October 2024 - Jobs to do this month

[MereDintofPandiculation]

@daisychain01 said “I plan to dig my dahlia up in early Oct. I've got some masking tape that I will use when I cut the stems down to just one main one, hose off the soil and label them in terms of colour, type and height.”

I’m planning to go through all my seed packets and list what I have, in preparation for buying new seeds this year.

i’ll also bring in all the remaining tomatoes from the greenhouse to ripen in the house, clear out the cucumbers, and use the space to move in plants that need overwintering under cover.

I'm going to be making the most of the rain and reseeding my lawn! Also got the last of the bulbs to put in.

Just reminding everyone it’s now October. What jobs need doing this month?

This month I need to jet wash the paving before the moss goes slimy, divide the strawberry plants, pick up leaves most days from the front garden (and hope it's just leaves!).
Keep deadheading the roses and cut back the irises as they go brown.

I've just come in from the damp!

Have had a busy day, which was quite a bonus as it was forecast to rain today day. It's held off all day so far.... very heavy cloud cover, which is quite helpful as it keeps the temps up this time of year.

I tidied the bonfire pile that was looking like the leaning tower of Pisa!

planted up the cyclamen in the stone urns and they look stunning. Will brighten the patio through the autumn, along with another tub of mixed heather. In the potting process, mulching with dead leaves gives the soil a boost of acidity, which heather and cyclamen enjoy.

removed the geranium from the urn and I've trimmed them all back (removed leaves, flowers and buds), ready to overwinter them, I've got newspaper and a small high sided tray ready to store them in, Apparently they will stay dormant and come back in Spring, even though mine look like green sticks . That'll be interesting, oh well they've got two chances as they say.

I salvaged some summer fuschia and thought I'd try over wintering them too. They look like they've gone from being tender stems to a nice bit of woodiness, so I'm hoping they'll last, as they've been gorgeous all through June, July and Aug, put them into well mulched compost in a trough 🤞

chopped back a rather wild penstamon so it isn't flopping all over the grass.

Re my dahlia - I looked at them today... and they looked back at me as if to say... we're not ready to go to sleep yet - they're adding such a lovely splash of colour in the gloom of the mist and mizzle - so they won that one, and I'll leave it until next weekend which is looking reasonably mild still. I don't want to wait until the frost, because I'll end up not doing it at all, especially as it's coming into leaf raking season, which takes up 2-3 weekends solid (late Oct early Nov).

My little rusty robin suddenly appeared and enjoyed a handful of mealy worms.

I discovered Wet and Forget on here @InMySpareTime it takes away the ongoing toil out of keeping the slimeyness at bay (we have stone flags at the front door which are lethal by Nov/Dec).

Once you've done your jet washing, its then just a maintenance job to spray on the Wet and Forget. No scrubbing needed, which to me is sheer bliss

@Icakethereforeiam. Ive brought your post over from the other thread:

I'm thinking of trying to overwinter some geraniums (regals). I don't have a greenhouse, my porch is tiny and I don't have room to keep them as houseplants so completely unearthing them, wrapping them in paper and keeping them in the loft with my dahlia tubers would probably be the best option but I think I lack the courage. So, I think I'm going to cut them right down, put them in smaller plastic pots and find room in the porch. It's unheated but shouldn't freeze and they'll get some daylight.
Fibrex sent me some plants labelled as what I'd ordered but, when they flowered, were clearly not the right varieties. One is just...yuck! I might try that one in the loft just to see what happens. It'll be no great loss.

Well, if your geranium fail, so will mine so let's just give it a try. I'll take a photo of how I've prepared mine for dormancy, as you need to snip off all the leaves and flowers inc buds so they don't rot and also anything that looks like it will harbour disease while they're tucked up. I'm going to do the same as you, put them in crates and store them in the cool/dark with my dahlia tubers, once they're out of the ground, washed and trimmed.

they recommend removing the geranium from pots, lightly dusting off/crumbling away any loose compost and storing them with bare roots in newspaper. It reduces the risk of rotting.

My jobs for this month are to sow a clover lawn (turf laid last year was ruined by dogs), lay stepping stone paths, plant bulbs, build a habitat wall with some toot laying around the garden to fill a gap in a fence, move some plants, sow some hardy annuals, and put a new wire support up for a grapevine (last one snapped under the weight 😩). I am a bit overwhelmed tbh. Everything takes 10x longer than I think it will.

that sounds like a very ambitious October to-do list! Pace yourself, especially the paving slabs, love the idea of a habitat wall. We built a bug hotel out of left over materials like bamboo cane cut into small tubes, layers of tiles, chicken wire ts of twigs. Unfortunately we ended up dismantling it because it was the space where the greenhouse needed to be.

Here is the photo of geraniums, some trimmed and with their roots lighted dusted of compost, ready for storage. There are some that still need to have their leaves clipped off, just to show the difference.

@daisychain01 thank you for the encouragement perhaps I am being too ambitious! Your habitat wall sounds great - I have lots of clay roof tiles and logs I plan to use, plus lots of twigs.

I keep our Pelargoniums in the porch. It’s usually frost free, though one year I washed the floor on a cold morning and instantly turned it into an ice rink. The Pelargoniums just keep flowering.

they are a bit bomb-proof really.

Definitely not too ambitious @Turkeyhen theres plenty of October left! Hopefully the weather will behave where you are. I'm not seeing any extreme weather yet, but I'm in the south west, so Oct and Nov tend to be cloudy and mild.

Two regals that I bought last year (3 for £10 from a market) survived outside in the pot I'd put them in. One succumbed. The winter was quite mild but we definitely had some frosts.
I'm giving them all a bit longer outside. Between the weather this year and the molluscs I want to enjoy my dahlias as long as i can.

So far: planting out apricot foxgloves amd ferns, lifting and dividing geraniums, moving around self seeded things (euphorbia, cerinthe, jacobs ladder) and weeding. I clear a wee bit in autumn but leave things like fennel that look lovely all frosted (if we get some frost!) Also put wires on my house to train my alfred carriere rose. Oh, and bulb planting!
I have some globe artichokes in biggish pots (grew from seed but were sooo slow) and salvias. I can't decide whether to plant them out or keep undercover and plant in spring. Clay soil and if we have another washout winter I'm worried they won't make it...

@napody I have the same dilemma - salvia (Amistad) in a large pot waiting to go in the ground. I'm inclined to leave it until spring.

I leave till spring because I want the plant to be in active growth before the slugs find it

Good shout- decision made!

I bought 3 packs of cyclamen which were reduced in the supermarket as they needed a water. Plenty of nice buds coming up.

Left them out overnight and the rain has given them a nice boost. I'll get them planted up tomorrow.

Judging by the overnight temps and the dry sunny forecast, I'm thinking this weekend will be when I dig up my dahlia and pack them away for winter. The space where they've been growing will look strange for a while, but I'll be piling leaves on there over the next couple of weeks to recondition the soil. Poor robins will feel a bit homeless as they're often grubbing around in the dahlia patch, but they'll soon adapt with all the other shrubs to shelter under.

We have a new leaf store being build, it's basically an extension to the compost bins, but it will give me a lot more space to keep any residual leaves that aren't piled onto the border. They'll rot down over the winter with all the rain, frost and snow. Ah the circle of life in the garden.

Today's the kind of day when people can't believe me when I say I'm as busy in autumn as I am in Spring

Dahlias - dig up, clean and store
Bulbs - 200 crocus, 30 Tulip, plus assorted ones that I put in a half barrel because I didn't label them.
Start collecting leaves - last two weeks in Oct will be the peak time
Autumn clean of greenhouse and hard standing outside
More cyclamen to plant in the bed outside the kitchen window
Clean, disinfect and store spare plastic pots, trays and seedling cells for reuse
Prune back the climbing roses
Clear away the hanging baskets and store the baskets
Clean the tubs ready for bulb and heather planting
Light prune of overgrown honeysuckle

I believe you! Autumn is even busier than spring if anything. Did you see Monty Don's leaf mould bin on GW last night? Sounds similar to yours.

I have bought a lot of perennials in the last few weeks but I'm not ready to plant them out yet. They have all been potted on for now and perhaps I will wait until spring to plant them out as larger plants. I had such problems with slugs and snails this year that I don't want to risk planting small plants in the ground. I don't have a greenhouse or cold frame though, so I'm not sure how well they will do in pots over winter without some protection.

My to do list is absolutely crazy. No dahlias to dig up though - the slugs ate them all this year before they had a chance to get going, so I have given up on trying to grow them.

@Turkeyhen Good idea to keep your perennials in pots and protected from slugs - they will strengthen over the coming months ready to position in your border around April if the ground isnt too cold or waterlogged. Leaf mulch is a great way to increase irrigation and make the soil structure more even and airated . Pesky dang Slugs won't die down completely if we have a mild wet winter. They munch away as long as its over 5C unlike snail that become inactive.

Will check out Monty's leaf compost bin thank you - I pick up GW feeds from YouTube- love a bit of Monty! Hoping ours will be made up on Tuesday ready for the Great Leaf Dump about to beset us

I believe you! Autumn is even busier than spring if anything Always strikes me as mad that council garden bin collections stop in November. Demonstrates, I think, that most people use them for lawn mowings

I have my new secateurs <hurrah> thanks to recommendations on the thread I put up .

I have a climbing jasmine -no idea what variety but the flowers are pale yellow , not white or bright yellow - just finished flowering .
And a hop , I wanted a climber that wasn;t Passionflower (they die) or honeysuckle (don;t like it ) . It grew hops this year !

Both need cut back .

Beautiful Virginia Creeper/ Boston Ivy is red but losing leaves . The one in the pot will be cut back and re potted into something bigger . The other one needs something to climb on