September is  normally the month of harvest festivals and Garden Shows (though this year is very different); churches, village halls and meeting rooms should be busy with local gardeners encouraged to ‘show off’ the flowers, fruit and vegetables that can be grown in the garden or allotment. You can, however still use the produce from your garden or allotment.  Chutney, pickles, jam and other delicious food can be preserved and used during the winter. Now is the time to go gathering the free fruits of the countryside; brambles (blackberries) are easy to find in hedgerows and they make delicious pie fillings and bramble jelly. Apples will also be ready for picking; watch out for wasps as they too like the taste of a ripe apple, particularly those on the ground.

Frost can occur early in September and put paid to some tender summer plants if they are not protected. In some years, the first frost can be late, and the growing season is extended by an ‘Indian Summer’, a term used by gardeners when good weather continues well into the autumn. Many birds that are summer visitors have already flown to their warmer winter homes but there is still plenty of garden activity and things to do.

Any dead plants can be consigned to the compost heap and there will be bare patches in the vegetable plot after crops have been harvested. Now is the time to sow some over-wintering vegetables, perhaps spring cabbage, winter lettuce or early broad beans.

As plants die, collect some of their seeds in an envelope; make sure that the seed is dry and that the name of the plant is written on the envelope. Next spring you will be able to sow these seeds and produce new plants; you could be surprised by the results.