It’s time to start preparing the garden for winter, finishing harvesting all the summer vegetables. Pumpkins and squash can be stored in a cool room indoors. Prolong your crop of peppers and aubergines by erecting a polytunnel over the rows. Tomato vines can be pulled up whole and hung upside down so the last fruit can ripen or be used green for chutney.
Start bringing in garden furniture, hose pipes and above-ground watering systems. Avoid the queues in the spring and get mowers and other machinery serviced now. Protect tender plants from the cold by mulching or earthing up and bring geraniums and other delicate pot plants inside a cool greenhouse or other frost-proof shed or room.
Some decorative pots will not stand a frosty winter and should be stored inside too. Plant bulbs. Croci, muscari and daffs are easy, but here are a few words on tulips.

Try layering a ceratostigma willmottianum.
These metre-high shrubs sport plumbago-like bright blue flowers which are valuable in the late summer and autumn and have attractive leaves which turn progressively redder. The plants need very little attention (cutting back once a year in the spring) and will do well on dry, well-drained soils.

Odd jobs for October
1. Disinfect stakes and store for next year.
2. Earth up globe artichokes after removing scruffy outer leaves and tying the rest loosely together with raffia.
3. Depending on your area and the age of your plants, you may have to unearth your outdoor fuchsias and pot them up for the winter. Cut them down whether you’re bringing them in or not.
4. In pots and windowsills, plant evergreens, pansies and bulbs. Leave room for polyanthus if you like them.
5. Plant out forget-me-nots and other biennials sown this summer.
6. Plant conifers and plan planting for other trees and shrubs for November or later. Start digging holes now to make planting easier.
7. Autumn leaves: make this task easy for yourself. In all but the smallest of gardens, leaf transportation is a bore. Instead of trudging kilometres getting them all on to the leafmould heap, simply rake the leaves onto your borders and spread them around flowers and under shrubs (diseased leaves should be burnt). This is what happens in real life, so to speak, and the worms gradually manage to get them down below, where they will rot and improve the soil, particularly its texture.
8. This is the moment to layer many plants.
9. Your early summer-flowering herbaceous plants can be lifted, divided and moved now. Earlier or later than October is quite possible, too, but the earlier the better, so that the roots have lots of time to settle in before the plants’ winter holidays.
10. Bury a stick of rhubarb here and there in your potager when planting cabbages, etc. This will help to protect them against clubroot.
11. Save your tealeaves/bags to put around camellias and roses.
12. Use empty hanging baskets upturned over your garden tubs in the winter to protect bulbs from squirrels, etc.
13. Bird tables: our furry friends the pussy cats love to climb up to the feeders, even when there is no tempting bird at the top. Avoid all this by making a sticky outer skirt of chicken wire halfway up the bird table ‘trunk’. This may seem unattractive but you can cover it with greenery or climbers such as morning glory to jolly it up a bit.