Home grown fruit and veg: an autumn update

Care for your sweetcorn

I've been very taken with the flavour of tendersweet varieties of sweetcorn like 'Swift', but I have found the individual cobs disappointingly small.

Local weather conditions really influence sweetcorn and plants need more than just sunshine to ripen the crop. I mistakenly thought sweetcorn was a tolerant plant that thrived on neglect. But, as with so many crops, the more you put in, the more you get out, so do water thoroughly if the soil is dry.

Once the tassels turn brown, check cobs to see if they're ripe enough for picking.

Time to trim cane fruit

Now summer is at an end, you need to tend to your blackberries, loganberries and other cane fruit.

Cut away canes that have carried fruit to just above soil level. Next, tie in new canes to support wires, training them out evenly. You'll find that the new thornless varieties of blackberry, such as 'Adrienne' and 'Loch Ness', don't grow as strongly as thorny types like 'Fantasia', producing fewer new shoots at ground level. Where new growth is sparse, only shorten stems that have carried fruit rather than cutting them off completely. New shoots will develop from these stem lengths next year.

Two Autumn tips:

1. Propagate blackberries
Blackberries can reproduce by 'tip layering'. When the tip of a shoot touches the ground, it produces roots followed by new shoots. You can lend the plant a helping hand by bending some cane tips down to the soil and burying them. Hold them in place with a wire peg or stone and water well. As always when propagating fruit, ensure the parent plant is disease-free. New rooted plants will develop within a few months, when they can be detached from the parent and transplanted to a new site.

2. Lifting and storing spuds
Maincrop potatoes should be fully grown now and ready to harvest. However, if you spot any sign of blight, remove all foliage and stems immediately to prevent it reaching the tubers. Lift the crop carefully by digging the soil at an angle, a little distance from the row, to avoid damaging the tubers under the ground. Leave the potatoes on the soil surface while their skins dry out, then store them in paper or Hessian sacks in a dark, frost-free place.

Checklist

• Use netting to protect blackberries and Autumn raspberries from birds.
• Wrap grease bands around the trunks of fruit trees to catch climbing winter moths.
• Plant out garlic.
• Pick hazel and other nuts as soon as they turn yellow or they will drop off.
• Pot up rooted strawberry plant runners.
• Sow crops such as Chinese cabbage, endive, lettuce, baby salad leaves, winter spinach and spring cabbage.