October is a time when the garden can look a little tired, but there are still some key jobs that need to be carried out if you want to keep your garden healthy and free of weeds
October has arrived, bringing with it chillier weather and plenty of rain.
It’s easy to think that your gardening days are over for the year and you can stow away your spade and shears for another six months. However, if you want to maintain a healthy, weed-free garden, there are some crucial tasks you should carry out in October, according to gardening experts.
One such task is covering your soil to prepare it for spring and prevent it from being overrun by weeds or damaged by continuous rainfall. Alan Buckingham, in his book The Allotment Calendar, suggests that gardeners should lay polythene sheets on soil beds in October.
This serves two purposes: it prevents heavy rainfall from washing away valuable topsoil and it also inhibits weed growth. He advised: “Cover beds with polythene. Spreading sheets over the soil keeps off the worst of the rain and suppresses weeds, as well as allowing you to sow earlier next spring.”
A member of the Allotment Garden forum added: “We cover ours for a month or two each winter with black plastic. It’s amazing how quickly a few wet weeks will wash out the nutrients and it helps reduce the weed load next year as well. We are sheeted at the minute until the start of January, then lift the sheet mulch on for the year and sheet back down until we start sowing mid Feb.”
Alan Buckhingham also recommends that gardeners should remove dead foliage and old dying plants – and you should not put them in the compost bin if there are signs of disease, reports the Express.
You should also rake up any leaves and destroy those with signs of scab or rust – adding them to your compost in this state simply risks spreading disease.
