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October in your garden

The Essential guide to work in your October garden.

Start sowing hardy crops nowA golden month of raking shadows, pumpkins and crunchy leaves underfoot. A month to enjoy the fiery richness of autumn before the year fades into its winter slumber.

Plan crop rotation

Harvest...

Apples, blackberries, French and runner beans, beetroot, Brussels sprouts, autumn cabbage, maincrop carrots, autumn cauliflower, celeriac, celery, chard, chicory, fennel, kohlrabi, lettuce, onions, parsnip, pears, maincrop peas, peppers, maincrop potatoes, quince, radishes, raspberries, sorrel, spinach, spring onions, winter squash and pumpkins, swede, rosemary and turnip.

Organic Gardening Magazine - In your Garden

Fruity facts:
Quince seems to have fallen out of favour in England, but it was once a favourite pudding, in the Middle Ages to the 19th-century finding fans such as Sir Issac Newton. Quince was popularly eaten baked and eaten with cream or made into marmalade and jellies. Marmalade was originally made from quince when it was first brought to this country from Portugal in the 15th century. Quince continued to be used for making marmalade until the 17th century when the citrus fruits we more commonly associated with this preserve became more widely used.

• More on this in the magazine

Seasonal tastes…

Haws, the fruit of the hawthorn bush, can be collected from late September onwards, and because of the high amount of pectin haws are great for making jams and jellies.

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Haw jelly
Place 3lb (1.3kg) of haws in a pan with 3 pints (1.8 litres) of water, simmer until the haws are cooked and then strain the liquid into another pan, adding 1lb (450g) of sugar per pint (600ml) of liquid. Mix the sugar and juice in the pan and boil until the setting point is reached. To test for set put a drop of the mixture onto a cold plate and push it with your finger, if it wrinkles then the mixture is ready for pouring into sterile jars
and sealing.


• More on this in the magazine

Hedgerow health…

Organic Gardening Magazine - Month in your Garden

Make a conker tincture by collecting fresh conkers as they fall to the ground, chop and add to a jar with enough vodka to cover them. Leave this chopped conker-vodka mixture for a month in a dark cupboard, shaking every few days. Strain and bottle. Take five drops in water twice a day for treatment of varicose vein or thread veins. Check with a herbalist first as conker tincture may sometimes cause digestive irritation.

• More on this in the magazine

Look out for…

Apple Day on 21 October. Designated as an ‘annual celebration of apples, orchards and local distinctiveness’ by charity Common Ground, apple-related events will be taking place up and down the country this month. Celebrate Apple Day by playing Apple Happy Families. Families are made up by tracing the lineage of one apple back through those that were crossed to make it, the parent apples and then parent varieties. For example, Discovery comes from a cross between Beauty of Bath and Worcester Pearmain, which comes from Devonshire Quarrenden. Each family is made up of four cards, and is played in the same way as traditional Happy Families. Make cards by drawing the apple varieties or printing them. Visit www.commonground.org.uk

• Much more in the magazine

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