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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