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Just this year, I’ve worked up a sweat yanking out a well rooted courgette and channelled my inner puzzle solver trying to retrieve tangled squash runners without pulling everything else up that they’ve grabbed on to! Keep the Infected Plants Out of the Bin Avoid adding any infected fruit and plants to the bin. If you’ve grown any peas or beans, chop the plants off a few inches above the ground for composting, and let the roots and base rot down into the soil. I know plotholders who compost down everything, including their weeds, but I prefer to keep my compost bins free of weeds as I reckon they’re perfect environments for the critters to revitalise and end up back in your soil.

If, like my wife, you’re a fan of the astronomical calendar, then your seasons are defined by the Earth’s axis and orbit around the sun, and Autumn began on 1st September. These plants will die off and need clearing away and composting, but void composting any infected plants, such as tomatoes with blight. Rhubarb and Rain Rhubarb will prefer replenishment to protection, so pull up any unused stems, and add a thick layer of well rotted manure around the crowns. Dig up the remaining maincrop potatoes to stop them rotting in the soil, and don’t let squashes lay on wet ground too long, as this will damage the skin.

Although both were new beds, the soil was different, and it was clear there wasn’t as much good organic matter present as there was in the squash bed. Although organic matter will typically only account for a small part of the soil make up, it plays a vital role in holding everything together and retaining moisture, as well as storing and providing nutrients and food for all forms of life within your soil. Adding organic matter to your soil is an ongoing job, as the plants you grow will eventually use up all the nutrients and that goodness will need replenishing. Traditionally, manure is dug in, either at the point of spreading, or at a later date once the organic matter has had chance to work into the soil.

The burden of the squash plants have also left me with bendy leeks. The plants have reasonable shanks for this time of year but there aren’t many that have been strong enough to take the weight of the overrunning squash vines. I’ve grown huge, money saving squashes and good crops of equally profitable strawberries, raspberries and rhubarb, and normally this is something I’d have taken great pleasure from (I wrote a book about saving money from growing veg, after all), but I’m sensing a change in the wind. Well, the point this year was that Lewis enjoyed the carrots.