Clear the Ground While the Soil Is Still Warm

Autumn is the season when the kitchen garden pays you back for a summer of watering and weeding — and then asks for one last push before the light goes. The few weeks either side of the first frost are the most valuable working window of the year. Clear the beds, feed them and cover them now, and you will spend far less time fighting weeds and coaxing sulky seedlings next March.

Start with the spent crops. French and runner beans, courgettes, cucumbers, tomatoes and sweetcorn are usually finished by early October in most parts of the UK, and leaving them in place only shelters slugs and harbours disease. Cut the tops off legumes at ground level and leave the nitrogen-rich roots to break down in the soil. Where a crop has been hit by blight, mildew or white rot, clear the whole plant, roots and all, and bin it rather than composting it.

• Pull spent annuals and add healthy material to the compost heap.
• Bin diseased foliage, clubrooted brassica roots and blighted tomato haulm.
• Dig out bindweed, couch grass and ground elder — far easier to shift in damp autumn soil than in dry summer clay.
• Lift and store maincrop potatoes, onions and garlic once the tops have died back and the skins are papery.

As each bed empties, note what did well and what did not. A line in the notebook now about the carrot fly or the corner that stayed waterlogged will save you repeating the mistake.

Feed the Soil, Not Just the Beds

Spread well-rotted compost or manure over the surface of empty beds at roughly a barrowload per square metre — a generous 5–8cm layer — and let the worms do the digging for you. There is no need to fork it in; winter weather, frost and earthworm activity will work it down through the profile and improve structure far more gently than you could manage with a spade.

On heavy clay this is the single best thing you can do all year. On light, sandy soil the same treatment improves water retention and holds onto nutrients that would otherwise wash straight through. Build organic matter up little and often rather than in one thick dump.

Where you have no compost ready, sow a green manure instead. Field beans, grazing rye, winter tares and phacelia all germinate well in September and early October, cover bare ground through the winter and can be cut down in spring. Mustard is quick but is a brassica, so avoid it where brassicas are going next year.

Plant Garlic, Overwintering Onions and Broad Beans

Autumn planting gives you a head start and often a better crop. Garlic planted in October and November roots before the cold, then bulks up fast in May and June, producing bigger bulbs than spring-planted cloves. Choose a variety described as suitable for autumn planting, and never plant supermarket garlic, which may carry disease and is rarely suited to our climate.

• Split bulbs into individual cloves just before planting, keeping the papery skin intact.
• Push cloves in pointed end up, about 2.5cm deep, 15cm apart, in rows 30cm apart.
• On wet or heavy ground, plant into a raised bed or add a handful of grit to the hole to stop cloves rotting.
• Overwintering onion sets can go in at the same time; firm them in well so birds do not pull them out.
• Sow hardy broad beans in November for an early crop, and cloche the seedlings if the winter turns harsh.

A layer of mulch over autumn-planted crops keeps the soil workable and helps roots establish before the hard frosts arrive.

Protect Structure and Look After the Perennials

Autumn is also the moment to put the garden's bones in order. Clean and store canes, netting and plant supports. Empty and scrub water butts before the rain fills them again. Check raised bed boards, stakes and fruit cage netting for rot and repair what you can while your fingers still work.

Perennial crops need attention too. Cut down asparagus foliage once it has yellowed and mulch the bed. Prune autumn-fruiting raspberries to the ground and tie in the new canes of summer varieties. Rhubarb crowns benefit from a thick mulch of well-rotted manure, and established fruit bushes appreciate a feed of compost and a light tidy of congested branches. Leave herbaceous herbs until spring, but divide any clumps that have gone woody in the middle.

Finally, cover what you can. Bare soil loses nutrients to winter rain and grows a fine crop of weeds by February. Mulch, green manure or a sheet of cardboard weighed down with bricks will all keep the beds in good heart and make spring sowing a pleasure rather than a rescue mission.