Make the Most of the Autumn Window

Autumn is the season that quietly decides how good next year will be. The soil is still warm from summer, the light is fading but not gone, and there is a satisfying urgency to getting things done before the first proper frost. Whether you are working a half-plot allotment, a kitchen garden behind the house, or a few acres of smallholding, the jobs below are the ones that repay you twice over. Get them done now and you will thank yourself in March.

Clear Spent Crops and Tidy the Beds

The first task is the least glamorous and the most important: clearing out what has finished. Beans, courgettes, cucumbers, tomatoes and sweetcorn will all be done by early to mid-autumn, and leaving them to rot on the bed invites disease and slugs. Pull the plants up, add healthy material to the compost heap, and bin anything showing signs of blight, mildew or rust rather than composting it.

Do not strip the ground bare and leave it naked over winter. Bare soil loses nutrients to rain and structure to compaction. Options:

• Sow a green manure such as field beans, grazing rye or winter tares on empty beds.
• Spread a thick mulch of well-rotted compost or manure and let the worms work it in.
• Cover with cardboard or black polythene if you want a clean, weed-free start in spring.

Leave the roots of brassicas in the ground for a few weeks — they help break up the soil and the stumps are easier to remove once they have softened.

Spread Compost and Feed the Soil

Autumn is the best time of year to improve your soil. Spread two to three inches of well-rotted manure or garden compost over beds and let the weather and worms incorporate it over winter. Do not dig it in deeply — a light forking is plenty, and on no-dig beds you can simply leave it on the surface.

A few specifics worth remembering:

• Keep fresh manure away from beds where you plan to grow carrots, parsnips and other root crops — it causes forking.
• Add lime to brassica beds if your soil is acidic, but never at the same time as manure.
• Empty and turn the compost heap. Autumn is a good moment to mix in the summer's kitchen waste and shredded prunings.
• Mulch around fruit bushes, rhubarb and perennial herbs, but leave a gap around the stems to avoid rot.

If you keep livestock, muck out sheds and pens now and stack the manure to rot down for next autumn's spreading. Well-rotted manure is black gold on a smallholding.

Plant Garlic, Onions and Spring Bulbs

Garlic planted in October and November almost always outperforms spring planting. It needs a cold spell to split into proper bulbs, and autumn planting gives it a head start on the weeds. Choose a hardneck or a good hardneck-type softneck suited to your area, split the bulbs into individual cloves, and plant them pointed end up, about two inches deep and six inches apart.

Autumn-planting onion sets such as Senshyu Yellow or Electric are also worth a row — they crop a few weeks ahead of spring sets and often miss the worst of the onion fly. Plant them in firm, weed-free ground and net them against birds, which love to pull them out.

While you are at it, get your spring bulbs in. Daffodils and narcissi want to go in first, followed by tulips in November. Plant them at roughly three times their own depth and mark the spot so you do not slice through them with a hoe in spring.

Protect Tender Plants and Prepare for Frost

Cold weather will arrive suddenly, usually on a clear night in late October or early November. Move tender potted plants such as citrus, olives, agapanthus and pelargoniums into a greenhouse, conservatory or cool porch before the first frost, and reduce watering as growth slows.

Things to do before the cold bites:

• Fleece or cloche late salads, spinach, chard and winter lettuce.
• Lift and store maincrop potatoes, and check stored onions and squash for signs of rot.
• Wrap terracotta pots in bubble wrap or hessian, or stand them on feet to stop waterlogging and cracking.
• Mulch the crowns of tender perennials such as globe artichokes and tree ferns with a thick layer of leaf mould or straw.
• Drain hosepipes, water butts and irrigation lines before the first hard freeze.

On a smallholding, this is also the moment to check field shelters, mend gates and make sure livestock have dry standing ground before the wet months set in.

Prune, Mulch and Look After Fruit

Autumn is the classic time for planting bare-root fruit trees, and the sooner they go in, the better they establish before spring. Plant them in a sunny, sheltered spot with the graft union just above soil level, stake them well, and water them in even if rain is forecast.

Once leaves have fallen, prune apples and pears to remove dead, damaged and crossing branches. Leave plums, cherries and other stone fruit until spring or midsummer to avoid silver leaf infection — this is a common mistake and worth remembering.

Clear fallen leaves from around fruit trees and bushes, especially if you had scab or black spot this year, and add them to the leaf mould heap rather than the compost bin. Rake leaves into a wire cage and leave them for a year or two — the result is the finest mulch you can give a kitchen garden.

Finally, take stock. Note what cropped well and what failed, order your seed potatoes and garlic, and sharpen your tools. A tidy shed and a written plan in October are worth more than any gadget in spring.