canes for next year. Tie new canes to a trellis to protect them over winter.
– Consider starting a compost bin. Add fruit and vegetable scraps, crushed eggshells, grass cuttings, old plant material, weeds, and leafy debris (ensuring they are disease-free). Mix in brown materials such as hedge trimmings, shredded paper, dead woody stems, and straw to prevent sogginess. Use a compost activator to enhance your homemade compost’s quality and readiness.
– Apply an autumn/winter feed to your lawn to help revive it after heavy use in summer.
– Cover your pond with netting to prevent leaves from falling in. Left unchecked, leaves can rot, creating ammonia sludge that can harm wildlife and make the water stagnant and acidic.
– While the soil is still slightly warm, divide or lift any herbaceous perennials or deciduous shrubs that may be overcrowded.
– It’s time to plant spring-flowering bulbs like alliums, begonias, crocuses, daffodils, dahlias, freesias, gladioli, iris reticulata, lilies, muscari, snowdrops, and tulips.
– Now is the time to plant hedges, evergreen shrubs, and conifers, or move them while there is still warmth in the soil.
– Apply a winter tree wash to trunks and branches of all fruit trees and bushes, as well as dormant vines under glass, to prevent infestations when the growing season begins.
– For a splash of colour on gloomy days, plant cyclamen, winter heather, hellebore, winter pansy, and primrose in pots for winter blooms.
– Set up your greenhouse tube heater now in preparation for early frosts.
– Sow hardy broad beans and peas outdoors now for an early crop next year.
– Take hardwood cuttings from deciduous shrubs, herbaceous plants, and ornamental trees.
– Clean out and disinfect bird feeders and bird boxes, then refill them with quality bird food.
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For over 30 years Elixir Garden Supplies have been providing gardeners with all the essentials they need to achieve growing.
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