Gardening – Oct 23

Tom Strowlger

@garden_with_tom

I enjoy gardening in October, we can still enjoy warmth from the sun on ever shortening days. It’s a month where we gardeners can be very productive whilst also enjoying the floral overhang of late summertime. The garden now has a truly magical feel about it, with its damper mornings and golden colours. This month has many important gardening jobs for us ranging from clearing leaves, weeding, composting and most excitingly planting spring bulbs. 

The garden will always look like it needs more floral colour this month, so by planting cyclamen, primroses and winter pansies into beds, borders, tubs and pots we can give it a welcome colourful boost. The bright pinks and whites of cyclamen look like beacons of bright light on darker Autumnal days, and Primroses and hardy Pansies do the same with yellow, red, blue and white colours.

The most exciting job of this month is planting spring bulbs. We can design and plant our very own spring flower displays. The range of spring bulbs is exciting to us gardeners, it includes snowdrops, muscari, daffodil, hyacinth, crocus, allium and tulip bulbs. They are all ready to bring our gardens alive again from late winter into springtime.  We must make sure borders, beds, planters, tubs and pots have well-drained soil with part to full sun to get the best floral results from our bulbs. 

The general rule of thumb for planting spring bulbs is to measure the depth of the bulbs from top to bottom and plant them in holes three times their depth. This helps bulbs to establish their roots and be protected from frosts and hungry wildlife. We can plant a regimental row of beautiful tulips or randomly scatter daffodil bulbs into borders and beds. That’s the joy of bulb planting; we pick what we want to grow and display, but whatever our preference we will need a reliable bulb planting tool, trowel and spade.  

The sight of falling orange to brown leaves from branches brings a warm cosy feeling, however the leaves accumulate in every nook and cranny of our gardens so we must tidy the leaves up before they become set in for the rest of autumn and winter. The falling leaves will naturally create heaps and starve those areas of vital air and light, we should rake leaves off the lawn and sweep them off paths and heap them up onto a compost. 

This is the perfect time of year to create a compost, the garden is full of green and brown waste that can be heaped up into an unused part of the garden. The art of composting is to keep turning the compost heap with a garden fork to ensure air gets to the contents. The decomposition of the garden waste is slower in the colder months and quicker in the warmer months. It will create our own supply of compost and mulch to use next year.  

Autumn creates a fresh smell with every spade full of moist soil and touch of browning leaves. It feels like Mother Nature has started her yearly freshening up our gardens and ensuring the green spaces are deep cleaned ready for next s pring. We can do our gardening jobs alongside Mother Nature at this cosy time of year, as nothing quite compares to working hard in the garden and then going indoors for a hot drink and treat. 

Please do follow me on Instagram @garden_with_tom for more seasonal gardening advice and tips.