October Gardening
The air smells different and the skies look different. It’s definitely October – a good time to garden. Here are some of the things you might do in October.
1. Your lawns can be overseeded this month if you didn’t get to it in September. Have some fun and give your lawn some trail mix. A little compost, some cocoa fibre, a bit of bone meal, and even something a bit different such as President’s Choice palletized compost would be quite tasty for your lawn. Into this mix, add the best seed you can afford and rake the mixture into your lawn. The cool days are perfect for germinating grass seed and your trail mix will take your lawn through the winter and into the spring in good shape.
2. Get those spring bulbs into the ground now. Tulips can be planted up until the time the ground freezes but daffodils should be planted earlier.
3. Rake the leaves off your lawn. Leaves left on lawns cause spring problems. But don’t get rid of those leaves! Chop them and put them on your perennial beds. Chopped leaves are a treat for the soil in your garden. By May they’ll all be gone if you chop them fine enough. I use a Flowtron leaf chopper but a weed whacker in a large garbage pail will do the trick. Last year I put about 3 inches of leaves on the garden with great results.
4. Continue to transplant shrubs, bushes and trees through October.
5. Give a light pruning to roses and ramblers. Don’t cut them back too much. The fall pruning is just to reduce the effects of winter wind.
6. Lift and store your tender bulbs after the first hard frost. Dahlias and cannas can take a day or two of drying off before they are put into their winter bed.
7. Apply a Tanglefoot band on your fruit trees to catch overwintering moths. Many moths go down the trunk and into the soil for the winter. Tanglefoot will impede the progress!
Jottings contains some articles I've written for the monthly newsletter of Barrie's Garden Club and other projects. I did the newsletter for 6 years and have quite a collection of "fillers." I also write just for me. What better place to share them than on my own site. I hope you enjoy them.
All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual -- Albert Einstein
This is a collection of neat ideas and crazy tricks that I've collected from various sources. Many are amusing, and most are useful. We gardeners just love to learn neat little ways of doing our gardening jobs more effectively. My most popular talk is just that: "Hints and Tricks."
Most of the hints I've used myself or know someone who will vouch for them. All of them are fun to read and almost as much fun to do.
The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition-- Carl Sagan
This is a miscellaneous section of all the odds and sods of information I've collected and would like to share. I've found most of the information in magazines and on the internet or in the many gardening books I can't resist buying!
You'll also find some of my favourite links on the Gardening Info page.
Save the Earth. It's the only planet with chocolate!
My Garden
This section includes pictures of my small urban garden along with photos of the plants in that garden. This is a show-off section. Remember --gardeners don't take pictures of their gardens unless they look good! My garden is lovely, but I admit that it's not always as good as it looks in the pictures I choose to display!
I'm really more of a plant collector than a gardener and love the new or the unusual. Because the garden is small, I change plants often. Over the years, I've had quite a collection of the good, the bad and the ugly of garden plants.
The garden and digital cameras complement each other. Between my husband, my son-in-law and me, we've taken hundreds of pictures -- too many for a web page. But I've put up some that I like and hope that you enjoy them, too.
