Plenty to do in the garden this month

SEPTEMBER is a month that brings beautiful autumnal colour along with its cooler days and darker evenings. Make sure you make the most of nature's time for planting and add any herbaceous plants that you want to bloom and flourish next spring. They will get the best start this time of year due to the cooler atmosphere, the damper air and the warm soil.

Other jobs to do this month include:

Plant spring flowering bulbs such as daffodils, crocus, muscari and scilla but not tulips.

Continue with dead heading and weeding so that you extend the flowering season and keep soil nutrients and moisture for your plants and not the weeds.

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Plant out new spring bedding such as wallflowers, primula and bellis.

Bring inside any tender perennials such as fuchsia or geraniums before the first frosts.

Raise the height of the mower and mow less often. This is also a good time to sow or turf a new lawn or to repair bald patches in an existing one.

This is the last chance to put in new strawberry plants and pot up any rooted runners.

New fruit trees can be planted if the ground is moist. Wait until later if we are having a dry spell. At the end of the month wrap grease band around the trunks of fruit trees to prevent the wingless female moths from climbing up to lay their eggs.

Continue to sow over wintering seeds such as spinach, turnip, lettuce and onions.

Any outdoor tomatoes should be picked before frosts and brought indoors to ripen. Leave them on the vine and place the whole truss in a greenhouse or on a windowsill.

Lift onions and shallots but do not bend over at the neck as they won't store as well. If the weather is not wet leave them to dry on the soil otherwise bring them into a dry shed.

Lift all root vegetables and store in a cool, dark and dry place. Leave parsnips in the ground as they taste better after being frosted.

Clean out bird baths and keep them topped up with water. As the breeding season for birds is not quite over it is still not safe to put out peanuts and other large bird food but continue with small bird food.

If you have the room put a pile of twigs or logs in a quiet corner of the garden as these will become home to lots of wildlife. To make it an attractive area plant around the logs with primroses, ferns etc.

Do not cut back any plants with seed heads, such as sunflowers, as they provide a useful source of food for birds.

Make or buy a hedgehog hibernation box and leave it under a pile of dead leaves at the back of garden where it will be undisturbed.