Gardening Tasks in Autumn

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The beautiful autumn colours combined with ripened fruit and vegetables can make it a highlight of the gardening year.

Just like the rest of the year, though, there are plenty of essential tasks to do in the garden.

Lawns

• Give your lawn a phosphate fertiliser in September or October for a healthy root system to enable it to survive the winter in good condition.
• Scarify the lawn, ie give it a thorough raking to remove debris, dead grass, etc.
• Spike the lawn to improve aeration and drainage. You can do it either with a special tool or a garden fork.
• Rake leaves off lawns where they will turn the grass yellow. Also, if you have a garden pond, clear fallen leaves out it because they will rot down and pollute it. Better still, think ahead and put netting over the pond before leaves start falling and all you will have to do is take the netting off carefully when trees and shrubs are bare and you can gather them all together in one go.

Flower & Vegetable Beds

• As your flower and vegetable beds are emptied of plants, spread a good thick layer of organic compost over the soil, preferably from your own compost heap. It will put fibre back into the ground as well as beneficial nutrients which won't be washed out of the soil in winter rains as they would be if you used a fertiliser at this time.
• Once, you have manured it, dig over your vegetable garden and then the frost will break down large clumps of soil leaving you with a fine tilth come spring.
• Dig in annual weeds but take out perennial weeds like dandelions which have long tap roots. Leave in a tiny piece of root and the dandelion will be back next year.

Shrubs and Trees

• Transplant any deciduous trees or shrubs you want to move once they have lost all their leaves and stopped growth for the year.
• Plant new shrubs and trees before the first frosts.
• Autumn prune roses so they are not damaged by winter gales. This is not the same as the full spring pruning but rather just to remove dead flowers and hips and to shorten stems.
• Remove old branches that flowered this year from shrubs that produce their flowering branches the year before they flower.
• Feed your shrubs and hardy perennials to promote buds for flowers next year.

Plant Protection

• Sow tender herbs in pots in the greenhouse (or on the kitchen windowsill).
• Begonias: cut the plant off about 6 inches above ground level then dig up and clean the tubers. Let them dry before storing them in a dark frost free place after dusting them with a fungicide.
• Cover the crown of Gunnera Manicata by folding over one of its leaves, then put a a layer of leaves, straw, bracken or similar protection over it. Do the same with the crowns of other vulnerable plants or bulbs.
• Screen young shrubs from bitter winds. Move tender plants into the greenhouse or indoors.

Fruit and Vegetables

• Lift and store beetroots, carrots and turnips. Clean the soil off them and cut off all foliage (put it on your compost heap), then store them in a wooden box. Put a layer of peat or peat substitute in the bottom then a layer of vegetables, a layer of peat and so on until the box is full. Keep the box in a frostfree and dry place.
• Pick apples and use them in pies, crumbles, etc and put them in the freezer. If you can't face all that cooking, make them into apple juice and freeze it in sensibly sized packages - a good tip: freeze apple juice and similar produce in plastic bags held in a flat containers when they first go in the freezer. When the juice is frozen you can remove the containers and the bags are easier to slip into odd corners if space is at a premium.
• Lift potatoes, clean them and store them in paper or hessian sacks to exclude light and keep in a frostfree dry environment. Do not use plastic bags or the potatoes will go rotten.
• Ripen tomatoes in a warm place or make green tomato chutney with them.

Plan Ahead

• Order seeds, plants and bulbs for spring sowing and planting.
• Plant bulbs for spring flowers like daffodils, hyacinth and muscari.

See recipes for using autumn fruit and vegetables.

Copyright © 2003 - Carol Fisher.
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