Get busy in October!

October is a great gardening month, yet quite a busy one. Now is ideal plan- ting time: the worst of the winter rain should be passed, but the soil is nice and wet.

So make a survey of your garden, remove anything that drowned during our late rains and plan replacements immediately.

If you sow your own seed: get cracking! It’s time for all the summer veggies (peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, etc) and also the summer annuals (marigolds, zinnias, cosmos, etc).

It’s also an excellent time for feeding: the spring growth period extends over the next few months and the plants will benefit greatly from a good feed now. A nice thick mulch of kraal manure and horse manure is recommended.

Watch out for slugs and snails, these critters are at their most voracious now and in autumn! And before we go any further it’s too early for sweet basil! Basil is an annual hot weather plant with a very short life span (unless it is well managed). So don’t even try sowing seed directly into the cold wet earth, yet. The seeds are likely to come up and then sadly keel over.

If you are completely desperate and have a warm sheltered windowsill, you can try starting a few plants in pots to plant out in late October. Nurseries “start” basil plantlets in tunnels and hothouses now, to supply all you desperadoes, but be warned, these pampered babies are delicate and subject to lots of nasty illnesses. So wean them gently. If they are dumped into cold unprepared earth they too are likely to wave bye-bye! Choose a well drained, sunny spot, prepare it with liberal quantities of real compost and manure and then wait till late October. (Well, you can always dream about pesto, or make it with something else.)

Then, in late October, buy some pre-prepared babies. Let them live in their bags on top of the previously prepared bed for a few days to acclimatise and then plant them. This way you ought to have basil in plenty for Christmas. Ideally, sweet basil should only be sown in November. This is when plant and climate are in tune with each other. Truth is, a row of six basil plants planted in early summer and well maintained should provide such copious quantities that anyone who owns a freezer will still be giving pesto away.

Right now is ideal parsley time. Parsley prefers cool weather, and I’ve never met drowned parsley. They’re thirsty creatures, so love this time of year. People seem to struggle with growing parsley, so here are a few easy steps to follow for growing magnificent specimens:

1. Make sure your parsley babies are fresh.  Parsley is a biennial plant (lives for 2 years). Thus, if you buy a two year old plant it will already be root bound and stunted. Parsley has a taproot, one long deep delving root. If it can’t sink it’s root down deeply it will never thrive.

2. A recipe for parsley holes:
Ingredients:
1 x bucket; 1 x spade; lots x manure

Method:
Choose a semi-shade place, not full sun. Dig a hole the size of the bucket. Fill the bucket to halfway with composted manure (yes, I am serious!). Pour manure into hole, mix with an equal quantity of soil. If you haven’t already filled the original hole, top up with more soil. Now make a depression large enough to tuck the baby in. Water well. Never deprive parsley plants of water.

A common mistake with parsley is incorrect harvesting. You should pluck entire outside leaves and leave the immature light green soft center ones to feed the plant. A wellgrown, well plucked parsley should provide copious quantities of luscious leaves.

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