Monty Don's Guide To Fall Gardening Preparation! ｜ Gardener's World

Hello, welcome to a rather soggy gardener's world. Well, it's wet today, but it's not particularly cold. But there's no doubt about it, winter's coming. We can't hold it at bay. And we will get some cold weather almost inevitably over the next few weeks. I've got one particular plant in the garden that won't tolerate any cold at all, and I definitely don't want it to be damaged. So that's the first thing I'm going to be digging up and getting undercover today. This week, Rachel gives us the early spring instalment of her cut flower diary, and sows seed to provide masses of annual and biennial blooms. This has got to be the part I look forward to the most. The sun's out, and at last I can get direct sowing outside with those hardy annuals. And Carol is celebrating the glorious autumnal display of Japanese maples by visiting a grower who is devoted to these dramatic but elegant trees. When some of them get to this size, they're almost becoming part of the family. These are some tremendous plants for me, and I really love them. Quite a few plants that are still flowering will need protection over winter. For example, we've got the chocolate cosmos, we've got dahlias, cannas. These are all plants that will take some frost, but can be killed if it gets too cold, and they will all need protecting and bringing in. But don't do it yet. The thing to do is to wait until they get blackened by frost, because they grow right up to the last moment. So, for example, dahlia tubers are growing as we speak, they're getting bigger and bigger, and next year's flowers will depend upon really nice, big tubers. However, one or two plants are genuinely tender, and I've got a banana here in the jaw garden that won't take any frost at all. So I'm going to lift it today just in case there's a cold snap and I might lose it. This is the Abyssinian banana. And you can see it's still looking fantastic, which is why I want to take it out before the frost gets it. So I've got to dig it up and take it indoors. But the first thing I'm going to do is tie it up. I'm just tying it like that to keep the leaves out of the way. OK, let's try and dig it out. It didn't come in a very big pot, so I wouldn't expect the roots to have grown too big. I'm rather hoping they haven't at any rate. This is the Insetia ventricosa. If you grow Musa bajou, it's a little hardier. So if you live in the south and you've got a sunny position and you're prepared to protect it with fleece, then you probably can keep it outside if it's not too cold. However, this insetti will not survive any amount of cold and it's coming in. It could look good for another month. If we had no frost, it would be fine. But it just won't tolerate it and it would be very sad to lose a plant of this size. There we go. This is mucky, quite dirty work, but Rachel has been using more finesse. She's making a cut flower garden and all this year she's been keeping a diary of it. And we join her when last spring she began direct sowing seeds. Back in early spring, I set myself the challenge of growing my own cut flowers. I decided to record a diary of the different stages of my experiment to monitor how I got on. I sowed a variety of seeds in the greenhouse in March to get me started, but once the frosts had disappeared, I could finally get to work outside. This has got to be the part I look forward to the most. The soil's warmed up, sun's out, and at last I can get direct sowing outside with those hardy annuals. And I'm aiming here for a really nice, fine tilth. This nice, crumbly texture on the surface of the soil. Because I'm in a productive part of the garden, in the kitchen garden, I'm going to grow these like a crop. I'm going to be sowing nigella into here and they only need to go a few millimetres under the surface. Just take a pinch of seed and I just drizzle it in, but really being as sparing as I can. I knew if I planted nigella in spring, I'd have cutting material throughout the summer because even when the delicate flowers are over, the seed pods can still be used in arrangements. It's important to water them as soon as you've got them sown, really, so they germinate quickly. Now, because most of these beds are going to be filled with single varieties, I thought I'd have a bit of an experiment. And in this one, I'm going to sow these fantastic mixes. Some of them are actually specifically cut flower mixes and others are colour-coded. These are all blues. You can see here there's a mixture. We've got salvia, we've got delphinium, we've got convolvulus, we've got more nigella here, centuria. And these, instead of doing them in drills, I can just broadcast. And I'm aiming to cover this evenly but thinly. There we are. The reason I embarked on this experiment was to give me a constant supply of flowers throughout the year that I can cut and enjoy in my home. One place which is open to the public and is home to a fantastic cutting garden is Parham House in West Sussex. When the owners bought the estate in 1922, the lady of the house wanted fresh flowers in every room. So it's really been the responsibility of the head gardener since the 20s to provide cut flowers for the house. About 70% of our cut, I would say, would be annuals and bulbs and biennials because they're such generous plants. They're almost cut-and-come-again flowers. We cut twice a week and we produce about 20 bucketfuls of cut flowers and that goes from April through till October. We try and create as naturalistic sort of arrangement as we can. So they're very English cottage garden plants. And some of the things that we've got here, things like the gadishes and the cornflowers and the amimagus, really sort of epitomise that country look. So we try and concentrate on those more unusual things that you don't necessarily see in the supermarket. Some of the real showstoppers that we cut and some of the star performers, we've got things like delphiniums and aeromurice, which are very upright flowers which you can then put through a vase which gives you a lot of drama. We also grow a lot of smaller infilling plants. Texture's just as important as colour. And if you can give different textures, different flower shapes, that brings a lot more to an arrangement as well. So plants like sweetwilliams and calendulas will support some of those big showstoppers and give you that colour foil behind. Every plant in the garden, I think, has got value as a cut flower. It's just exploring it and experimenting as you go. Well, there's no doubt at all that the display at Parham is absolutely stunning and a real inspiration for me. I mean, that's the sort of thing I'm aspiring to. And I have to say, I'm also really impressed by the way that they've used plants in the cutting garden that perhaps I think of more as border plants. And one of them really struck me is the verbena benoriensis, which are just those fabulous sort of clouds of soft mauve flowers on those wiry stems. And I think they could be really useful for me. And I've slightly missed the boat in terms of sowing seed and a little bit too late, but I've managed to get ahead of myself a bit by getting some plug plants. And they're simple as pie to just plant up like that. It feels a bit like cheating. Right. Excellent. So I feel like I'm really motoring now. I've got some plug plants in, lots of seeds sown, but I've got itchy fingers. And I'd like to go around the garden now and see what I can cut to make myself a lovely bunch of flowers for the weekend. There are some wonderful blooms around in spring. So thankfully, I didn't have to look too far. Only taken five minutes. But there we are. Spring in a vase. Roll on summer. That simple excitement of sowing seed and then waiting for them to grow and flower can't be beaten. And of course, next week, we will start to see those seeds coming to flower. No flowering for this banana, I'm afraid. That's it for this winter. I could pot this up, put it in a greenhouse porch or a conservatory, as long as it was above freezing, and enjoy it growing in a container all winter. But it would have to be enormously big, much bigger than the greenhouses I've got here. So you need a lot of space. But if you've got a small insetti, that's a completely viable option. Grow it on indoors, harden it off next April and May, and plant it out when you're sure every chance of frost is gone. But something as big as this, really very, very few private houses will have room for it. So the important thing is to realise what matters in terms of preserving it and what doesn't. The roots matter more than anything else. They must be looked after. And the stem, which goes right up to here, that matters. And that's going to get bigger and bigger every year. So we want to look after that. But the foliage is all freshly grown this year. I know it's the thing that matters most in the border, but in terms of the plant, it's the most disposable part of the plant. So I can cut these off without in any way either damaging the plant itself or reducing next year's display. There we go. I'm actually going to take these indoors and put them in a vase. So eat your heart out, Rachel. Now, that leaves me with a fairly chunky banana stem and roots. The next thing to do is to remove as much soil from around the roots as I can. And the reason I'm doing this is to stop moisture collecting and to discourage it from growing at all. Because at this stage, I want to put the plant into hibernation, really keep it dormant. If you grow cannas, you can treat these much the same way. You store it in a cool, dark place, protected from frost, but not having enough light or heat to grow at all. The next stage is to drain it. I don't want to store it wet for the risk of rotting. I've got an old dustbin and I'm going to try putting it in that. I'm going to stand this upside down in here and I'll leave that for a couple of days, if not more, to drain it out, let the soil on the roots dry out and then store it somewhere cool and dark. And that will last all winter quite happily, dormant, not growing, but alive. And then next March, April, I'll bring it out, pot it up, bring it into the greenhouse. It can start to grow again. Right, final job is to put these in some water and enjoy them for a day or two indoors. And here are some other jobs that you can be getting on with this weekend. It's time to prepare your rhubarb for optimum performance next year. The best single thing you can do is give it a thick mulch of well-rotted manure or garden compost, but be careful not to cover the crowns themselves. This will keep in the moisture and feed the plants and maximise those shoots early in the new year. Chicory has been growing strong green foliage all summer. Now, this has been feeding the roots, but in itself is not very good to eat. However, now the colder weather is coming, you'll find new leaves appearing, which have a different colour and are much sweeter and delicious either raw or cooked. Gradually start to remove the old summer leaves so that they don't fall on the new shoots, get damp and then rot. This way, you'll ensure you'll have that delicious harvest right through winter. Winter containers standing on a hard surface can suffer the risk of sitting in a puddle of water. So lift them up and place them on blocks to make sure that they can drain properly. I've grown a whole bed of celery this year. And celery is essentially a swamp plant. It likes lots and lots of water. It likes good drainage too, though. So the raised bed has been good for it. But the very dry September we had wasn't so good. So if you are growing celery next year on a raised bed, do remember to water it. But now's its season. Not too bad. Wouldn't win any prizes. And it's one of those crops that you never really eat all of it. But it doesn't seem right if you don't have any of it. You always grow a bit too much. And its cousin, celeriac, is a plant we never have enough of. I love celeriac. The leaves look the same, they smell the same, but the root, and it's actually not really the root, it's a fleshy basal plate, is what you cook. Again, it likes lots and lots of moisture. And a good thing to do at this time of year is just pull off any leaves that are growing to the horizontal. Just go around the plants, pulling the leaves off, cleaning up around them. And then scoop the soil away from around the plate. And that will stop any roots growing out and let that plate get bigger, because that's what you want. And it will go on growing for another month or so. And that isn't terribly frost-hardy. It's good for down to about minus five. So a couple of plants that probably aren't grown enough, but there's that distinctive flavour that I wouldn't be without. Tomatoes have done their stuff. We've got a freezer filled with tomatoes, tomatoes roasted, tomatoes sauce made, and we'll be eating those right through the winter. But now we've got an empty greenhouse. And I hate to see this space wasted, because there are a range of crops, particularly salad crops, which grow very well in the greenhouse, but also will give you fresh leaves right the way through until you plant the first tomatoes. Now, the ground is obviously pretty exhausted. That has been feeding the tomatoes and giving them nutrition. So what I do like to do is add a layer of compost. It doesn't have to be a lot, just about an inch or so. And that will do all that you need to give that little bit of extra nutrition to any kind of leafy plant. What I want from these beds, above all else, are fresh leaves, salads. And you need to choose your salads for this winter growing period carefully. You can't just put in cos lettuce, the sort of things that we would normally grow in May, June, July in our gardens. Whereas some lettuce, and particularly some of the Japanese leaf plants, are much better suited to growing with very low light levels and colder temperatures. It's too late to sow seeds. Even if they germinate, the light levels are getting too low for them to grow. You need to buy young plants, and you can do this. You can buy plants in plugs, and you can either get them through the post, you can get them from garden centres, you can get them off the internet. They are readily available. And, for example, this is mitsuna. Mitsuna is a Japanese leaf, slightly peppery, crossed between mustard and rocket, really. And what I like about it is it makes a big plant, lots of foliage, and you can cut it down to the ground and you get fresh growth. You can eat it raw, and you can cook with it. So, plenty of opportunity for using it. So, we put these in and just go through the compost, down in there, and there it goes. So, the sort of spacing I'm looking at is about like that. And these plants will grow to fill that gap. This bed will have no bare soil at all. The whole thing will be covered. As well as green mitsuna, I've got some purple mitsuna, which will look great, taste much the same. Similar in look, but much more mustardy is mustard. This will add a real bit of edge. And one of the things that you'll find if you're trying to grow lettuce varieties, they get a little bit insipid, particularly around about January, February time, when they haven't had much growth. So, something with heat, with bitterness, with spice, is really welcome, because it's good, strong taste. Endive is really good. It's a form of chicory. You get this rosette of leaves. It adds a slight bitter touch to a salad. Cut and come again, you can probably get two or three cuttings from it. I'm going to fill this up. And my goal is to have enough salad plants in this greenhouse to be able to come and collect leaves for a fresh salad every day of the year. Now, that's planning ahead. But Carol has been looking at a plant which probably more than any other revels in the glory of the season. Autumn is a season of enchantment. The changing colours in the garden offer a magical panorama of oranges, russets and reds. It's to trees we look for the most spectacular show. But surely none of them can hold a torch to the fiery display created by Japanese maples. Ed Smith has devoted his life to growing the very best Japanese maples, sourced from around the globe. He specialises in trees that are best suited to our UK gardens. You're so used to seeing those in little pots or small gardens, but here they are as big trees. Yeah, they're amazing. These are now, what, 50 years old? Probably been in the oven for the last 30 years. Palmatums is the species that we grow most of on the nursery and it's the one that has the most variety in it. So there's a palmatum to suit every garden. They're exquisite trees, aren't they? They give a garden a bit of elegance. I dare say you've got quite a few at home, haven't you? We have got hundreds of varieties of maple at home and you don't realise when you start growing them how you become addicted to maples. These are probably the kind of aces we're more used to thinking of for our gardens, aren't they? That's right. Lots of people complain about their aces frazzling and leaf scorch on them, but is it sun that does that? This red one here, Crimson Queen, and this green one here, Dissectum viridi, they're doing very well in full sun. I would say the wind is probably the worst culprit. The leaves are quite thin and they struggle to cope. Equally, if the plants are in a pot and the water's irregular, you can start to see those signs starting to appear on a plant. Right, so in that case, it's drought. That's right. Did a plant like this just get like this? Did it grow in this beautiful shape? You can prune it and keep the shape that you're looking for, but the more important thing is not to prune hard. I say to people, don't be afraid to prune your maples. Just don't go into old wood. This plant here, even though it's a lot smaller, is the same age as that one there. Right. This produces lots of seed, and this is then sown, and in about two to three years' time, it becomes big enough for us to use it as what's known as a rootstock to graft a piece of this. If you like, this crimson queen onto the rootstock. You always use that as rootstock because it's vigorous. You're always looking for rootstock to give plants some vigour. And that's how you grow all these wonderful aces? That's how practically all of these varieties that we have here are produced, is from grafting from a seed off ace of palmatum. Wood from something like this. And putting the two together. Magical process. So this is your outdoor laboratory? Yeah, this is where it all happens. So this is a three-year-old ace of palmatum. This is what we're going to graft onto it. It's a variety called ace of palmatum bloodgood. What we need to do now is remove the leaves off this scion here. Scion is the name for the piece you're going to put onto the top, the variety. Trim it off there. It's the exciting bit. This is where the skill starts to come in, really. Make a nice long cut down one side. And then I'll just make another little cut at the back, so it makes a V shape. That's the scion prepared. I then am going to make a matching cut on the rootstock. That looks pretty good. Insert it like so. You need to tie it. That's an elasticated band. But you could use cotton or raffia, something similar. And keep the tension on the rubber band as you go around. So it's pulling the surfaces together. And that's it. It's beautiful. And all you need to do now is just wax that graft so as it stops losing moisture. And then in about six weeks' time, we'll end up with one like this. Right. So this was grafted six weeks ago. What will you do when it reaches this stage? What we need to do then is actually chop all this away. Oh, look at that. You know, using the vigour which is in that plant is now going to go into that new piece that you've put on there. So that's a whole brand-new tree. And hopefully it will do well. There are so many beautiful trees you've got. So many different varieties. This one here has been a popular one. It's an amazing specimen and it's one called kinshi. The translation from Japanese into English is golden harp strings. It's totally delightful. It is a beautiful plant. But you must be thinking all the time about what to propagate. You know, it takes a few years. So you've got to be thinking ahead. What are we going to be growing in a few years' time? When I recently been to Japan, there was one out there called bihu. It just stood out above everything else that was there. It's one that is going to be ever so popular, I would think. When some of them get to this size, they're almost becoming part of the family because they've been here for so many years. It's just a tremendous plant for me and I really love them. Absolutely wonderful. I do too. I do love the Japanese maples and have tried to grow them here at Longmeadow, but come a bit unstuck with the wind, they really have suffered from the sharp winds we get here. And I gave it up. Although that was some time ago and the hedges have grown taller and the trees and maybe there'll be enough shelter for me to have another bash. But from the outset of this garden, I have grown our one native maple, Acer campestra, the field maple. And I love it. I've grown them right round the edge of the pond. In fact, they ring the whole garden. I've got a hedge of them. They're very adaptable. They make a good tree, a specimen tree on its own. They make a good hedge. You can cut them, you can clip them, you can train them, or you can just celebrate them as they are. And as for autumn colour, I think they're as good as any. They turn a glorious yellow. And for about 10 days, they glow as bright as anything in the garden. That's it for today. But all things being equal, I'll be back here next time at Longmeadow. So until then, bye-bye.