Putting the veg patch to bed for winter

01The end-of-season jobs, in order

1. 1
   Clear spent crops — but sort as you go. Pull anything that's finished cropping. Healthy, disease-free material goes on the compost heap. The exception matters: foliage hit by blight (your tomatoes and potatoes especially) should not go on the compost — bin it or burn it. Home compost heaps rarely get hot enough to kill the spores, and you don't want to spread the problem back across the plot next summer.
2. 2
   Don't leave the soil bare. This is the one most people skip. Bare soil over winter gets battered by rain, which compacts the surface and leaches nutrients straight out. Cover it — either mulch with a layer of compost or well-rotted manure, or sow a green manure. Either way, the soil goes into winter protected rather than exposed.
3. 3
   Sow a green manure on empty beds. If a bed's clear and you're not mulching it, sow a green manure to hold onto nutrients and protect the structure. For autumn sowing, hardy overwintering types work best: field beans, winter tares, grazing rye or Italian ryegrass. You dig or hoe them in come spring — the legumes among them fix a little nitrogen as a bonus.
4. 4
   Skip the digging. The modern, RHS-aligned line is a relief for anyone with heavy clay: there's no need to dig it over. Turning the soil destroys the drainage channels worms make, disturbs fungal networks, and releases stored carbon. Lay your mulch on top and let the worms pull it down over winter — they do the cultivating for you. Dig only if you genuinely want to.
5. 5
   Lift and store maincrop veg. Get maincrop potatoes, carrots, beetroot and the like out of the ground before hard frosts and slug damage set in. Store only sound, undamaged roots somewhere cool, dark and frost-free.
6. 6
   Plant garlic, overwintering onions and broad beans. Autumn isn't only for clearing — it's prime planting time. Garlic actually needs a cold spell to bulb up well, so get cloves in now. Autumn-planting onion sets and hardy broad beans go in too, for an earlier crop next year.
7. 7
   Protect the hardy standers. Leeks, kale, Brussels sprouts and parsnips are built to stand through winter and taste better for a frost. Leave them where they are; earth up leeks a little and firm any tall brassicas against wind-rock.
8. 8
   Clean, sharpen and store tools. Scrape off soil, wipe blades down, sharpen spades and hoes, and store them dry. A wire brush and an oily rag now saves you buying replacements in spring. Wash out pots and seed trays too, so you're not carrying pests into next year's sowings.
9. 9
   Leave a wild corner. Resist the urge to make everything spotless. A log pile, a patch of longer grass or a heap of leaves gives ladybirds, beetles and other beneficial insects somewhere to overwinter — and they'll repay you by eating your aphids next year. Honest caveat: a wild corner is a genuine help to garden wildlife, but it's a modest one, not a cure-all for pests.