October is a transition month in University City gardens. If March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, October arrives hot as a jalapeño but leaves as cool and crisp as a fresh green salad.
That parallels how the food garden works this time of year: You’ll still have peppers and green beans at the beginning of the month, but by the time Halloween rolls around, you’ll be picking greens, lettuce, carrots and beets.
October isn’t just a good time to enjoy food gardening. A number of other garden and landscape jobs are on the October calendar, and they are a lot more fun to do now that fall is in the air.
The only bad news is that it’s too late to plant most vegetables. This is the time when you reap the harvest sown in August and early September, not the time to start your garden. You might get away with a late planting of spinach or mustard greens, but even those are iffy.
The exception is garlic. The middle of this month is prime time for planting garlic to harvest next June or July. More on that in a future column.
If your planting mojo won’t leave you in peace, don’t worry. Redirect your energy to planting trees, shrubs and perennials. Mid-to-late October is prime time to set out new landscaping plants. Watch for bargains at local nurseries, and be on the lookout for fall plant sales sponsored by botanical gardens, schools and garden clubs.
One especially good opportunity, if you are interested in adding blueberries, blackberries and other fruit producers to your edible landscape, is Mecklenburg Cooperative Extension’s fall fruit crops sale. The sale benefits local 4H programs serving youth. You have until Nov. 7 to place your order. To learn more call 704-336-2082 or visit http://mecklenburg.ces.ncsu.edu/2012/09/mecklenburg-cooperative-extension-fall-plant-sale.
Extension programs in other counties also have sales, so you may also want to Google around a bit. I’ve seen an excellent selection at Renfrow Hardware in Matthews, and you can’t beat their good advice.
Rabbiteye blueberries deserve a special note. Rabbiteyes are local native plants, and the 4H sale offers varieties such as Tifblue that thrive here, produce a tasty harvest and look great in the landscape, with beautiful fall leaves that linger into January. Remember: They like our acidic soils just as Nature made them; no lime, please! Choose a couple of varieties (say, Tifblue and Climax) so they can pollinate each other for maximum fruit production.
The 4H sale plants are from good Southeastern nurseries (though not from North Carolina) and have strong root systems. They produce best in full sun but can tolerate some shade.
If you plant new trees, shrubs or perennials in October, be sure to water them religiously if we hit a dry spell, as happens this time of year. That also applies to all container plants and to shallow-rooted azaleas, even established ones. Your azaleas and camellias are preparing to bloom next spring, and you don’t want them to get stressed.
This is also a good month for all those odds-and-ends lawn maintenance jobs, including aeration (a core-type aerator is best – forget the spiky shoes, which were invented mostly to give ankle doctors more business). You can also add a sprinkle of compost after aeration.
If you have a fescue lawn, this is a good time to overseed whole lawns or fix patches. When you seed, keep the area evenly moist and very gently remove tree leaves daily. This is not the right time to seed Bermudagrass or other warm season grasses, but you can overseed warm-season lawns with annual ryegrass to keep them green through the winter.
When the leaves start falling at the end of the month, be sure to rake them off the lawn. Next month, we’ll all have plenty of free material to make compost with.
Start preparing now. Make sure your compost bin is in a spot that is convenient to reach. Beside your site, you can now informally pile up weeds and old vegetables left from the summer garden, then mix them with leaves when they start falling in a few weeks.
By the same token, you can get a jump on your spring vegetable garden by making beds now to use for early crops. Leave the beds in place under a sprinkle of straw or leaf mulch. When rains return early next spring, they can make it too wet to work the soil but not too wet to sow seeds or set out transplants of cool-season crops such as spinach, lettuce and sugar snap peas. Preparing your beds now in the fall – a trick learned from successful farmers – enables you to plant in early spring even when it’s too soggy to dig.
One last hint from experience: If you have sweet potatoes or sprawling winter squash or pumpkins in your garden, or ornamental sweet potatoes in your landscape, harvest them now and pile the vines where you can put them in the compost or use them for mulch. If you wait until a frost, you will end up with a black, gooey mess, since the leaves and stems turn to slime in cold weather.
It may fit the Halloween theme; it certainly makes for a scary cleanup job.
Speaking of Halloween, it’s worth noting that Rhode Island farmer Ron Wallace grew the world-record biggest pumpkin this summer; it weighed in at 2,007 pounds. That’s one scary Jack o’ Lantern!
Now if only our politicians could grow the economy like that.
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