The beauty of autumn is two-fold; not only all around in the trees as they begin their glorious displays of golden leaves, but also that everything in the garden seems to be slowing down a bit and this, thankfully, includes us.

If you are itching to get outside and are in need of something to do, this month is the perfect time to get stuck into a few projects. I’ve always been a huge fan of raised beds for vegetable gardening, and making them is fairly easy.

Guarantee a bumper crop from the off

The advantages of having a raised bed are many. For one, it saves toiling away, constantly digging and trying to improve any heavy soil you may have. Secondly, you can put some decent compost in there from the start and guarantee a bumper crop from the off. Weeding is so much easier in a raised bed too, and they can be made to a height that is more accessible if you’ve a bad back or other health conditions.

To make one, it is essential to use untreated timber, as this means nothing toxic can leach into the soil and your edibles. It really is as simple as knocking in some corner posts and fixing some boards to them, then filling it with good compost and decent well-rotted muck.

If you are still wanting for a little project after that, making a leaf mould bay is ideal at this time of year. Four fence posts knocked into the ground and wrapped with some fencing wire will do the trick. Then you can get collecting the fallen leaves and deposit them in your bin. That’s all you have to do, and next year you will have beautifully rich leaf mould that you can mulch with as a soil conditioner or to combine with compost as a potting mix.

Of great benefit to garden creatures

Don’t completely clear up your leaf piles – remember to leave some in the garden, as they are of great benefit to many other creatures besides us gardeners.

Another job that is good to do this month is pruning the climbing roses. They will flower on next year’s new growth, so you can prune them quite hard now. I like to think of climbing roses as having a framework of spaced horizontal to upward diagonal structures that I prune back to every year.

There’s no point in trying to tie in and save all of the new growth it has put on in the past year – instead, prune it back to that existing skeleton. That way you’ll get more new growth and that means more flowers.