Once the last courgettes have given up and the beans have gone leathery, the temptation is to shut the shed and forget the plot until March. Spend a couple of dry weekends on it now, though, and you save yourself a fortnight of catching up in spring.
Clear before the weather turns
Pull spent crops while the soil is still workable. Tomato and potato foliage should go in the bin rather than the compost if there was any sign of blight, as the spores overwinter happily. Everything else, chopped small, breaks down fine on the heap.
Get on top of the weeds now. A bittercress plant that flowers in November will seed a whole bed by April, so it is worth a slow walk along the rows with a hand fork.
Feed the soil, not the plants
Autumn is the right time to add bulk. A barrowful of well-rotted manure or garden compost spread two or three centimetres thick over each bed will be pulled down by worms over winter, so you rarely need to dig it in.
- Heavy clay: add compost and a scattering of grit to open it up.
- Light sandy soil: pile on organic matter to help it hold water.
- Bare beds: sow a green manure such as field beans or grazing rye to hold nutrients.
Cover the bare ground
Soil left open all winter loses goodness to the rain and caps into a hard crust. A mulch of compost, leaf mould or even a sheet of cardboard weighed down with bricks keeps it crumbly and warmer, which means it dries and warms faster come sowing time.
Last tidy jobs
Scrape and oil your spades and forks before they go away, empty and stack pots out of the frost, and turn the compost heap one final time. A plot put away tidily in October is a pleasure to come back to.