Gardening calendar: plant fruit trees and get raking

Get raking: you can use your autumn leaves for compost Photo: Alamy

Sarah Raven shares her top tips for the garden this week, including making an autumn wreath
Girl raking leaves

By Sarah Raven
7:00AM GMT 29 Oct 2014

1 Divide and multiply
Divide perennials that flower before midsummer’s day, such as oriental poppies, peonies and lupins, as well as spring-flowering hellebores, pulmonarias and Solomon’s seal. Dig up, divide and replant straight away. Perennials that flower after midsummer are best divided in the spring. That’s a good general rule.

2 Mulch ado
After a good summer, the soil is warmer than usual. It’s moist too, so now is a good time to mulch wherever there’s bare soil. Spread home-made compost, leaf mould or green waste from your local council a good inch and a half deep. It helps to condition soil, retain moisture and suppress weeds.


3 Be fruitful
Plant a fruit tree – an apple or pear. Dig a hole twice the size of the root ball and break up the base, adding plenty of organic matter (leaf mould or manure). Plant the tree to the same level as it was previously. As with roses, this ensures the graft is below soil level.


4 Pot luck
If you have no more space for a fruit tree in the ground, plant one in a pot. Use a 37-litre filled with John Innes No 3, mixed with about a third of tree or shrub compost and some Osmocote (or other slow-release fertiliser), with plenty of crocks in the bottom.


5 White Christmas
For pots of paperwhite narcissus at Christmas, plant bulbs now. These only take five weeks to flower. Plant just below the surface, about 1in (2.5cm) apart, in a soil-based compost lightened with grit, with crocks in the base (or use bulb fibre). Store at below 10C and bring in when buds form.


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A great little tip for growing fresh lettuce

A great little tip for growing fresh lettuce.  Instead of buying plantlets from DIY stores and garden centres, keep your eyes out for plastic trays of mini-lettuces in supermarkets.  I've bought these in Sainsbury's, but I assume other supermarkets do something similar.

They are designed for consumption as a salad, but it is easy to divide them up and re-put them on in a good compost.  You can get about fifteen plants from a tray.  The good news is that  a tray brought this way only cost a pound or two.

One tray, which I bought sometime in April, saw my family through to the end of September in fresh lettuce, all for about £1.50!  

If you try it this time of year, I suspect that they will need to be planted under glass.

Storing Potatoes

We should have all dug up the last of our main crop potatoes by now.

They will last best if stored somewhere cool and dark.

Storing in the fridge is a bad idea.  It can discolour the flesh and cause a deterioration in the flavour.

Always remove any that are damaged or diseased, and check regularly, at least once a fortnight, and remove any showing signs of rot.

One can store them in anything that allows a bit of air circulation: cardboard boxes, paper sacks, hessian sacks, wire trays, etc.

A good source of hessian sacks is www.henandhammock.co.uk (Tel: 0184-421-7060)

Its time to cut down all the grotty looking perennials

Its time to cut down all the grotty looking perennials in your garden.  If they are still contributing something, foliage or attractive deed heads, by all means leave them until later, but if they are a mess, just cut them back to the base.  All the resulting rubbish is good for the compost heap.

It is an ideal opportunity to propagate by division.  Many perennials, once they are cut back, can be lifted, divided into two or three plants and replanted for next year.  It is good fun, buying one plant and two years later finding you have nine.

When Autumn Leaves Start to Fall ..

What should we do about all the autumn leaves that nature dumps on our garden?  Well apart from paths, patios and lawns, how about thanking mother nature for this gift.

If you leave the leaves where they fall, the worms will soon drag them under, and even the toughest will be gone by next spring.  Indeed, what harm have dead leaves ever done to you?

The leaves on paths, patios and lawns can be safely added to the compost heap, plus any you can pinch from the adjacent streets.

More autumn leaves means more microbes and more good little soil beasties.  And everything in your garden depends on the health of this soil community.

The very last thing you should be doing is burning your leaves or throwing them away - they are far too valuable to be doing that

What's On ...West Dean Gardens

 RHS Harlow Carr

A taste of Autumn
Harrogate: 4-5 Oct, RHS Harlow Carr.  A celebration of the autumn harvest.  Tasting, displays and experts on hand to help you.  rhs.org.uk/hardlowcarr

West Dean Gardens

Grow! Cook! Eat!
West Sussex: 4-5 Oct, West Dean Gardens.  Talks, cookery demos, food market and live folk music.  Adults £8.50 (£10.70 on the gate) and children £1.00.  westdean.org.uk

Royal Botanical Gardens

Apple Festival
Edinburgh: 4-5 Oct, Royal Botanical Gardens.  Displays of Scottish apples, taste unusual varieties, plus get you own identified by an expert (hopefully!).  FREE entry. rbge.org.uk

National Botanical Garden of Wales

Wales Fungus Day
Carmarthenshire: 12 Oct. National Botanical Garden of Wales.  Wild mushroom 'cook up', expert mushroom advice (how not to kill yourself) and a fungi exhibition.  gardenofwales.org.uk

The Apple Display

Apple Festival
Kent: 18-19 Oct, Brogdale Collections.  More than 200 varieties of apples (that should keep the doctor away) and pears to try; plus live music and local ciders.  Adults £7.50 and children £3.60.  applefestivalkent.co.uk