Putting the growing season to bed

Let’s face it, October is not much of a growing month. It’s the time of damage limitation; preparation for winter; tidying – shutting down your veg garden if that is your wont.

First, what we are up against. We lose two hours of light this month. No more the long, high-sun, late-summer evenings, picking, sowing and mooching after work. My almanac says the sun will set before 4.30pm in southern England, but before 5.15pm in the west of Ireland. It is the month the clocks fall back. October has full moons topping and tailing the month: the harvest moon we had on the 1st, the hunter’s (also known as blood) moon is still to come on the 31st.

But on to tasks. For most, it is the time of clearing and compost. Of packing away poles, of levelling the plot to the ground. Of breaking up impacted earth, if you still believe in digging. I hold fast to it like an old friend – perhaps because my favourite formative years were spent watching my father do it. Corduroyed, belted, beret’d, whatever the weather, he liked to work soil, digging in manure from the chicken shed. So far, so Seamus Heaney.

It is time to think about lifting root crops: dig the last potatoes; store or leave turnips and carrots etc in the ground, largely depending on where you live. Harvest the last of the beans and peas, ‘cure’ the pumpkins.

If, like me, you feel a need to plant and sow, early broad beans can start to go in now; over-wintering garlics and onion sets, too. If you have a cloche you can also sow early cauliflower, and try your luck with late radish.

When clearing old crops try to leave seed heads for the small birds whose food options are fast limiting. Think about stringing a few feeders. My allotment neighbour Mary gets spotted woodpeckers on hers. A joyous watch.

Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29 (4th Estate, £9.99) is out now. Order it for £8.49 from guardianbookshop.com