In the Garden: October

The signs of autumn are all around us: a mix of cooler sunny days and nights, more frequent rain showers, local apples in abundance, and the leaves are beginning to fall to the ground. There are apple pressings and harvest festivals on both sides of the border, sunflower mazes, and crazy amounts of Pumpkin Spice treats in markets, coffee shops, and bakeries.

Spider season arrived early this year, with large outdoor orb spiders and the occasional wolf spider. Halloween is coming with little ghouls and goblins, jack-o’-lanterns and spooky decorations. Days are growing shorter, and the Big Dark will soon return. Daylight Savings Time ends on November 2.

My garden is still going strong, with lusciously ripe tomatoes and a bumper crop of cucumbers to satisfy my husband’s pickle cravings. Cooler weather and shorter days changes the color of certain dahlias, which is like getting an extra variety for the final month of the bouquet season. My days are rich with flowers and pleasant puttering, and my evenings are long and slow and filled with family time and future dreams.

Here is your annual reminder to “leave the leaves,” which I wrote about last October. Decaying leaves protect and feed the soil, prevent weeds, and provide habitat and food for bees and other pollinators, birds, and small animals. Leaves can remain on the lawn and should also be spread in a three- to six-inch layer in your beds and borders. Most pruning can be put off until spring, further increasing winter wildlife habitat.

Less time spent on fall cleanup means more time available for other garden chores. Fall is the perfect time for planting trees, shrubs, and many flowers, giving them time to settle into the soil and develop a strong root system before winter temperatures arrive. This is the best time for dividing and/or moving perennial plants like daylilies, coneflowers, hydrangeas, and woody salvias. Spring flowering bulbs – daffodils, tulips, Dutch iris, crocus, alliums, snowdrops, and hyacinths – are ready to plant for next year’s blooms and look great in borders or in pots.

Consider planting a “bulb lasagna” pot for a striking springtime display: a pot of layered spring bulbs that will bloom at different times, providing weeks of blooms in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors. Details can be found via Google search, and bulbs are available online and at local nurseries, building stores, and some grocery markets.

I grow a lot of herbs and summer flowers in large pots, scattered throughout the garden for maximum sun exposure, and grouped on the deck and around ground-level seating areas. Many of these plants are treated as annuals due to our cold winters. I’m a frugal gardener, and I try to keep my geraniums, salvias, and small hydrangeas safe from freezing temperatures by moving them into my unheated greenhouse (or garage, bunkhouse, or shed), where they happily survive the winter with little to no care.

They do not require sun, heat, or grow lights while in winter storage, and they need minimal – if any – watering during this time. Some drop their leaves, others go dormant or appear to “die back” to the ground, and most of them spring back to life when the weather warms, putting out fresh shoots and leaves and growing larger than the year before. Last winter, one of my large mixed pots contained trailing petunias as a filler plant, and the petunias survived and began blooming in March, a delightful surprise.

In-ground plants and shrubs that are generally considered frost-hardy can be damaged by extra-low temperatures, as happened two years ago. In the event of overnight temperatures dropping below 25 degrees, plants can be protected by covering them with garden cloth, burlap, or bed sheets, to keep them a few degrees warmer.

There’s still time to plant some fall and winter vegetables from seed. Radishes are ready to eat in approximately three weeks. Lettuces, Swiss chard, and tender salad greens are fast growers, and can be eaten as baby greens if there’s a threat of killing frost. Harvest the leaves as needed, rather than the whole plant.

Planting the bottom of a head of leafy lettuce – about two inches tall – is an even faster way to get fresh greens. Place it in damp soil with an inch or more of the leaves exposed, and it will sprout new leaves. Plant directly in the garden, or grow indoors in a pot near a sunny window.

Cabbages, carrots, Brussels sprouts, and carrots are frost-hardy, can survive beneath the snow, and are made sweeter by cold temperatures. Snow is a great insulator for many winter hardy plants, including many herbs and some shrubs and ornamentals.

As the days grow shorter and cooler, take time to reflect on this year’s successes as well as the things that didn’t work as well as you’d hoped. It’s never too soon – or too late – to think about next year’s garden.