Autumnal Gardening

Autumn is in full swing now - the trees are dropping their cloaks of leaves ready to stand bare in the cold winter winds, the nights are drawing in, Jack Frost is making his early morning rounds here and there, and the frantic harvesting on the plot is nearly over for another year. For many people the garden is put out of mind as they prepare for the impending rush of Christmas, but for those hardy souls who want some fresh air, there's still jobs on offer in the garden at this time of year.

One of the major autumnal tasks is that of tidying up. The first frosts will have put paid to many plants and these can be gathered up and composted. If you find any diseased material don't put that on the compost heap as the heap may not get hot enough to destroy the virus or fungi responsible. Instead dry it out and save it for a bonfire - with a bit of careful planning you could pop it on a bonfire for Halloween or Guy Fawkes Night celebrations and kill two birds with one stone. If you do have a bonfire please remember to either thoroughly check the pile beforehand or, better still, store the material in one place and then move it to the site of the fire when you need it. A pile of burnable material looks like a great winter home for many beneficial animals and insects, so the last thing you want to do is incinerate them accidentally!

Harvesting

Out on the veg plots cutting down the Jerusalem artichoke stalks will keep you amused for a few minutes. The frosts will have withered their foliage, but this is just nature's sign that the tubers underground will now be ready to harvest. Unlike potatoes, don't dig them all up in one go and try to store them inside. It's much easier, and they last far longer, if dug up as required. If you've got really heavy soil that is difficult to dig in winter you could try digging them up now and then reburying them in pots of soil and sand mixed together - effectively small clamps.

Jerusalem artichokes aren't the only veggies that will still be providing for you now that the winter is coming. Brussel sprouts taste far nicer after the first frosts have touched them and the other hardy brassicas such as kale will be coming into their own. Spinach and spinach beet will also be providing leafy greens, and there should be some roots such as swedes and turnips available. Leeks, those trusty winter alliums, will stand up to most things the British weather can throw at them and you can look forward to leek and potato soup to warm you up after a trip to the allotment!

Sowing

But it's not just harvesting that is possible. As long as the ground isn't frozen you can actually get some plants started now. Autumn sown onion sets are one of these. Onion sets are really baby onions that are ready to pop straight into the ground. Simply clear a patch of ground of any weeds, rake off any stones, mix in some home-made compost and then dib a little hole about the same depth as the onion bulb so that just its tip will poke out of the ground. Some folk simply push the sets into the ground without making a hole but this runs the risk of damaging the base of the bulb and also makes it more likely that it will push itself back up out of the ground too early. The sets will need to be netted as inquisitive birds often pull at the tops and yank them out of the ground.

As well as onions, you can start getting garlic planted. There are a number of varieties available in garden centres and DIY stores now. These are split into two groups - ‘hard neck' varieties that throw up a single flower stalk during growth and ‘soft neck', which have papery skins and tend to last longer in storage. Folk who have grown their own this past year can also use their own bulbs to supply cloves for planting - if you do this pick only the biggest cloves to sow for next year's crop and use the smaller ones for cooking. Also beware of any diseased or rot affected bulbs - these obviously should not be used for seed.

Some people swear by growing garlic using cloves from supermarket or greengrocer bought garlic bulbs. Whilst these will work it can be a bit more pot luck - you might find that the grocery garlic has been imported and is a variety that prefers a different climate to the one you have in your garden, or has a latent disease that will affect next year's crop. If it does work for you it can be considerably cheaper than the garden centre or specialist nurseries though.

To plant garlic, clear a bed and dig in some home-made compost to aid drainage. If you have a heavy, wet soil, also incorporate some sand, as garlic grows best when it is not in waterlogged ground. Split the bulbs into cloves, dib holes 1 inch deep and pop the clove in with the pointed tip pointing upwards. The holes should be 4 inches apart - we cover an entire 4ft x 4ft raised bed like this, although folk growing in rows tend to leave more space between the rows to make hoeing easier (we just weed by hand sitting next to the bed). Again it is helpful to net over the beds to stop birds attacking the growing bulbs.

Away from the alliums, you can also get some broad beans and hardy overwintering peas in the ground now. These plants will spring into life relatively quickly and, when the worst of the winter weather hits, will go dormant until the warmth of spring pushes them back into growth. To be honest it can sometimes be a bit of a hit and miss affair with autumn-sown beans and peas - especially if you've got mice near the plot who will happily gorge themselves on your newly sown seeds.

To help get round the mouse issue, you can sow peas and beans in old toilet roll tubes and get them to germinate in a cold frame, greenhouse or conservatory. Once they are a couple of inches high, plant them straight out in their toilet roll tubes - the tubes will rot down in the ground during the winter. Another trick is to sow peas in a mixture of sand and sieved compost in a piece of old rainwater guttering. Once they've germinated and reached a few inches high, simply make a trench in the ground the same depth and length as the guttering and slide them out into the ground. My Dad used to slosh his pea seeds around in paraffin as the smell was supposed to put the mice off - that's one trick we've not tried ourselves though! Remember to provide both the broad beans and peas with some sticks for support. These can also help keep the birds at bay if they are sufficiently spiky - some folk use holly or gorse branches specifically for this purpose.

We tend to hedge our bets with sowing beans and peas. We'll sow some straight in the ground in the autumn, some in pots and then some more in the spring. That way if the worst happens and we lose the autumn-sown crop we've still got a fall-back and if it all works out we'll have a succession of crops. We also expect some of the seed to fail - after all the old saying when planting beans and peas is ‘one for the rook, one for the crow, one to rot and one to grow'. One in four is about right some years...

Other jobs

Burning, harvesting and sowing aren't the only jobs going though: now is the all important time for leaf collection. This is to make leaf mould - a brilliant material that can be used by itself as a mulch or mixed with sand and loam to make potting compost. Making leaf mould is dead easy: sweep up leaves, put them in a bag or container out of the way and then forget about them for a year or two. I've been known to be seen sweeping up barrow loads of leaves from the street outside our allotment site - I like to think of it as a public service to stop little old ladies slipping over on them. Well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

The container for leaf mould can be as simple as an old plastic bin bag or compost sack with a few holes punched in it to let the air in. For larger volumes of leaves a corral built out of a few stakes hammered into the ground with chicken wire tacked to them will help keep the pile neat and tidy. As we find leaf mould really useful our plot usually has several containers on the go - we'll start with a couple of big bins and then move the partially rotted material to a smaller cage for its second year of decomposition and free up the big bins for a new batch. Where possible we also collect pine needles separately to other leaves as these take even longer to break down and result in a more acidic leaf mould. This leaf mould is really useful though as it can be used as a soil improver and mulch around acid loving plants such as blueberries.

On grassed areas you can also collect leaves using a lawn mower. This is not only quicker and easier than a rake or broom but also chops up the leaves and mixes in some grass clippings, which can help speed up decomposition. However you collect your leaves it is far, far better to make leaf mould with them than it is to burn them. Save the bonfires for the diseased material and larger chunks of woody material that won't compost... and the potatoes in tin foil!

Jim'll

Photos (c) Salena Walker 2009