5 Essential Autumn jobs in the garden

Hardly anything is producing food for me at the moment, but with the colder nights and days and a healthy dose of rain the garden is in need of a bit of a clean up.  Its an easy job with warm days and moist soil.  We are getting ready for the dormant months.

Job 1 - peas are up and doing well - its the first time in this eastward facing garden so if they werent doing well I'd dig them in at some point as 'green manure'.  They needed staking so I've used some old plastic covered wire, and you will see in the photo, a large collection of oven racks from our oven that's heading to the tip

Job 2 - do some weeding - keep on top of it now and plants will get a good start.  Here are some broccoli plants and spring onions before I did the weeding.  Weeds can still take hold of the garden patch - we still get lovely sunny days and relatively mild nights.  Snails will be about - beer I hear in a saucer will take them out organically.  Snail bait - carefull with chooks about - they might eat it - it might be a wheat based bait.

Job 3 - harvest - unexpectedly whilst weeding I found 2 cumcumbers - both small but they were eaten today and they were so juicy!  I wish I'd left them there another week - with the rain they'd have doubled in size.  Tomatoes can be bought inside even if green - dont leave them on a hot window sill or they will cook.  Mum used to say put a banana in a paper bag with an unripe tomato and it will help it ripen - something to do with the acids in the banana skin - apparently this technique has merit!  You can pull the tomato plant and all out of the ground and hang it in the garage - most will ripen this way.  Pumpkins should be left outside on a bench to dry and harden.  Try not to pull the stalk off - they are more likely to rot without it.

Job 4 - if you cant make a compost heap because you've got too much carbon like material I usually store it somewhere until I have anough manure to make it hot enough to break down.  I currently have 3 carbon storage areas

I will post a hot manure formula in a future post!

Job 5 - rainy season is a coming - think about where you are going to catch water.  I've mentioned this before - I have 4 water catching stations around the yard - here's one - a bin that catches water off the cubby roof - its rarely empty