GINA PARKINSON enjoys the colour as berries take on their autumn twinkle

DAYS are drawing in and a new season can be sniffed in the air. It is time for clearing the garden, getting ready for winter and preparing for spring.

The warm and sunny days that still occur at this time of year are joyful, with low sun lighting everything with a warm glow reflected in the turning leaves and rich colours of late summer blooms.

There are also berries aplenty in our garden this year, shiny on holly and bramble as the light catches the polished foliage and fruits of these plants.

Cotoneaster is also looking good, branches bowed with a heavy crop of large, gleaming deep red berries. The variety of this shrub in our garden is unknown, but it is a good specimen with big leaves and fruit. It reliably produces clusters of white flowers in spring that the bees hang around for days before they open then visit endlessly for days until the blooms eventually fade.

The berries are insignificant green beads to begin with and generally ignored until suddenly they are spotted again fatly scarlet beckoning in October once more.

Rowan trees are laden with fruit too this year. Ours carries bright orange berries that look wonderful against a clear blue autumn sky, but other members of this plant family range from yellow and white through to deep red.

Red berries are apparently the most popular on the bird menu but ours will be stripped at some point. A cloud of blackbirds will appear over a couple of days and gorge on this tempting fruit.

 

 In the vegetable garden

MANY apple trees will be ready for harvesting this month, October being the main apple-picking month. Test the fruit first before trying to pull it from the tree by gently lifting it from below and twisting. If it is ready the fruit will come away easily from the stem. If it resists leave it to ripen a little longer and try again in a few days. Excess apples can be stored for varying amounts of time according to the variety. Some will keep will for weeks and even months, while others need to be eaten fairly quickly.

Storage rules are the same whatever the variety. Only chose blemish-free fruits and put them in a box where they don’t touch each other. Place the box in a cool and airy place checking every three or four weeks and disposing of any that begin to rot.Weekend catch-upTHE first leaves are beginning to turn and soon the house will be littered with dried foliage blown in through the front door.

We have large trees lining the road where we live that freely donate their unwanted foliage during October and November.

So I will be out there regularly sweeping them up and depositing the collection into the leaf bin. This sounds grander than it is, just wire mesh fastened around four posts, a simple device that does the job perfectly.

The leaves collected last year are rotting down nicely, but I don’t think they will be ready to spread about the flower beds this autumn. I have found it generally takes a couple of years for them to rot down completely.

So this mixture will be moved to a nearby compost heap, which is at a similar stage leaving the leaf bin ready for this year’s collection.

 

Open gardens

Tomorrow

In aid of the National Gardens Scheme

Ellerker House, Everingham, YO42 4JA, 15 miles south east of York and five-and-a-half miles from Pocklington. A five-acre garden on sandy soil with mature trees, a formal lawn, extensive grass area, a woodland walk around the lake, oak and thatched breeze hut, herbaceous border and seating areas for viewing the garden. Open noon to 5pm, admission £3.50.

 

Gardening TV and radio

Tomorrow

8am, BBC Radio Humberside, The Great Outdoors. With Blair Jacobs and Doug Stewart.

8.30am, BBC2, Gardeners’ World. Fruit picking.

9am, BBC Radio Leeds, Tim Crowther and Joe Maiden.

9am, BBC Radio York, Julia Lewis.

9am, BBC2, The Beechgrove Garden. The programme visits a community garden at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee.

2pm, BBC R4, Gardeners’ Question Time. Chairman Eric Robson and panellists Bob Flowerdew, Christine Walkden and Matthew Wilson answer questions at West Dean College, Chichester.

Friday

3pm, BBC R4, Gardeners’ Question Time. The team is on the Settle to Carlisle railway taking questions from the passengers. With Pippa Greenwood, Chris Beardshaw, Bunny Guinness and chairman Eric Robson.

8.30pm, BBC2, Gardeners’ World. Monty Don continues to prepare his garden for winter whilst Carol Klein takes a trip to Surrey to look at wild and cultivated heathers.