Gluts and glory in the autumnal garden

AUTUMN is a time of abundance in the garden, when I often pester my foodie friends for suggestions of new ways to cook courgettes.

I like them roasted in the oven with olive oil and rosemary, but when the rest of the family starts groaning as I produce yet another tray, I have to start disguising them in other dishes.

So far soups and cakes have done the trick – but I draw a line at courgette ice cream.

In a few months, such gluts of fresh produce will be just a memory and it will be time to rely on winter veg, so if you want to continue harvesting food from your own garden then its time to start planning ahead.

Start by sowing an assortment of leafy greens, including lettuce, chard and winter spinach and clearing away spent crops to make space for cabbage and kale.

Leeks planted earlier should start to thicken up now, so give them some balanced fertiliser and pull soil around the base of stems to help blanch them.

Meanwhile if you grow summer raspberries then prune out this year’s fruiting canes now, cutting as close to ground level as possible, and tying in the new canes that will carry this year’s crop.

This has been a good year for plums and the fruit on my young trees is ripening nicely.

One of my friends was complaining that they’ve had a poor crop because of problems with pollination, but as our garden is surrounded by a meadow there is no shortage of bees to do the job.

Over the summer bees have continued visiting, attracted by the clover that grows in the patches of grass I leave uncut, and by the wild marjoram that has seeded itself into every corner.

Wild marjoram is native to this country and most days its pinky-purple flowers thrum with insects. It can become invasive, but I just hoe it off where I don’t want it to thrive.

Lots of things are scattering seed now, including my euphorbias.

I grow loads and some can be short-lived, so over the summer I’ve been taking cuttings. I could collect the seed, but because I grow several different varieties there’s always a risk of crosspollination, whereas with cuttings I know exactly what I’m getting.

After last winter’s losses, I’ve also begun to take salvia cuttings, setting four or five into small pots of gritty compost and placing in warm, shady spots while the roots form.

Many plants grow easily from cuttings, but be warned, it can become addictive. Some years I take enough pelargonium cuttings to keep the local parks department in bedding plants and I can’t resist raising a few more lavenders and rosemarys.

Now I have my sights set on my new rose ‘For Your Eyes Only’ and if everything goes to plan, then in a few years I could have turned one bush into dozens, proving it’s not only courgettes that come in gluts.