They grow up so fast
Your garden has lots to offer you all year round – but it’s up to you to strike while the soil is still warm and get planting for an awesome autumn
AUTUMN is nature’s time for planting. While a lot of the heat from summer is gone, the soil is still warm – which means plants can send out roots and get established before winter.
Here are my top crops to get into the ground now so that they pay dividends next year: air-gaps around it, meaning water cannot get in and rot the bulb.
If you are planting garlic varieties, these can be chosen based on the culinary uses you have in mind – strong and light varieties have very differing tastes. Cultivar Spanish Roja will give you a beautifully strong flavour, with the extra benefits that its cloves peel easily and it tends to store well. Garlic prefers an alkaline soil, so you can add lime to reduce the pH level below 6.5 to keep it thriving.
Pop the cloves into the earth about six inches apart, with the flatter basal plate facing downwards.
Plant them to a depth that leaves about an inch of soil between the tip of the clove and the surface. SPEEDY salad crops can grow at any time and are often a series of leafy crops, such as spinach and rocket.
I had a large empty container left over from a tree I planted last year, so I just filled it with soil and cast a speedy salad mix over the top and sprinkled compost over it.
Now it happily grows outside the house, where it’s easy to reach and to regularly harvest leaves from.
Each year I get two clear crops from it – you can do that periodically right up until it gets too cold to do so. SOFT fruit bushes, such as currants, make marvellous plants to have around because they’re easy to grow in a wide range of soil conditions.
You can site them in containers, in the midst of your fruit and veg, or even in among ornamental borders.
Their lovely foliage flowers in spring and then during summer you get the fruits as well.
Try a few different varieties and dot these around your outside space.
Blueberries are a classic soft fruit addition, preferring acidic soil.
I’ve grown these before in raised beds with ericaceous compost, or in containers with old nails or Brillo pads added to the soil to provide a source of iron to boost growth.
Blueberry plants also add decoration, with colourful autumn foliage and delicate spring flowers to complement their delicious deep purple fruits.
Coming into autumn, you can buy raspberry canes as bare root or pre-grown in containers.
If you can, get them in the ground now so they bed themselves in to gain an established root system and they’ll grow fruit a lot better.
You can be clever with raspberries – plant early summer-harvesting varieties as well as autumn-producing plants and you’ll enjoy a continual harvest of plump berries from early June to the end of October.