October Gardening

Hi fellow clueless gardeners!

I didn't post anything last week because it hasn't been a very visually interesting few weeks in the garden, but just in case you're following along with me, I thought I'd give you an update on what I've been doing in the garden this October.

Most exciting news first - the peas that I planted to overwinter at the end of September have sprouted!

I didn't expect them to - it feels like entirely the wrong time of year for seeds to be growing - but I have read on a few sites that you can grow peas over winter to be ready in March/April, during the hungry gap. I'd like to be able to extend my growing season as muh as possible so, skeptical as I am, I decided to give it a go. The variety I see associated with overwintering most often is one called 'Meteor' - I bought a pack of those and sewed about 20 of them straight into the ground in my pea bed. We'll see how they get on once the frosts start.

I've also planted some garlic, and some spring flowering bulbs (daffodils and snowdrops). I planted them in different areas - the garlic going into the border where the courgettes had been, and the flowering bulbs going into the area where my dog keeps digging and nothing seems to grow well. I've had a lot of luck with bulbs in the past and they've always seemed to grow well even in poorer soil so I'm hoping they will do well here, and the dog will stop digging quite so much. That area is currently really swampy due to all the rain we've had and the dog's churning,  but some grass is starting to take there so I'm hopeful it'll recover a little over winter.

I plant both my bulbs and my garlic in much the same way (although with garlic I'm mindful of spacing and tend to plant in rows, whereas with the flowers I chuck them on the ground and plant them where they fall for a more natural effect). I stab a butter knife into the ground (I keep one specifically for this, it's my take on an athame/boline), wiggle it about a bit, then drop the bulb in the resulting hole  and cover it up again. I have very loose, sandy soil though, so it's very easy for me. If yours is more clay or chalk based, or is very compacted, you may need to dig with a hand fork or similar to create a loose pocket of earth about twice the size of your bulb or clove so it can divide and spread its roots out easily.

This month has also been all about cleaning up the garden for winter. By that, as you know, I don't mean picking up every bit of leaf litter and clearing out every stalk. Mother Nature needs some of that to shelter beneficial insects, feed the birds, and nourish the soil. But it does mean inspecting the fruit trees for damaged branches once they've been harvested, and giving them a prune if needed to stop frost damage or disease setting in over winter. I also removed the diseased leaves of my courgette plants and disposed of them to keep them from infecting my compost, and over the next few days I'll be giving all of my tools a really thorough clean, first with soap and water, then with vinegar/alcohol so that they're ready to go in spring when I'll be working with delicate younger plants.

One of the fun things to do in the garden at the moment is save some seeds. The birds have already started this off for me with my marigolds

I'm not sure the picture shows it very clearly, but the dead seed heads have been pulled open and there are heaps of marigold seeds on the ground.

I'm not actually sure how the flowers from these seeds will turn out because I think they were F1 hybrids. The seeds are unlikely to produce the same flowers as their parent plant, but I've saved some seeds anyway out of curiosity. 

It was super easy to do, I just waited until the dead heads were dry, peeled back the outer layers of the plant heads and found all the seeds inside. There were so many just from a few heads that I'm also going to try experimenting with hanging the dead heads upside down from my tree branches over winter to see if the birds eating at them and wind battering them will help spread the seeds in a low effort, natural way.

I let the seeds dry out on a sheet of paper on a sunny windowsill, then popped them into an envelope ready for spring. If even a quarter of them germinate and flower we will have some very happy bees next summer.

I've still got to plant my shallots (and fast because we are getting very late in the season, but I've been lazy), which I'll do in a similar way to the garlic, but other than that I think the garden is mostly quietening down for winter now. All of our first year crops have been harvested  (and mostly eaten, although we are still working our way through the windowsill-ripened tomatoes), and beds have been cleared if annuals and mulched to nourish the soil ready for planting next year. I'll be "harvesting" some yew, ivy, and holly from my garden edges for our yuletide wreath in December,  but most of the garden work now is taking place in my head and on the page as I plan next year's growing season.

One ongoing piece of maintenence though is the new raised bed. Because I'm attempting to fill it with home made compost, in a sort of lassiez-faire lasagna bed, I will need to keep topping it up throughout the winter. I'm adding (well covered) kitchen scraps, shredded newspapers, cut grass, twigs, dead annual plants (that aren't diseased), toilet rolls tubes that have been cut into fine strips,

And the dead heads of the marigolds that I had removed seed from, as well as sweet chestnuts shells from my latest foraging session in the woods.

I was also lucky enough to be able to swap a bag of windfall apples for a bag of well rotted horse manure. Hopefully that'll be arriving in the next few days so I can add it to my beds and mulch the fruit trees with it.

When it arrives I will tell you how it came about. I never thought I'd be happy to receive a bag of shit, but that's what gardening does to a person.