the october garden chores: 2013

Cop hold of these gardeners tips designed for the upcoming Cop26 summit on the climate

The Elizabethan Tower where Vita had her study. Credit: Shutterstock

 Part of Tom Massey's

When I started this series of K.I.S.S. gardening advice, I hoped to inspire those who didn’t know where to begin gardening and those who may have lost joy in their gardening pursuits. After all, there are plenty of things to worry about these days, and gardening should not be one of them. Gardening should provide a respite and an escape from our screen technology culture. So let’s take the advice of Willie Nelson’s boy, Lukas, and “Turn off the news and build a garden.”

Yes, there are a lot of chores vying for attention:  whether to deadhead the spring bulbs, or edge the beds they’re growing in; divide that overgrown drift of some perennial, or pot up the annuals for a summertime show ahead; mow or mulch and so on.  But let’s not get crazy—let’s go area by area through the list:vegetable gardenMAKING NEW BEDS? A nature-inspired method for raised-bed building, using fallen branches and logs, is called hugelkultur—and it’s fascinating, and effective, if you’re expanding your growing area.TUBERS AND SLIPS: Are the white potatoes in the ground? Sweet potatoes can go in this month, too.MY NEW SEED-STARTING TOOL will tell you when to sow what, indoors and out. Also fo

Peak planting time for bulbs and for many woody things continues through month’s end or so; make that work include some focus on the addition of fall and winter plants to the landscape.Garden cleanup, though, is the primary order of the day—and don’t forget: quickly stash your tender things as frost threatens or just after, depending on the plant, to carry them through the winter. Here we go:TREES & SHRUBSCLEAR TURF OR WEEDS from the area right around the trunks of fruit trees and ornamentals to reduce winter damage by rodents. Hardware cloth collars should be in place year-round as well.BE EXTRA-VIGILANT cleaning up under fruit trees, as fallen fruit and foliage allowed to overwinter

LOST ANYTHING IN THE GARDEN LATELY (besides your mind)? That’s the question Forum member Boodely poses in the Urgent Garden Question Forum this week, and I’m confessing to eyeglasses, every manner of tool and more. (Usually my MIA items turn up when I turn the compost heap.) Lost anything in your garden? On the very practical side comes a twist on the groundcover question, which usually includes the words “for shade.” Not this time.

Ask yourself this: Where do you see your garden from most often, and at what time of year? Where does the magical light happen, and catch your eye? For me, it’s a few places:The best seat in the house is the dining-room table (above), where I often plunk my laptop and heaps of messiness when writing and just generally like to be. (So does Jack the Demon Cat, who adores the west view.)I can see a long way due west from that old Chinese wooden chair, and also pretty far south, with a short east snapshot as well…so those directions, starting at the point of my favorite chair and emanating outward, are the primary axes of my garden. Fr

BY AUGUST, BOTH GARDEN AND GARDENER can be looking a little tired. If only I can muster the stamina, both of us can be in much better shape before long. The primary tactics: watering, of course, and weeding, but I’m also looking to freshen things up visually by re-edging beds whose lines have grown fuzzy, and topping up the mulch.  There’s nothing I can do to repair holes in leaves left behind by hailstorms, or other such woes—but I can trick the eye, at least, and make the overall picture a little cleaner and sharper.Yes, I sometimes think that August, not April, is the cruelest month (though T.S. Eliot famously thought otherwise, and spelled it cruellest for good measure). It is typically hazy, hot and humid…but that’s no excuse for stopping: Every weed pulled now is a hundred (a thousand?) you don’t have to deal with later. Don’t let them go to seed. Make a pass through each bed each week, since weeds are not just unsightly but

I’ve said in the past that I think of the August chores list as a form of spot cleaning—a headstart on fall cleanup, one blemish at a time. Thinking of it that way makes it more palatable, frankly: a leg up on work I’d have to do later, anyhow? OK; I can handle that.I can’t fix everything, turning brown leaves green again, or sewing up holes in the Astilboides or brassicas. But I can (and must!) try to trick the eye with some targeted trimming, mulching and edging—and lots of deadheading, of course.(I say “must,” because Garden Conservancy Open Day visitors are coming August 17—do join us!)Besides the visual relief, editing out the worst bits reduces hiding places for pests and disease, so again, it’s worth it.  Let’s go:weeding and wateringWEED! Make a pass through e

Spring is coming; you can feel it, even here in Zone 5B where the intermediate witch-hazels were trying to bloom despite single-digit F temperatures that rolled the rhododendron leaves up tight as cigars as January wound down.  Brrrr! But oh, the luxury of it: Fiat lux! (Let there be light!)  Like this:On the last day of December where I live, the day was only 9 hours 16 minutes 18 seconds long; by January 31, it was 9 hours 57 minutes 20 seconds, and February 28 promises me an embarrassment of light: 11 hours 11 minutes 42 seconds. (Calculate your daylength for any day of any year here.)I’m stifling the urge to start ordering plants before I do some planning—reviewing the 2012 garden in my photo library and any notes, trying to match my purchases to what the garden really needs most–not sho

IFEEL LIKE I’M BACK IN GIRL SCOUTS, earning merit badges for proficiency in new tasks. This weekend I mastered Generator 101, and though it’s no picnic, I did manage to make a tea party, with my electric kettle operating al fresco—or at least I made a cup of hot tea or two to fuel me on into rounds of snow removal of various kinds. A slideshow of the storm from hell, the second big October snow of my years here.