Kitchen Garden - October

Vegetables

• Harvest carrots and potatoes, making sure the crops are clean and dry before you put them into storage.  Marrows can be stored once their skins have been hardened in the sun.

• Finish picking tomatoes before the plants become diseased.  You can hang up the whole plant to ripen green trusses, or alternatively pick the fruit and ripen it individually.  Or you could always make some green tomato chutney!

Herbs

• To ensure a supply of fresh mint during winter dig up some roots and plant them 5cm (2 inches) deep in a seed tray in J Arthur Bower’s Multi-Purpose Compost.  Keep the tray in the greenhouse.

• Clumps of chives can also be put into pots and brought into the greenhouse.

Fruit

• Prepare site for planting bare-rooted fruit trees and bushes.  Fruit trees dislike poor drainage so if your soil is heavy add plenty of J. Arthur Bower’s Coarse Grit as well as organic matter when you dig it over.

• Protect established fruit trees with Growing Success Glue Bands. These set in place a sticky barrier which stops female moths climbing the tree to mate and lay their eggs.

• Finish harvesting autumn-fruiting raspberries and cut down all the canes that have fruited this year.

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