The
Smoke gets in your eyes By Alex Webster
Dartmouth Gardener
“Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eve run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage tree, And fill all fruit ripeness to the core”
o wrote Keats of the waning of the year, a time to reflect and enjoy the fruits of one’s labour and sample the fruits of other’s labour at the Dartmouth Food Festival. Though October is one of the less hectic months on the
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vegetable plot, there is still much to do before the worst of the winter weather sets in and time usefully spent now will save much work later. Where and when you can, tidy your vegetable plot,
removing any rubbish - the less left lying around the fewer hiding places for slugs and snails - if possible, burn any woody waste. Any green waste should go to the compost heap - speed the process by chopping it up with shears. Think carefully where you intend to plant your runner beans and start a bean trench, digging it out and lining it with newspapers (six sheets thick) before adding compostable kitchen waste, lawn clippings etc. Leave the trench open and add more waste as it becomes available, such as fallen leaves and hedge trimmings but don’t use too much woody matter as this is slow to break down. Cover the trench with soil in the latter part of the winter. This will yield good results in the following year as the beans tap into this enriched matter. As the ground becomes vacant, start digging it over and should your ground be heavy clay, just leave the clods unbroken - the freezing and thawing action of the cold weather will break them up, giving you a fine tilth to work with in the spring. spread rotted manure or compost over the surface. The worms will drag this down into the ground. some experts advise that October and November are
good months for serious digging and the deeper the fertile soil the better the crops can be. Double digging (i.e. removing a trench and breaking up the sub-soil with a fork followed by the addition of a good layer of manure or compost) with a topping of earth from the next trench can greatly improve your soil. Others follow the practise of ‘no-dig gardening’ where
compost is spread on the soil surface each year as they feel most vegetables only root a few inches into the soil. Depending on your site and soil it can be well worth trying out both methods and finding what works best for you. To generate an early crop next year, over-wintered broad beans can go in from the middle of the month. Although hardy, they don’t like sitting in water - if you have heavy soil this could be a gamble and you may prefer to just sow early on next year. You can also sow beet leaf spinach early in October but choose a perpetual or winter variety. start planting out garlic this month but generally it’s a November job but this may be prudent to do now in case the weather turns nasty. October is also the last chance for planting out Japanese onion sets. As they are hardy and require only short- daylight hours, they’ll bulb up about a month earlier next year than normal onions. They don’t, however, store as well so don’t plant too many. Protect them with a cloche or netting until they’re well established - pigeons love pulling them from the ground and throwing them to the side. It is also a good time to prune your blackcurrants,
redcurrants and gooseberries. You’ll need to cut back raspberries and blackberries and it’s a good time to plant out new stock. Prepare the ground well and fork in plenty of bone meal per plant at the base of each planting hole. This slowly releases nitrogen and helps strengthen the plants in their early days.
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GARDENING
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