Whether you are lucky enough to have an allotment or just a small vegetable plot, time spent on clearing and preparing your beds now will pay dividends next year. Make the most of the autumn sunshine to get compost dug into bare beds and you’ll have saved yourself hours of work on those chilly Spring days.
Jobs for October: • Make sure that plenty of sun can get to your pumpkins in order to get them ripe in time for Halloween.
•
Leaving dead seed heads etc. on your fl ower borders
will provide valuable
food and shelter for garden wildlife over winter, as will leaving an undisturbed log or two. Build a rough shelter in a quiet corner and you might get a hedgehog move in!
•
If you get lots of fallen leaves on your plot don’t waste them. Make a bin from chicken wire attached to 4 posts. Fill this with the leaves and they will rot down to give you sweet-smelling black leaf mould in one to two years time.
• As the days get shorter and the weather gets cooler the focus on your vegetable plot starts to turn from growing and harvesting, into clearing and tidying.
You may think that it’s all too late in the year to be planting, but there are some crops that defi nitely need to be thought of now, and others that, given an early start now, will
50
The benefi ts of garlic... benefi t next Spring.
If you’ve not grown garlic before, then do try it - it’s easy to grow, can help protect other crops from pests, and with just a small amount of space you can grow enough to see you through the whole year!
Now is defi nitely the time to order your garlic bulbs and they can be planted anytime between now and Christmas, but preferably not when the soil is too wet.
Rather than
planting all the garlic together it may pay to spread it around the plot as the strong smell can be an aid in keeping pests such as the carrot root fl y away from other crops.
Each garlic bulb should be separated into individual cloves and the cloves are planted with the pointed end uppermost, just below the surface, leaving about 4 inches between each one. They like well drained soil and you’ll be pleasantly surprised in the long winter days to see their green tips creeping upwards. Each clove matures into a whole new bulb.
The traditional time for harvesting garlic is in June, on the longest day of the year and if properly dried and stored it will keep right through the winter.
Would you like some fresh, tender, young, peas early in the Spring next year? Look out for hardy varieties that can be planted now. They can be overwintered and are able to withstand the frosts, though protection with a cloche will be appreciated.
To advertise in thewire t. 07720 429 613 e.
the.wire@btinternet.com
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