1. Harvest ripening Apples and Pears before they fall.
 

2. Clean out cold frames and greenhouses ready for use when the colder weather arrives.
 

3. Cut the trusses off unripe tomatoes and ripen them indoors on a warm windowsill.
 

4. Onion and garlic sets can be planted now for an earlier crop next year.
 

5. Plant out biennials like wallflowers and Sweet Williams, to give them time to settle in before winter for flowering next year.
 

6. Cover ponds with netting before the heavy leaf falling begins.
 

7. Keep up the deadheading and get a free crop by collecting seeds from gone-over seedheads.
 

8. Cut back perennials as they start to fade, remembering to leave a few hollow stems standing to provide homes for insects over winter.

9. Plant spring flowering bulbs! In containers, make use of the technique known as a 'bulb lasagne' where you take 3 types of bulb that flower at different times during spring, and plant in layers to prolong your flowering. 
 

10. September is a good time to start thinking about any new trees you’d like to plant so get the soil ready by removing any grass and digging through some soil improver.
 

11. Cut off the foliage on maincrop potatoes and wait a couple of weeks, then start digging up the potatoes – kids will love this job! Leave the potatoes to dry for a few hours before storing them in paper bags or hessian sacks.
 

12. Keep picking the last of your French and runner beans, then cut the plants down to ground level and leave the roots to release their stored nitrogen into the soil.
 

13. It’s a fruit bonanza in the orchard this month! Plums, pears, apples, blackberries and autumn raspberries are all ready to harvest now.
 

14. Collect and sow seed from perennials and hardy annuals.
 

15. Lift and divide overgrown clumps of geraniums, hostas and daylilies. As well as rejuvenating the plants, this also gives you a free supply of extra plants to fill any gaps in the garden.