Autumn Pick ripe apples, spread compost on empty beds and store root vegetables

As summer begins to fade, Jojo is busy picking ripening fruit before high winds threaten, storing root vegetables for the coming months and digging out well-rotted compost for spreading on empty beds

September In the garden

During my years as a gardener, I’ve been involved in various community gardening projects, including one at a local primary school, worked by me and another mother, the children in the after-school gardening club and the school gardener, who taught the children about all things ecological. As well as raised beds, in which we grew a variety of edibles and flowers, we had a small orchard with six heritage apple trees, two plum trees, and a strip of native hedgerow plants, including medlars, hazel and rowan trees, and two blackcurrant bushes. Four chickens, hatched out at school, scratched in a run beside the trees. Plenty came in the form of an enormous, 25m-tall cooking apple tree. The problem was always how to get the apples down.

In A New Orchard and Garden, the Yorkshire vicar William Lawson (1553-1635) describes various useful apparatus for picking: ‘A gathering apron like a poak before you, made of a purpose, or a wallet hung on a bough, or a basket with a sieve bottom, or skin bottome, with lathes or splinters under, hung in a rope to pull up and down.’ I found some great modern versions in the USA (at durokon.com) – padded nylon bucket bags that strap to your back, and a net bag with a scalloped plastic edge that you attach to a telescopic handle.

Lawson’s advice on picking for storing is: ‘Gather your fruit when it is ripe, and not before, else will it wither, and be tough and sower. All fruits generally are ripe when they begin to fall.’ Aside from looking out for unblemished fruit dropping, you can cup the apple and twist gently to see if it will disengage. Try to get them all down by the end of October when high winds and frosts threaten.

In the kitchen

‘I should sugar and preserve my days like fruit,’ wrote Sylvia Plath in her poem Last Words. It’s a good motto for this time of year when hedgerow and garden plot are bursting with fruits that need to be transformed into something longer lasting. We used to grow medlars (Mespilus germanica) in the school orchard. It is an unusual fruit, small and round, ripening to a glossy russet colour with a central rough ‘eye’ framed by five sepals. The sharp jelly made from this fruit goes well with game or smoked fish. To be eaten raw, the fruit must be bletted (overripe), but the jelly requires only that you cut the fruit into four, barely cover with water and then stew until soft. Put the fruit in a jelly bag and allow to drip overnight before boiling up at the ratio of 500g sugar to 600ml juice until the setting point is reached. Seal in jars that have been washed in soapy water and then heated in a warm oven (160°C) for ten minutes to sterilise.

If you haven’t grown the complex parsley- and celery-tasting herb lovage (Levisticum officinale),

then do sow some now (it needs cold to trigger germination). If you do have it, make a herb salt for use in soups or winter salads of smoked fish and peppery leaves, or on a Swedish smørrebrød (open sandwich) of brown bread, sliced boiled egg and radish. Pick a large bunch of fresh-looking leaves on a warm, dry day and blend with 200g sea salt, then push through a sieve to get rid of any fibres and freeze until required. You can also use the seeds later in a flour mix for bread.

Damsons make a good jelly as well as a terrific vodka – laid down now it will be ready for Christmas. You need 1kg damsons, 500ml of vodka, sugar to taste and a couple of large, sterilised preserving jars. Wash the damsons and remove any that are damaged. Pack them into the jars, stopping about 6cm from the top, and cover with vodka.

Put in a cupboard and give the jar a shake every so often. After four months, strain the contents through a jelly bag, wringing it to extract the maximum juice. Add the sugar bit by bit, stopping when it tastes good to you. Put the jars back in the cupboard, shaking every other day for at least two weeks. It’s ready when the liquid is clear and the sugar has dissolved. Strain into sterilised bottles.

If you want your alcoholic hit now, make a purée from cooked, sieved damsons sweetened with sugar, then take a teaspoon of the mixture and add to a glass of sparkling wine.

What to sow

• If you’re looking for cold-tolerant winter greens to be eaten raw or cooked, sow a few oriental greens such as komatsuna (mustard spinach) and the mustard greens ‘Osaka Purple’ and ‘Dragon’s Tongue’.

• The heat of the summer (plus your careful turning) should have cooked your compost beautifully. Now is the time to dig it out and spread it over empty beds or store it in rubble sacks for use later on. This will give you plenty of space to start laying down the excess plant matter generated as you clear summer crops of potatoes, beans and pumpkins.

• Store root vegetables such as carrots, potatoes, turnips, beetroots and swedes. Twist off the greens and bury the roots in boxes of sand in a cool shed, cellar or garage.

What to cook

• Classic plum and almond tart Try this rich tart if you have lots of plums or pluots (juicy apricot/plum hybrid). It requires a shortcrust pastry shell baked blind (225g pastry in 20-22cm tart tin). Make a rich, stiff almond paste of 200g each of sugar, coarsely ground almonds and butter whizzed up with 4 egg yolks, 1tbsp lemon zest and seeds from half a vanilla pod. Spoon it into the pastry case, smooth it and then arrange 16-20 plum halves: place one in the centre cut side up and make two further rings of plums.

Bake for 30-45 minutes at 190°C.