The
Dartmouth Gardener
Preparing for Autumn
As the Dartmouth clock ticks two minutes past Regatta, thoughts turn to the winter ahead but hang on a moment, the weather in September is often warm and sunny with all the hope of an Indian summer. So what on earth am I talking about, it’s just that many gardeners tend to view September as the end or the beginning of the gardening calendar. As the light starts to fade, it fills the surrounding countryside with the bronze aura of autumn. The air above the plot becomes filled with flying insects pursued by swallows; their acrobatic turns and twists out shine any aerial display by the Red Arrows.
Not only is it a time of diminishing light and decay as the leaves begin to turn, it is also a time to celebrate all things great about the garden, namely bountiful harvest. The last of the potatoes need be dug and stored as do any onions and shallots, leeks will be left in the ground and
JOBS FOR SEPTEMBER
• Continue to sow vegetables for over wintering, to mature next spring, including: turnip, spinach, winter lettuce, Oriental vegetables and seed of over wintering onions - both salad and bulb types.
• Plant over wintering onion sets.
• Spring cabbages that were sown last month
are probably ready for planting out. Cover them with horticultural fleece or netting to stop the pigeons shredding them.
General care
• When asparagus foliage turns brown, it is time to cut it down. Take care of the spines, and give the plants a good mulch afterwards.
• Irregular watering can lead to problems with blossom
end rot in tomatoes, splitting of root vegetables and flower abortion in runner beans. Help prevent this by watering well during dry spells.
• Keep up too with watering winter squash and pumpkins - this will prevent their growth from being checked. Use stored rainwater wherever possible.
By Alex Webster
harvested as required by the cook. In the flower garden the late summer blooms fill the eye with an abundance of colour; the dahlia’s in their many guises out shine the brightest fire work display. I was talking to a fellow gardener just recently and they commented that they prefer not to grow dahlias because they signposted the end of summer.
Back in March I photographed the allotment as a record of its progress, I’m always amazed by the fact that a few packets of seeds can produce an abundance of blooms.
Soon many of these will fade and set seed to begin the whole process again; this year we have saved seed from many of the hard and half-hardy annuals, such as poppies, cornflowers and calendula. If left to their own devices these will drop seeds all over the plot and will have to be hoed out next spring. Seed saving is best carried out on
a dry sunny day when the moisture content in the seed head is at its
lowest. Poppies are among the very easiest of flowers to gather seeds from. There are many varieties of annual and perennial poppy and the seed gathering method is similar to all.
Allow the poppy to flower and do not deadhead. The petals will drop and a seedpod will develop at the end of the stem. When the seeds have matured the capsule will brown and make a series of small openings just beneath the crown cap of the pod.
Gather the pods after they have browned and made seed dispersal openings. Place the dry heads in a long paper bag with the bottom of the stems protruding, tie the bag around the stems and leave a loop to hang the bag in an airy shed or room. Afterwards the pods may be turned upside down and the seeds will then fall from it. A few taps on the pod will help to remove all the seeds from within.
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