Back in 1906 the magazine One & All Gardening described itself as “A popular annual for amateurs, allotment holders and working gardeners” and included monthly advice re what to do and when in a cottage garden. We decided to share this with you each month, some of the gardening advice remains valid today and other advice is simply interesting, we hope!
October 1906
“Take up and store late potatoes, carefully sorting and picking them over before pitting. Plant the potato grounds with coleworts and cabbages and sow a good breadth of Green Top Stone turnip for winter. Earth up celery and see that onions are stored in sound condition and dry.
Give the garden a complete and general clean-up as soon as clear and manure and dig all vacant ground.
Trim hedges, scour ditches, edge grass walks and put all decomposable matter in the piggery or on the dunghill.
Gather all late apples and pears carefully and store in a cool outhouse. When apples are very prolific the winter sorts keep well stored in the earth in small pits, like potatoes, covered over with a layer of straw and earth in the same way. Walnuts may be kept as sound and sweet as when gathered till March in the same way and then sold at four times what they will fetch when there is a glut of them in the autumn.
Clear all flower beds and borders, trim the roses, vines and fruit trees on the cottage as soon as the fruits are gathered; plant a few bulbs and spring plants in the beds and borders around the house; clean paths and yard so as to give everything a cared for look. Rearrange the plants in the window and begin by thorough cleansing the latter. The wasps, flies and gnats have made a terrible mess of the glass during the harvest and now this is over and the cleaning complete, the window garden should be set in order for the winter and a start made with a clean window.
The Fruit Garden – As the crops reach maturity and the season of growth draws to a close, the best opportunities for root pruning, the removal of exhausted and worn-out trees, the re-forming of fruit tree borders, and replanting of the same are all at hand.”
So come on, who knows what a colewort is?
