October and the garden is looking a little soggy.

After some lovely sunshine in September, we heralded in a new month with torrential rain. It just left me wishing I had got my act together and had bought a water butt for my greenhouse.

When the sun came out on Saturday afternoon, I took the opportunity to tidy the garden and to harvest the crops still malingering in the vegetable bed.

The butternut squash are all cut, with a good length of the stalk intact. This is in case the stem starts to rot off and then at least there is a way to go before it reaches the precious fruit.

They are sitting in the greenhouse, where their skins are hardening off, to help preserve them, although I don't expect they will last long, as we roasted one for Sunday dinner and it was so sweet and delicious.

I grew 9 squashes from 6 plants. I am not sure if that is a good average or not. I feel there should have been more squashes; maybe it was a lack of moisture, as this summer has been rather lovely, with plenty of sunshine.

All my tomatoes have been picked. The ones still green, have been put in the greenhouse to ripen up and the juicy red ones have been turned into a rich tomato sauce, to be used as a base in pasta and mince dishes. I used some sauce from a previous batch I’d made in a homemade lasagne and it really made a difference to the taste.

The tomatoes are simply cut in half and placed on a roasting sheet. I added a couple of my home-grown chillies, some garlic, dried herbs and a dash of olive oil and then put them in the oven at 180c for 40 minutes.

This recipe is courtesy of Pam Corbins’ River Cottage Preserves book. It has lots of recipes for turning your home-grown produce into delicious treats.

Besides the tomato sauce, I have made sun dried (oven dried really) tomatoes, to enjoy during the long winter months and the most delicious raspberry jam, to enjoy on homemade bread.

I have made the most amazing discovery. My vegetable bed now has worms living in it. I am so pleased. Soil without worms is just not healthy soil. I am going to give it a good blanket of well-rotted manure this autumn, which should keep them happy.

I still have some vegetables growing in the garden. My parsnips are looking good and I intend to eat them with our Christmas dinner.

My purple sprouting broccoli is still going strong but they are looking a bit like your nans’ doylies. Caterpillars are making a meal of the leaves. I thought the caterpillar season was over, so I think I will need to cover them with fleece again.

I am going to be buying some garlic to plant over the next couple of weeks. Garlic needs a cold spell for it to kick into action, so it needs to be planted in the autumn (which was were I went wrong the first time I planted it).

I have ordered an apple tree from Blackmoor Fruit Nursery.

This is quite an unusual apple tree, as it has three varieties grafted onto one stem.

Perfect if you don’t have room for an orchard.

As the garden slows down, my updates will be monthly.

Next month the highs and lows of my gardening year and what I plan to do differently next year.