SEPTEMBER.
Lettuces may now be planted in frames, or in very warm borders, for winter use. Brocoli, cabbage and savoy plants may also be planted out, and young plants pricked out into nursery beds. Celery should be earthed up, and you should tie up the leaves of endive to blanch the plants white. The spinach sown in August should be thinned and cleared out, and small salading should be sown once a-week or fortnight. Gather ripe seeds as before, and see that the birds do not devour them. Now is a good time to plant the strong runner plants into separate beds, and at about fifteen inches asunder either way. Towards the end of the month hyacinth and tulip roots may be planted, as well as any other bulbous root. Anemone and ranunculus seed may be sown, and perennial plants transplanted. Continue to keep the flower borders always very clean, and begin digging vacant beds and borders for future planting.
OCTOBER.
Now the apples and pears begin to ripen. Seeds are still to be looked for and preserved, vacant spaces of ground are to be dug up and manured. Fruit trees may now be transplanted, and currant and gooseberry-trees may be planted. Recollect that the currant-trees may be cut close down to the fruit buds, but the gooseberry only half way down the last year’s wood. Cut out irregular growths and suckers, and keep them trained to a single stem below. Strawberry beds should this month have their winter dressing of manure, and all the runners cleared away close to the head of the main plants. Raspberry plants may be pruned, the old stems cut away, and the last year’s suckers’ stems selected for the next year’s bearings, and each of them shortened one-third in height. In the flower-garden the borders should be nicely dressed, and all kinds of plants may be transplanted, or their roots divided, and bulbs not yet planted may be put into the earth. Plant all kinds of shrubs and evergreen trees.
NOVEMBER.
Now is the time for digging up potatoes, and taking up carrots, parsnips, onions, &c., and storing them for winter use. Winter spinach should be weeded, and the red beet-root dug up. Onions may be pricked out to come in early in the spring. Trees may be pruned; all sorts of fruit trees and bulbous roots planted. Now tender plants should be removed to the pit or greenhouse.
DECEMBER.
Peas may be sown in a warm sheltered spot to come in early in the spring, as may Windsor and broad beans. Celery should be well earthed up, and all vacant ground manured, dug, or trenched. Secure the roots of newly planted trees from the frost by laying dungy litter round them, and the same may be done to the spots in which hyacinths, tulips, anemones, and ranunculuses are planted. Small young tender seedling flower plants also require care at this season. The borders may now be finally cleared and laid nice and smooth, the remainder of pot plants removed to the greenhouse or pit, which should be closed during the night, and only opened in fine mild weather; as the frost comes on place mats above the glass during the night, which should be removed in the morning. All leaves from trees, &c., should be collected in a pit for manure, free from sticks or stones, and the whole garden put into order for the frost.