The Cut Flower Podcast

Embracing October in the Cutting Garden

• Roz Chandler • Season 1 • Episode 137

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Text Agony Aunt Roz with your Cutflower Questions.

In this episode of the Cut Flower Podcast, Roz discusses the beauty of October in the cutting garden, emphasizing the importance of preparing for winter while still enjoying the last blooms of the season. She shares practical tips on caring for dahlias, sowing hardy annuals, planting spring bulbs, and planning for the next growing season. Roz encourages listeners to reflect on their gardening successes and challenges, and to dream about future planting plans.

Takeaways

  • October is a beautiful month in the cutting garden.
  • Keep cutting flowers to encourage more blooms.
  • Be cautious with dahlias before the first frost.
  • Lift or protect tender plants for winter.
  • October is ideal for sowing hardy annuals.
  • Now is the time to plant spring bulbs.
  • Prepare and mulch your garden beds for winter.
  • Dividing and moving perennials can enhance your garden.
  • Tidy up tools and check seed stock for next year.
  • October is a time for dreaming and planning for the future.


Roz (00:00)
So hello everybody, it's Roz here again and welcome back to the Cut Flower Podcast. And October is such a beautiful month in the cutting garden.

I know we're heading towards winter in the UK, but it is a beautiful month. The light softens and the mornings are misty. And while the growing season is starting to slow down, there's still plenty to get on with. I love this time of year, as it's a time to plan for next year, and it's a time to almost say goodbye to this year. So today I'm going to take you through what you can do right now in your cutting patch, from planting to planning, to set you up for a beautiful year next year.

Firstly, let's just enjoy the last of the blooms. Let's start with the joyous part. If you've still got Dahlia's, Cosmos, Zinnia's, Rudebeckia's or Scapia's flowering, just keep cutting. The more you cut, the more they'll give you before the first frost arrives. And remember, if frost is forecast, you can almost always pick everything and fill your house with colour before it goes over.

Be wary of course with dahlias, course dahlias are first frost, your dahlias will go and you'll go out one day and they'll all be black. I remember the first time it happened to me and it is quite a sight. The best thing to do is leave them for a couple of weeks, let them all die off, let the energy go back into the tubers. You don't need to rush anything. If you're going to lift your dahlias, so you live in an area where the soil is clay or it's quite waterlogged and you need to live or you're going to propagate from those tulips and you want to

tulips, those dahlias and you want to use those tubers you need to lift them. Do it on a dry day. You need those tubers to be dry so once you've lifted them you want to put them out in the sun put them out on a wooden pallet and let them enjoy the sunshine before you put them away for the winter.

If you put away tubers which are wet, unfortunately they will get mouldy. We do recommend that if you're going to lift your tubers that you put them in boxes with sawdust, where you wrap them up, you keep them dry and then throughout the winter just check them and make sure that they haven't gone mouldy and the mice haven't attacked them. It's quite a risk to lift your tubers because of those two things. If you're going to leave your tubers in the ground, which in the main we do, unless we want to propagate from, we do cover them with

thick layer of mulch and in the UK we get our mulch from Plant Grow.

So we get tum bags delivered of mulch and we mulch them. We then add straw to the top and then give them a nice little bedtime. We put some old carpets on the top too. We make sure our dahlias are well covered. Bear in mind for every inch you go down in the soil it can take minus one degrees. So if your dahlias are three inches below the ground it can take minus three. So if you think your temperatures this winter are going to get up to minus five or minus eight you need

an 8 inch barrier before your dahlia Just bear that one in mind.

Next one, lift or protect tender plants. So we've mentioned dahlias already, we've talked about lifting them. There are other tender perennials that you may want to think about for the winter. So things like pitosporum is a tender perennial, chocolate cosmos is a tender perennial and you will need to be, if they're in the ground, you will need to be prepared with your fleece material, ready to go out and fleece them. Eucalyptus as well, the trunks of eucalyptus you may want to do when you

have extreme temperatures. Some of your plants like Pelagoniums or if you've got any little fruit trees we've got a lemon tree that we purchased in the summer and a couple of fruit trees in pots that we move into our polytunnels so go and have a look around and see what you think would be a tender perennial and won't like the cold.

Something which is well underway at Field Gate Flowers is sowing hardy annuals. October is one of the favourite months for sowing hardy annuals. You can sow directly into soil or into trays in a cold frame or unheated greenhouse or into a polytunnel. Think cornflowers, nigella, larkspur, ammys, scabius. All of these love a bit of cool weather and will overwinter beautifully to give you earlier blooms next spring. If you're sowing direct, cover these with fleece or cloches

them from heavy rain or slugs. Start to plan your bulbs. Now here at Field Gate Flowers we've had all our bulbs delivered, we had I think it was 50,000 ish delivered. Now is the time to plant your spring bulbs, your tulips, your narcissi, your alliums, your fritillarias, your anemones and your ranunculus. Just remember one thing and I say it lots and lots of times, tulips are best planted in November once the soil is colder. If you plant them before then you risk

getting all sorts of viruses. So the soil needs to be quite cold for tulips. You can do it in November, you can do it in December, and you can still do it in January. But the rest can go in now. You can also do layering bulbs in pots. The lasagne method is a lovely way to get a ⁓ beautiful, useful arrangement come the spring.

So now the hard bit, prepare and mulch your beds. As annuals come out, take the chance to clear weed and mulch your beds. Add compost or well-rotted manure to replenish the soil after a busy season. If you're not planting a cover crop, leave the soil covered either with a mulch or cardboard to protect it from the winter weather and lock in those nutrients. Ideally, you would put a cover crop. Something like Vasilia is a great cover crop because it gives nitrogen back to the soil. So think about how you're going to prepare for next year.

October's great for dividing and moving perennials like Achillea, Phlox and Vibascum. It keeps them healthy and gives you more plants for free. Who doesn't love that? So perennials like Achillea and Phlox do, if you want to move or divide, we do a lot of dividing. So we do a lot of things like ladies' mantle as well. So think about what perennials you can divide going into the winter.

Also, tidy up your tools and state stock. It is a good idea to clean, sharpen and oil your tools. Check your seed stock for next year. What are you missing? Make notes on what's worked and what didn't work this season. What are you going to do more of? What are you going to do less of? We have massive amounts of spreadsheets here at Field Gate Flowers because in February we forget that actually, you know, that Achille we grew, we weren't very fond of the colour or actually the length of the cosmos of that plant wasn't as good as the other one. So do make lots and

lots of notes. ⁓

And finally, October's for dreaming. Sketch out your planting plans for next season. Think about the new varieties to try or maybe a new bed layout. This is quiet, thoughtful work that makes spring feel so exciting when it comes around. So we do lots and lots of planning. We have all our seeds now planned out for the whole of next year. Hopefully a lot of you will join us on our annual course, which starts in February. And we've been running this, it'll be our sixth year and it's our Seed to Vase inaugural course and it starts

February and we take you through the whole year from February to October with training and communities and so on and we'll tell you more about that later but that will help if you want to join us for next year. So that's your October in a cutting patch a lovely balance of just winding down and preparing for what's next.

Even as the nights draw in, there's something incredibly satisfying about putting the garden to bed and thinking about the future. you know, up comes your first flowers in, you probably get in the UK, you get your hellebores first and then maybe some snowdrops and some crocuses. Then along come your tulips. Your tulips will come in about April.

early April, going into May and your ranunculus. So you've got all your planning to do as well. So I would take October as a sort of month of well done. You've done an amazing season. Take stock of what didn't work and what did work and then move forward and think, okay, so what does next year look like? It's been like being a fashion designer, isn't it? You've got to plan your next year. So I'm wishing you all the best. Any questions, do come and ask us on Instagram. We'd love to hear from you. Hope you're following us at Field Gate Flowers.

DM me and ask me any questions and I'd be happy to help. See you all soon.