October Gardening
October is the perfect time to plant trees, shrubs, conifers, and hardy perennials—or spring bulbs like tulips and daffodils—and if you’re looking to sow cover crops or install lawns, now is the time for that as well.
Portland Nursery is always stocked up with fresh plants and seeds to help make your fall gardening goals a reality.
It’s also time to start cleaning the garden, protecting fall vegetables and preparing for frosts, but we’ll get into all that a little more below!
Harvest
Finish harvesting warm season veggies like green beans, corn, tomatoes and potatoes. There are great harvesting pointers on our September Tips page, please check it out. Apples, pears, fall raspberries and kiwi are potentially ready for harvest as well.
Many of these crops can be stored for winter consumption, most notably potatoes, squash, apples and pears. Root crops like carrots and beets can be stored in the ground or in another cool location.
Cleaning
It’s time to clean up finished veggie and fruit beds. Much of the debris left in the garden after summer can be added to a compost pile or bin, but diseased leaves, stems or fruit should be disposed of and not added to compost.
If your strawberries have grown into a thick ground cover, you should probably thin it out. They fruit better in subsequent years if divided and replanted with room to grow.
Raspberry canes that produced fruit this year will not produce again next year, so they should be pruned all the way down to the ground.
Planting and extending the season
Now is the ideal time to plant overwintering garlic, onion sets and shallots.
Bok Choi, overwintering cabbage, kale, chard and other salad greens can still be planted from starts in October, but it’s too late for planting seeds.
Frosts can occur in October, but November is more likely in Portland. Still, adding season extenders like row cover, cloches or cold frames help to keep frost off of leaves and create a warmer environment under the cover. Watch for slug damage on your greens, as always.
Now is also the best time to plant cover crops. Any garden bed that will not be in use until spring is a good candidate for cover crops that can protect against erosion, add nutrients to the soil, fix nitrogen and support pollinators. Learn more on our Cover Crops Page.
Dig a little deeper
Repurpose fallen leaves! Leaves can be used either for composting or as mulch in garden beds. If you are mulching with them, consider shredding them with the lawnmower or other tool first. Whole-leaf mulch is a slug friendly environment, and doesn’t protect the roots quite as well.
Late October or November is a good time for mulching in general. While your leaves are great, you can also use compost, bark, straw, or other materials. Please see our Fall Soil Maintenance Page for some detailed tips on mulching.
Mulch should only cover the roots and should never be piled up around stems or tree trunks. This can potentially cause damage or rot of the bark and underlying tissues.
We love conifers at Portland Nursery. Tall, soft, dwarf or prickly we eagerly anticipate their arrival every fall when they fill our nurseries with bright colors and interesting textures.
Deciding on the right ones can be tricky, so we’ve compiled a guide to help you make decisions.
Monthly Gardening Tips
Visit individual month pages for gardening ideas. Pages are regularly updated with projects for that month.
