The Vegetable Plot - September

 The big freeze in September

You will be lifting your potatoes and onions now, leaving beds free for moving in the spring cabbage you sowed in mid-July where they can mature. Half-space plant them, then in spring you can lift alternate plants and leave the others to grow on for later.

If you are a keen veggie grower and you have the space you will probably be harvesting the vegetables of your labours: tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers, lettuces, cabbage, turnips, carrots, marrows, runner beans and maincrop beetroot.

As the late, great Geoff Hamilton used to say, even if your garden is large but mostly lawn and you only have small borders for plants, the veg can be grown in between herbaceous plants. Carry on earthing up celery, move lettuce seedlings to frames or under cloches and thin out seedlings of endive, winter spinach and spinach beet. Leave marrows and pumpkins in a sunny place to harden.
We hope you’re enjoying a bumper crop.

• Freeze those vegetables that you can and you don’t need now
• Freeze Brussels sprouts, broccoli, sweet corn and cauliflower cut into sections
• Bag potatoes in paper sacks      
• Carry on earthing up celery
• Lift maincrop potatoes
• Store carrots and parsnips in hessian or thick paper sacks
• Plant rooted strawberry runners where they are to fruit 
• Pick and store apples and pears