October is a splendid time of year to celebrate the end of the bright, long days with bountiful produce and welcome in the crisp air, cosy nights and sample the last delights of the Garden before Winter. 

For the first two weeks in October, our Gardener’s will be feeding the citrus with a weekly seaweed feed to get them good and strong before they go under cover before the first frosts arrive. A nice cool porch or an orangery/greenhouse is best to keep them frost free but allow for plenty of airflow. Citrus really hate sudden changes of temperature and an overly dry environment. You may have spotted some of our big and beautiful pumpkins down in the vegetable patch. We will be harvesting these this month ready for Halloween. This year’s crop has grown to epic proportions, making show-stopping pumpkins. Do not miss an opportunity to see these wonders, maybe take one home with you for a display that will be the envy of your neighbours, and after Halloween, you will have enough pumpkin soup to share around! 

There will be plenty of bulb planting as we plant all bulbs in October. Flowers like daffodils, muscari and crocus are planted whilst the ground is good for working over, however we keep the tulips back till November as we want to reduce the risk of tulip fire. Leaf collection starts in earnest and with so much space in the garden, we concentrate on the paths and removing leaves from the base of plants. We do not want any crown rot from a warmer damp leaf environment. A quick tip – as the leaves come down, you can mow them on a lawn and they will quickly disappear, but you have to do it quite regularly else it doesn’t work as the leaf cover gets too thick.