Now's perfect time to get stuck in

Lifestyle today welcomes back Nelson garden writer and new mum Vanessa Phillips, who

will be writing a fortnightly column on life in and around her city garden

A few weeks ago if the welcome mat was out at my home it would have come with a

caution, to read: "Welcome to the jungle."

A month or so of not venturing into the garden after having my baby girl Abby in

late January was all it took for the garden to completely go out of control, with

weeds to knee level and all manner of vines creeping around carefree.

Luckily my partner – a bit of a neat freak – decided he could take the mess no

more and embarked on a frantic clean-up mission, although ripping up a few of my

treasured raspberry and rhubarb plants in the process.

With the hard work done and most of the vegetable plots cleared out now, I've

started going back into the garden to complete the cleanup and begin planting again,

but things are not as they were.

Now, tasks which used to take me a day can take a week as I rush out in short bursts

during my 11-week-old daughter's daytime sleeps to frantically dig, pull, plant,

heave and haul things.

My progress in the garden is going so slowly at the moment that the Yates

"Phenomenal Early" cauliflowers I should have sown by now are looking likely to be

phenomenally late.

But now is the perfect time to get stuck into a post-summer garden cleanup. Not only

does a good autumn cleanup clear space for winter crops, but removing old plants

prevents bad bugs from sheltering and over-wintering in them, and gives you the

chance to revitalise the soil for the months ahead, by adding the likes of lime,

composts, well-rotted manures or fertilisers.

There is an art to doing an effective autumn cleanup, to not only make the most of

what the garden has to offer in the process, but also to reduce the amount of

greenwaste that needs to be taken off site to be disposed of.

One of the first jobs for autumn is to make use of the leaves starting to fall from

deciduous trees by gathering them and putting them in a pile where they'll

eventually break down to make a rich leaf mould for use on the garden (you can put

the leaves in a large black plastic bag with a few holes poked in it or any sort of

pen/structure which they can't blow out of).

While tidying up, seed can be saved from annual flowers, and veges such as tomatoes

and beans (except for F1 hybrids which won't come true from seed); in the strawberry

patch it's time to cut off and replant runners, while in the ornamental garden now

is also a good time to divide perennials such as daylilies so you get more for free

for replanting in the garden.