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.”

@70isaLimitNotaTarget is your jasmine 'Clotted Cream'? I have one of those and it goes absolutely nuts every year even if it's hacked back to the base 😂

That does ring a bell now you say the name .

It's got nice strong stems and glossy dark green leaves ,
The smell of the flowers is heavenly

I've got a pink flowering jasmine which has much smaller leaves and tiny flowers , it's like a hedge , we cut it back with the hedgecutter to control it

Yesterday's weather couldn't be more different to what it is today. It was bright blue skies, mild and lovely golden sunshine, Today I'm sitting here listening to the rain lashing down and the wind is howling.

So I took advantage of yesterday to sort out my dahlia tubers, which I'd dug up last weekend and left them in the wheelbarrow ready for washing and trimming.

it took about an hour to hose them off, which wasn't too bad. My pair of robins enjoyed the spray of water and got a nice handful of mealy worms for coming over to see me.

next job today will be dividing and trimming off most of the long stems and dangly roots.

i noticed a GW video in my YouTube feed, all about dahlia tuber care in the Autumn and Alan Titchmarsh said you don't really need to wash off the tubers, just brush off the loose soil. Well, he may be correct but I've also seen a video where they said the opposite, that leaving soil on the tuber can increase risk of rot over the storage period. So I take that view as I'd rather reduce the risk and get nice healthy tubers in the new season.

photos of before and after cleaning the tubers.

today I'll be out in the greenhouse doing the trimming and separating, then putting into ventilated crates, ready for winter storage. Photos to come...

Very good Autumn gardening weekend, with sunshine and blue skies both days. Even though it's just dark now at 5.23pm, I got quite a lot of tidying up done.

at least 12 trailers' worth of leaves blown into piles on our front verge which takes us quite a few days to clear away (3 cherry, 3 red oak, 2 birch and a maple). They fill up the border and we've now had a leaf mould store added to the end of the compost heap so there's space for whatever doesn't go on the border. They'll rot down over the winter and by April I can mulch the clematis and honeysuckle to keep them from drying out over summer.

I haven't had time to do the dahlia yet, but they're fine on the staging in the greenhouse drying out. I've also got to work out where to put the 'spent' grow bags now the tomatoes are done for this year... I noticed the chilli plants are still doing well so I might go out there tomorrow and put them into some oversize pots to see if I can keep them going over the winter.

how have all you gardeners out there been doing? Have you found time this weekend to do any October jobs? Only 4 more days and we'll be doing a November Gardening Jobs thread - for me it means bulbs, bulbs and yet more bulbs! And tidy up my patio pots - I haven't had the time in October!

We now have two pairs of robins. My mealyworm store is being rapidly depleted which is no bad thing. They are so entertaining (they probably think us mere mortals are too).