Page 46 - Simply Vegetables Autumn 2021

Cosmos still flowering in October
yourself from seed , but if not, they are readily available in garden centres.
Many annual flowers will have finished flowering by now and also some of the veg crops. Remove them
to the compost bin unless they are diseased and fork over the vacant ground, removing weeds. Runner beans and climbing French beans are among those that have almost finished but before I remove them I save some of the seeds for next year. I have said before that you should pick beans while they are young and tender but at this time
of year I allow some to grow until the beans inside the pods are large. I then pick the pods and leave them to dry on top of a cupboard in the kitchen. When they are completely dry I remove the beans from the pods.
When chrysanths have finished flowering they should be cut down to about 6 inches (15 cm) and the plants (now known as stools) dug up and planted in boxes of compost and kept in
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a frost free greenhouse over winter. The first keen frost will put an end to the dahlias. One day they will be green and still growing and the next day they will be blackened. In some years it doesn’t happen till November but when it does, the plants need cutting down and the tubers dug up and left to
dry in a frost free place. I described the treatment
I give to the tubers last year. If you don’t dig them up, they may survive depending on what kind of winter we get but I don’t think it is worth the risk. Gladioli will also be finishing so they need digging up too and the corms left somewhere fairly warm to dry.
I mentioned earlier
about sowing herbs for winter use but you can also dig some up from the garden, pot them up and keep the on
your kitchen windowsill.
Another job this month (and next)
is to collect fallen leaves to make leaf mould. You can make an enclosure with wire netting to put them in to rot down. I have no room for one so I put then in plastic bags until they are partly rotted
then add them to the compost.
The tomato season is coming to an end in the greenhouse. There will probably still be green tomatoes on but they won’t ripen now. It is best to pick them and dig up the plants. When the border is cleared you can use it to plant something else such as lettuce. The green tomatoes can be ripened by putting them
in a drawer along with a banana skin. You should have plenty of crops for
harvesting now and you may want to freeze some for winter use. Root crops such as carrots and turnips can be stored in buckets of sand or compost. The main crop potatoes should be ready so may as well dig them up and store them. You can use paper sacks (not plastic) but I keep mine in large supermarket trays. They must be kept in the dark and I put them in what used to be the coal shed at the side of the house. Don’t store any that are damaged or showing any sign of rot. You need to keep looking at them every so often to make sure they are still OK and I find this easier in trays than in sacks.
There should be some apples and pears ready for picking too. I store these in trays in the shed. They also need looking at occasionally, like potatoes.
Key to suppliers D (Dobies), S (Suttons), M (Marshalls), R (Robinsons), Sh (Shelleys, B (Browns), F(Fothergills).
Two marrows
46 Simply Vegetables
The green tomatoes can be ripened by putting them in a drawer along with a banana skin