How to get your garden ready for Autumn..
Autumn is a time not just for settling down and tidying up in the garden, it’s a time for preparing for a great gardening year next year.
It’s very easy, when the rain sets in and the days get shorter, to simply close the curtains on the garden and kind of pretend it’s not there for a while. When the weather warms up again, our own energy levels rise and we feel much better about going outside and sorting it all out. Do a few simple jobs now, though, and make a few simple plans, and your next gardening year will be even easier.
Here’s how:
- Assess your lawn
Are there bald patches, or scruffy and worn patches? Now is a great time to lay some turf to repair the lawn and leap into spring with it all lush and green, not muddy and sparse. You have a couple of options – you can lift up the scruffy bits and re-turf, or scrape out the dead grass, hoik out any weeds, and throw down some grass seed. You might need to put down seed a few times, if the birds spot it, but who could begrudge our feathered friends a little pre-winter dietary boost?
It’s also a good time, following the final cut, to add some autumn lawn fertiliser. This will do its work over the next few months, giving your lawn a great start to the next growing season.
- Clear the beds
As the summer foliage dies back beds can start looking really scruffy. Pull out anything that’s clearly gone over – yellow and drooping leaves, dead flowers. TAke care not to pull stuff up by the roots, or you’ll have empty patches next year. Take your secateurs with you to cut back close to the base of the plant, instead. Leave anything still happily green. You can go again in November to clear back those last bits.
- Weed!
Give all the beds a good hoe and lift out any remaining weeds. Now the summer growth of your ‘meant to be there’ plants has died back, you can clear away all dead foliage and see clear to the soil, so can get to any weeds that have been hiding away.
- Rearrange your planting
Autumn, when the soil is still warm but everything has stopped growing, is a good time to move shrubs, roses and any perennials that might have gotten too big for the spot they’re in. Choose your spot, dig a deep and wide hole and add a little blood and bone, then lift the plant you want to move into its new home. Backfill the hole firmly, water in and relax – it will be happily settling itself in ready to look great next spring.
- Prune your roses
Get them trimmed and tidy now and you’re on for robust flowering next year. First, trim off any remaining flowers. Next take off any leaves that look spotty, yellowed or nibbled at, and remove any fallen leaves or flowers from around the base of the rose. Then prune out any dead or damaged stems, and remove one of any that cross another, if they’re touching or might touch. This is to remove risk of any disease spreading and ensure a good airflow around the stems. Shorten any really tall stems to reduce the risk of wind damage – when cutting stems, always snip above an outward facing bud. With rose bushes, shape to an even height/width all around, to encourage a good even display next year. Climbing and scrambling roses can be tidied up to remove any excessively long shoots and encourage more side growth.
- Mulch
Such a great word. Mulch is effectively a top coat of fertiliser you spread across your flower beds in autumn, which serves to protect your plants from the worst of the weather and feed the soil. Leaf mould (all last year’s rotted down leaves), compost or well-rotted manure (fresh horse manure is rather acidic, so not great for gardens) all make great mulches. You can buy bags of all of these mulches, but leaf mould and compost you can easily make yourself at home. For leaf mould, simply bag up fallen leaves and tuck the bags away behind the shed until this time next year. Compost heaps are a little more complicated, but if you have room, there are some great ‘how to’ video guides on YouTube, or the Gardener’s World website.
- Tidy the shed
Come the spring, you really don’t want to open the door of your shed to be met with a jumble of muddy, dull, gardening tools. Bang nails into the walls to hang your tools on and give them all a clean before you put them away. Now is a good time to sharpen the blades on edge trimmers and secateurs, too. And any bits of kit that have been unreliable this summer – get rid, and add replacements to your Christmas list! A new set of secateurs has to be better than yet more socks, surely?!
One or two last weekends in the garden between now and late November will make an immense difference come spring, giving you more time when it’s warm to enjoy the fruits of your labour.
Eddie – Friday 6th October 2023. (Image used from Alderfield Road, Chorlton).
