Good time for garden stock-take
October is a good time for a garden stock take. I do this in conjuction with a garden tidy up, this won’t be a definitive winter tidy but just a interim action as there are many herbaceous plants still flowering with gusto and much dying back to take place before winter sets in.
As a point of note plants that are still flowering well include Penstemons, Rudbeckia, Dahlia, Verbena, Salvia, Strobilanthes, Gaura, Asters, Japanese Anemone and marguerite daisies. Some bedding plants may still be worthy of being left in situ at this time of year, others you can pull up as part of this gardening Oktoberfest.
As part of your autumn gardening inventory take a few photographs, in fact this is a great way of keeping a record of areas that are doing particularly well or that maybe need a tweak at any time throughout the year. As you set out on this autumn task arm yourself with a wheel barrow, secateurs, small spade, rake and a note book and pen. Work your way around the garden tidying and making notes as you go.
Things not to do in autumn include pruning spring and early summer flowering shrubs. Cutting these back at this time of year will remove the flowering wood that has ripened during the summer leaving you without a show of blooms next year. If any of these plants have gotten to large for their spaces make a note to prune them after flowering next year.
Other notes you might want to make reagrding shrubs maybe those that you may want to move, which for deciduous plants needs ideally to be left until mid November but for evergreens can be carried out now. If you have lavenders and have not cut them back yet, you should of, but I would still do this now anyway cutting them back hard but into living foliage growth areas. Hybrid tea, floribunda and English roses that have finished flowering can be cut back by half to stop them rocking in the winter storms, they will need a more skillful prune in early spring remember.
Any flower buds that look like they will make it to fruition leave or cut and bring inside and put in a vase.
Some leaves will have fallen by now and can be cleared up and composted or kept seperate to form leaf mould. This is only the begining of the leaf collecting, a task that even I find arduous but it is worth it for all the beauty trees give us. Many grassy foliaged flowering plants like Agapanthus, Libertia, Hemerocallis, Dierama and true grasses like Stipa, Deschampsia and Phormiums whether evergreen or deciduous will need a little tidy up by removing dead foliage. Agapanthus and libertia can produce interesting seed heads, if there is a good crop you might consider leaving them until your winter tidy up if they have only set seed heads that are sparse you should remove them now.
On the subject of seeds and seeding down to be more exact this is a good time to look for seedlings amongst your existing planting. These may either potted up for later, transplant to another location, given away to friends or weeded out. Some plants like foxgloves and Alchemilla mollis- Lady’s Mantle- can seed down to such an extent that they can become troublesome. To help solve this problem, with all self seeding plants not just foxgloves and Alchemilla, you have to dead head them before they seed down just after flowering.
Be aware that not all seedlings come true to the parent plant colour because of cross pollination. That said I have had white foxgloves in my garden for ten years and all seedlings come true to their white flowered parent because they haven’t any other colour of foxglove in the area to cross pollinate with.
Other plants in my garden that are useful for aquiring additional plants from seedlings include Verbena bonariensis, Libertia grandiflora, Cerinthe purpurascens, Geranium palmatum. All of these will come true to the parent as they are species plants.