• Save bean seed for next season.

Your climbing and dwarf beans will be coming to the end of their productive season pretty soon but before they do, don’t forget to leave a few pods on your best plants to fully mature. It’s as simple as doing nothing and waiting for the pods to turn brown and leathery. When that happens, shell the seeds into a glass jar and pop in your freezer for a day or two (to kill off any bugs that might be on the seeds). Then just pop the seeds in a paper envelope, labelled with the variety name. If you want to dry homegrown borlotti or cannellini beans to use in winter soups and stews, just let the pods turn yellow and dry on the vines before picking and shelling. • Got blight on your tomatoes yet? Tomato blights are all but inevitable this month. You’ll notice foliage yellowing off, then spots will appear on leaves and mouldy patches on stems. The usual advice with plant diseases is to pull the plant out to prevent infecting the rest of your toms, but to be honest once you see the symptoms of tomato blights it’s likely all nearby plants are infected already (and even if they aren’t yet, the spores will be literally everywhere). A plant won’t recover once infected, although copper sprays, Yates Tomato Dust or a general fungicide will slow the disease down. But if you leave infected tomatoes in the garden, most fruit should still ripen. If you want to delay blights as long as possible, trim excess foliage to promote good airflow, water at the base of the plants so the leaves stay dry, and keep toms fed and watered. Plants that are growing strongly will always be more disease-resistant.