Vegetables

Depending on their position and soil types, not all gardens can be cultivated intensively from now on. If this is the case in your vegetable garden, consider raised beds to give better drainage and increased soil warmth.

Rubbish should be cleaned up and taken to a green waste recycling depot or added to the compost bin. In colder months, compost heaps rarely heat up enough to destroy infective spores of fungoid diseases or the eggs of insect pests, so add only healthy material.

Dig over areas that will not have winter crops and apply lime (100g per sq m). Fresh manure can be added and will decompose over winter. Alternatively, sow oats or barley for digging during October as green manure.

Plant out cabbages to mature in spring. Sow broad beans about 2cm deep and in a double row, with 20cm between the rows. The well-known Exhibition Long Pod variety is still popular but plants need good support, as do Evergreen and the very tall (2.3m) heritage Red Broad Bean. A smaller variety, such as Coles Early Dwarf, may be more suitable for the smaller garden, although the long-pod varieties are generally hardier. Beans transfer nitrogen to the soil, a valuable side effect of growing the vegetable.

All crops should be kept weed-free by hoeing around them. Hoeing lets excess moisture evaporate and oxygen from the air in to penetrate the upper layers of soil for organisms that convert organic material into plant food.

Carrots and beetroot can be lifted and stored for winter. Put undamaged roots in a heap in a dry corner of the garden and cover with loose soil. This makes it easier to gather them as needed than digging from frozen soil in midwinter.

Hedges trimmed now will remain tidy for the next six months. If severe trimming is needed to reduce an overgrown hedge, cut one side only and wait until new growth is visible before doing the second.

 

Flowers

Ground can be prepared over the next month for planting rose bushes in winter and early spring. Add plenty of manure, digging deeply so it gets into the lower levels of the soil. For light, sandy soils, use fairly fresh cow manure to retain moisture. Keep manure at low depths and add lime on top. On heavy clays, straw, stable manure or a rich garden compost is preferable. Gypsum is invaluable in helping break down clay.

Sweet pea seed can be sown now for flowers in late spring.

 

Fruit

In the glasshouse, tomatoes still with fruit to ripen can be helped along by having most of their leaves removed so plant foods are diverted from the roots into the fruit. If only a few fruit are left, cut them off, attached to a portion of stem, and hang in a warm spot to ripen.

When harvesting is over, pull the plants out immediately to let the soil rest.

Tomatoes grown in pots or bags should be removed and the soil put on the garden, where it will weather into rich garden soil.

Replace soil in greenhouses at least every other year.