October allotment tasks

It’s frightening to think that this month is when some parts of the UK will have the first frosts of winter. We shouldn’t, being in the balmy south, but we need to be thinking about fleece protection for some of our crops.

• We’re picking over our potatoes and putting any that are less than a third green in complete darkness – after a month the green will be gone. It’s the result of sun exposure and the green parts contain a poison called an alkaloid which just goes to show that potatoes and Deadly Nightshade are part of the same family. However if they’ve gone back to potato coloured after a month of total light exclusion they will be safe to eat.

• We’re not planting garlic until November, but it’s time to prepare the garlic bed – this year they will be going into a raised bed as we grew far too much last year!

• We also need to move our broad bean supports to their new site so that we can plant the beans next month. We found overwintering broad beans to be much better than spring-planted ones so we’re doubling our sowing in November.

• And we’re picking off any yellow leaves from our brassicas so that they don’t harbour slugs or diseases like botrytis.

What are you going to be doing in October?

Labels: allotment-crops, allotment-october-tasks, allotment-preparations