The plot in October

Jobs on the plot

• Plant garlic. Now or next month. It needs the cold.
• Sow hardy broad beans. A variety bred for autumn sowing will stand the winter and crop a month early.
• Clear spent crops. Compost everything healthy. Bin anything with blight or white rot.
• Collect leaves for leaf mould. Bag them or pile them in a wire cage. In two years they make the best soil improver.
• Cut down asparagus fern. When it has turned yellow.
• Cover bare soil. With compost, cardboard or green manure. Bare soil loses its goodness to the rain.

Times are for an average year in the English Midlands. Go two weeks earlier in the mild south, and two to three weeks later in the north and in Scotland.