Tidy-up time

Get saving, harvesting, ditching, freezing, weeding and planning and your gardening tasks for the next year will be made much easier

As the season draws to a close, it’s time to clear patio debris, replace tired plants and restore order to your outdoor space.

Are your hanging baskets looking a little sorry, your pots pathetic and your borders brimming with weeds? Here are some easy but effective garden tidy-up tips...

Save it

Save what you can, deadheading late-flowering blooms in borders which may come back to life. Perennials which have finished flowering can be cut back but will come back to life next year.

Ditch it

If your hanging baskets and pots of annuals have completely dried out, take them down and empty the contents on to the compost heap. Keep your spirits high by buying spring-flowering bulbs and, if you want late colour, pop into the garden centre to find some.

Good plants will bring colour later in the year, so include asters, chrysanthemums and nerines, along with rudbeckias and sedums.

Tend to the lawn

Following the hot summer, the lawn might be looking like hay and should not need cutting. If it has grown substantially, though, leave the blades on the highest setting for the first cut, reduce the height at the next a few days later and then cut at the normal height. You’ll be surprised how much tidier the garden looks when the lawn has been mown. Take time to tidy up the lawn edges using edging shears.

Lose the weeds

Look over your beds and borders and if weeds have sprung up, then get rid of them quickly. Seeds shed at this time of year, which means more work later on. Keep on top of deadheading, otherwise the flowering will not continue as long as you’d like.

Harvest now

If you have a vegetable patch, harvest as much ripe produce as you can to stop the veg running to seed or becoming over-ripe. You can blanch (immerse in boiling water) and freeze many veg, including green beans and sweetcorn, so you don’t end up wasting what you pick.

Immerse the vegetables immediately in a bowl of iced water after blanching, to stop them continuing to cook. When cool, lift the veg from the iced water, spread out on a kitchen towel and pat dry to remove excess moisture. Pack loose vegetables in resealable plastic bags or other containers. Vegetables suitable for freezing include beans, broccoli, cauliflower, corn, peas, spinach, Swiss chard and summer squash. Even tomatoes can be frozen whole and then used in sauces and soups later on.

Clear space for new crops

Find time to clear vacant rows in the veg patch and refill them with autumn and winter crops as soon as you can.

Put away pots for winter

If you have empty pots you’re not going to use again this year, clean them with diluted disinfectant and stow in the shed for winter. That way, terracotta won’t crack and other vulnerable pots won’t perish when the frost comes. Also, remove and put away stakes that propped up plants, which have now been cut back.

Plan for next year

Take time to write a list of what you are going to include and exclude in your plantings next year. Look for gaps you’ll need to fill in borders next season and maybe extend the season by planning to plant some perennials which provide late summer colour.