"There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments"

Janet Kilburn Phillips

Wonderful Winter Veg

Hi Everyone.

This month is for pumpkins, Halloween and an extra hour in bed. Yes, the clocks will be going back an hour on 27th October. And then we will only be 55 days away from the winter solstice, which of course means the days start to get longer again.

So what have we got in store for you this month.

What to sow and grow in October

Glorious Garlic 🧄

Incredible Edibles

Chris's 5 top seed saving tips

Learning sessions - Winter Crops

And lastly, Lottie news.

🥦🍅🥒🌶🍠🌽🍓🫑🫐🍐🥕

What to sow and grow in in October.

The one main thing you can direct sow this month and probably the only thing to direct sow is Garlic. Everything else you'd be better off sowing in modules or plant pots under cover. More about Garlic below. This year I am growing my Garlic in my poly tunnel with the intention of trying to avoid the rust that they seem to get on my plot. The poly tunnel is the only place I've not had rust develop, so fingers crossed.

As mentioned last month, Spinach and Winter Lettuce are good to start now in plug pots. Cauliflowers are not the easiest things to grow, but you might like to try the Romanesco variety, the green pointy ones. I've always found these to be easier to grow over winter and to get a more reliable crop. Otherwise 'Snowball' is a good variety for the normal Cauliflower. Also hardy Peas are a good winter crop to sow now. Varieties like Douce Provence or Meteor.

It's still not too late to get some of the many varieties of Chard and Kale on the go. In fact you can, apart from probably December and August sow these two at almost any time of the year.

Don't forget that if the weather looks to get really cold and frosty, covering your crops with some horticultural fleece will help enormously. Autumn sown crops won't grow big or fast over winter, but as the days start getting longer and the temperatures rise a little they will soon take off.

Glorious Garlic.

Garlic must be one of the easiest crops to grow. Even if you only have a pot or two on a balcony you can grow Garlic.

There are three main types of Garlic. There's Hardneck, Softneck and Elephant Garlic.

I've grown Garlic from bulbs I've bought in a supermarket and if you've not grown Garlic before, but want to give it a try, this is a cheap way of doing so. This year however I'm going to be buying some Softneck Garlic from a reputable company, which will work out a bit dearer. And I've chosen Softneck because I'd like to be able to store it for as long as possible. I will also be planting some Elephant Garlic from cloves that I've saved from last year

You may have seen Huw Richards's video before, but I feel it's one of the most informative ones out there and well worth a look to discover all about growing Garlic.

Incredible Edibles

What should a community do with its unused land? Grow food?

Pam Warhurst, a force to be reckoned with, co-founded Incredible Edible, an initiative in Todmorden England, dedicated to growing food locally by planting on unused land throughout the community.

In her Ted talk she tells the story of how she and a growing team of volunteers came together to turn plots of unused land into communal vegetable gardens, and to change the narrative of food in their community.

Well worth a watch!

🫘 My 5 seed saving tips.🫘

Saving seeds can not only save you some money, but it's also fun to do. So far this year I have saved Tomato seeds, some Wild Strawberry and some Hollyhocks for my garden.

Seed saving can be very easy and it can also get quite complicated, but here are my five tips to saving seed and Charles Dowding explaining the process in his inimitable way.

1. Make sure the seeds you are saving are not from plants that are F1 varieties.

(An F1 plant is the result of two plants, both with different favourable characteristics being crossed to make an F1 plant. Seeds saved from an F1 plants won't have the same characteristics as the parent plants.)

2. The easiest seeds to save are from self pollinated plants. For example: Tomatoes, French Beans, Peppers and Peas.

3. Always try to save seeds from the most healthiest plants and the biggest fruits/pods

4. Make sure you dry your seeds thoroughly before you put them away to store them in a cool dry place.

5. Don't forget to date and label them.

Learning sessions - Winter Crops

Saturday 12th October 10am

This month I will be at the Vine Road Growing Project running another Learning/Training session, this time on the subject of winter crops. The why, the how, the when and what to grow, finishing off with a Q&A to ask all the questions you like. Come and join me!

If you would like to book a free place please go to the Eventbrite link below

To book your place

Quote of the month

" Gardening is an active participation in the deepest mysteries of the universe "

Thomas Barry

Lottie News!

Hasn't the weather been mad! I can't keep up with it. We even had a bit of frost a week or so ago and my poly tunnel went down to 2.3C. My Sweet Potato leaves got a bit knobbled which usually doesn't happen until November! Madness, utter madness!

Last month did look up a bit though with things finally getting going. The Aubergines put on a bit of a sprint and I ended up with a few half decent ones. My one and only good sized Melon started to fatten up and is now sitting in my kitchen and hopefully ripening to perfection. With so much rain lately the Celery is the best I've grown...they do like a good drink. And my Borlotti Beans got picked and de-podded after having dried on the vines. They have now had a short spell in the freezer compartment for a couple of days to kill off any baby weevils that might be lurking.

A couple of surprises, firstly another buried egg found on my plot, this time in one of my Carrot pots. It had to be a fox as there was quite a bit of tell tale digging. I don't know if it was a raw or a hard boiled egg and I wasn't going to find out either. Where they are finding these eggs I do not know. The other surprise was a pleasant one. We had one of the biggest surplus fruit and veg donations from the allotment plot holders, which is really lovely to see.

Halfway through the month I discovered some blight on one of my outdoor Tomato plants. I decided to then harvest all of the ripe, nearly ripe and just showing signs of turning ripe off my other plants in the poly tunnel as a precaution, to finish ripening them off at home. Fortunately the blight didn't get out of hand and it seemed to disappear after a few days, which was lucky.

And lastly, because of the cold snap I decided to lift the first of the Sweet Potatoes I had in three big pots. Not the best harvest I've had, but quite expected seeing as we've had rather naff weather. They all came out long and skinny, no big potatoes this year, just not enough sun.

If you have a food gardening question you'd like to ask just pop me an email and I'll see how I can help. I don't proclaim to be an expert, but I will do my best to answer any of your questions.

In the meantime, if you know of anyone who might like to become a FG4A member do feel free to forward them this email and get them to visit the website and sign up, it's free!

Or you can always catch up with what I've been up to on Facebook or instagram.

Keep safe.

Christine x

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