Innehållsförteckning för October 2025 från Kitchen Garden

Autumn pickings October is one of those in-between months – the harvest is still coming thick and fast, but I can feel the soil cooling and the evenings drawing in. The kitchen is piled high with apples and squash, and there’s usually a pan of something bubbling away on the hob. It’s a busy, slightly frantic, time but also one of the most satisfying, as the results of months of work all come together. It’s also when the garden seems alive with another kind of activity. I’ve been on vole patrol on my own plot, while Ben Vanheems tackles slugs in his usual wildlife-friendly way. I’ve also been looking at how we can make space for garden visitors, with a few tips to help hedgehogs get ready for hibernation. These…

WATCH OUT FOR LEATHERJACKETS With autumn sowings going in, veg gardeners should be alert for leatherjackets – the grubs of crane flies (aka daddy longlegs)– which can cause big problems in newly-planted beds as well as lawns. These tough, grey-brown larvae feed on roots, seedlings and young plants. On vegetable plots, they can wipe out late crops, such as lettuces, brassicas and carrots, by chewing through the stems just below the soil surface. Damp beds and freshly cultivated ground are especially vulnerable at this time of year, while lawns often show yellow patches or loose turf where grubs are active. Birds frantically probing the ground can be another tell-tale sign. SPOTTING AN INFESTATION Seedlings wilting or collapsing despite moist soil Roots severed below ground Clusters of 2-3cm grey-brown, legless grubs…

As gardeners, we rely on the soil to make growing possible, and it is especially important in our veg plots or allotments, where good soil is essential for healthy crops. The old saying ‘the answer lies in the soil’ is very true, and if you don’t look after your soil, some plants may struggle to grow or even fail. We all dream of having fertile, welldrained, moisture-retentive soil, but many of us have the opposite, with wet, sticky clay, or dry, sandy soil. Although we can’t change the soil in our gardens, we can alter and improve it to make gardening easier and to get better crops. Soil is essentially composed of particles of weathered rock and organic matter that have accumulated over many years. Before we can improve it,…

Hedgehogs were once a common sight in British gardens and allotments, but in recent decades their numbers have tumbled. Loss of habitat, busy roads and tidy, fenced-in plots have all contributed to the decline. Modern gardening practices – such as removing wild corners or relying on slug pellets – add further pressure. Yet hedgehogs remain one of the gardener’s best natural friends. A single hog can munch through hundreds of slugs and snails in a season, sparing your cabbages and lettuces. By making a few simple changes this autumn, you can give them the food, shelter and safe routes they need to survive the winter and thrive into spring. CREATE WILD CORNERS Hedgehogs rely on safe, undisturbed places to nest and hibernate. Ina neatly cultivated veg plot, that means setting…

Autumn is peak harvest time, a season of abundance but also of bruised apples, precarious ladder climbs, and overflowing trugs. Whether you’ve got a couple of trees in the garden or a small orchard on the plot, the right tools can save both fruit and frustration. I rounded up a selection of pickers, aprons, and bags to see how they fare in real life. Do budget options hold their own, or is it worth splashing out on telescopic poles and hands-free aprons? Here’s how the kit shaped up in my trial… BASKET PICKERS WITH TELESCOPIC POLES SeOSTO 2.6m Telescopic Picker (£21.99, amazon.co.uk) Kent & Stowe Telescopic Picker (£24.99, kentandstowe.com – shipping £15.95 if no local stockists) What they are: Traditional wire baskets with teeth or prongs around the rim. Hook…

KEEP PICKING Tomatoes, aubergines, peppers, cucumbers, and other undercover crops. Green tomatoes can ripen indoors, or be used to make delicious chutneys and salsas HARVEST Squash and place on a sunny windowsill to cure for two weeks, before storing. Squash is ready if the stem resembles cork and is hardened so a thumbnail can’t be pushed into it GATHER UP Garden poles and other supports and store tied into bundles, undercover if you can. This will increase their lifespan by several years LOOK OUT Try to find discounted seeds, string, pots and other gardening equipment, which is often being sold off at huge reductions at this time of year As a child, one of the joys of autumn was walking through crisp autumn leaves, hearing the crunch underfoot and feeling…

CHILLI CHAMPS I wanted to let you know about my recent success with the free chilli pepper seeds supplied with Kitchen Garden magazine earlier this year. I entered my best five into our Guernsey Northern Agricultural and Horticultural show, held in August, and received first prize in the chilli peppers class! Thank you! Phil Alabaster, Guernsey Ed: What a fantastic result – those chillies look red-hot in every sense! * STAR * LETTER WINS £25 VOUCHER PLOT PAUSE Alas, after 17 years of allotment gardening, I now have to step away on grounds of health (and safety). Two hip and two knee replacements, wrist problems, and torn shoulder and bicep muscles mean I cannot do the plot justice. I will be allowed a square metre patch at home, and can…

When it comes to fruit worth preserving, plums and their close cousins have long earned their place in the kitchen. There is more variety than many expect. Plums are the most familiar, ranging from varieties like Marjorie’s Seedling to the rosy-red Victoria, through to golden dessert types, all with juicy, sweet flesh that is perfect for baking, stewing or bottling. Damsons are smaller, darker, and far more tart, with a strong flavour that shines in chutneys and fruit gins. Gages are usually green or amber, with a honeyed taste and smooth texture that makes them a treat straight from the tree or turned into jam. Then there are mirabelles, those tiny golden fruits found in French hedgerows, ideal for tarts, compotes or steeped in spirits. Preserving these fruits has deep…

Imagine it’s a balmy evening in late spring. You’ve spent the last few days on your knees, dutifully sowing seeds, tending to precious seedlings, and whispering sweet nothings to your baby carrots. You’re admiring all your diligent work and feeling pretty good about the world – things are growing and all’s on track. But then you wake up the next morning, wander outside, and boom: slug carnage! Everything’s been rasped down to sad green stubs overnight. Sound familiar? If you’ve ever felt personally victimised by a marauding army of slime-trailing freeloaders, you’re not alone. Slugs and snails are the uninvited guests at every gardener’s party. And let’s be frank – finding your hard work demolished by something that dishonourably wreaks its destruction under cover of darkness can have anyone reaching…

A wormery is a brilliant way to recycle kitchen scraps and cardboard, cut down on food waste, and produce two valuable outputs: rich, crumbly worm compost, and a concentrated liquid feed (often called worm tea). The worms do all the hard work – you just give them a comfortable home. This design uses stackable plastic boxes with a tap in the base for draining liquid. Each ‘working’ box is drilled with holes for airflow and drainage, then lined with mesh so worms and scraps don’t fall through. The worms live in the upper trays, steadily turning peelings and paper into compost. Once one tray is nearly full, you prepare another and place it on top. The worms naturally migrate upward toward the fresh food, leaving behind finished compost in the…

As gardeners, we are all making the transition to peat-free composts. Whether you have already made the switch or are just starting out, understanding how to get the best results is key. While we all want to be more sustainable, we also need reliable composts that work well for our plants. Recent trials carried out at Stocksbridge Technical Centre by Justin Davies, along with the help of Sophie and Charlotte, have shown that peat-free compost can vary significantly in quality, and how we use it will need to change. Understanding compost standards: PAS 100 and the Compost Certification Scheme In the UK, the British Standards Institution introduced the Publicly Available Specification 100 (PAS 100) to establish a benchmark for compost quality. This specification outlines the entire composting process, from raw…

WORTH OVER £614 SEEDS FOR YOUR NEW SEASON Looking for something new to grow from seed next year? Suttons has launched a range of brand new vegetable varieties, handpicked by its expert product managers. Tomato ‘Toddler’ is billed as a ‘diseaseresistant marvel’. It’s also a particularly attractive variety, boasting an abundance of well-proportioned trusses, each with up to 16 glossy cocktail tomatoes. ‘Sweet Start’ is Suttons’ earliest sweetcorn yet. This supersweet variety produces tender cobs, and with plenty of hybrid vigour, it is perfect for the British climate. Strong and long like the legendary sword, carrot ‘Excalibur’ produces slender orange roots up to an astonishing 35cm (14in). This ‘Imperator’ type is great for both cooking and eating raw. Suttons’ first mini aubergine ‘Baby Black Jack’ is the smaller sibling of…

(AGM is the RHS Award of Garden Merit. Under RHS garden trials these varieties performed particularly well) SAVE OVER £8 & 20% ON SELECTED SEEDS SAVE* ON KINGS SEEDS! 20% OFF ALL SALAD LEAF SEEDS & SWEET PEAS Kings Seeds is offering KG readers the exclusive chance to save 20% on salad leaf and sweet pea seeds. To take advantage of this offer, simply visit kingsseeds.com/kitchen-garden and enter the code: KGOCT25. Offer expires October 30, 2025. Pre-order your fruit now for November delivery & SAVE! (Last orders by October 31, 2025) GROW A VARIETY OF FRUIT WITH THIS EXCLUSIVE FRUIT BUNDLE 12 x Strawberry ‘Sweetheart’ plants – A new, early-season variety we are offering this year is Sweetheart. It is one of the best garden varieties introduced in recent years. It…

Get in touch by post, email or via our Facebook page: Facebook.com/kitchengardenmag * STAR * QUESTION WINS £25 VOUCHER RASPBERRY CRUMBLE Q. Our Autumn Treasure raspberries are crumbly again. They were like this last year, too. They’re only five years old. They seemed overcrowded last year, so we drastically thinned them out. We’ve fed and watered them, but this hasn’t seemed to help so far. Nobody else’s raspberries on our allotment site are affected, so I doubt that poor pollination is the cause. Is there anything else we can do to improve the quality of our fruit, and should we give them another chance? We’ve already planted new canes of a different variety at the other end of our plot, in case the existing ones don’t recover. Tony Warne, Cambridgeshire…

LAURA LEWIS FROM SOUTH GLOUCESTERSHIRE Laura and her husband, Mike, only took on their allotment last year, but in that short time it has already transformed their lives. With no previous experience of growing they’ve learned quickly with the help of fellow plotters, and now enjoy tackling their large plot together with their schnauzer, Lewlew. They are often joined by their grandchildren too. Despite complex health challenges, Laura says the allotment has brought huge physical and mental benefits – along with bumper crops and plenty of family memories. Do you tend your plot on your own? If not, who helps you? Me, my husband Mike, and our Schnauzer, Lewlew, tend our plot together. Do you have an allotment, or a vegetable plot in your garden? Our allotment plot is approximately…

Beetroot comes in many shapes, colours and sizes, and I grow several types, including the traditional globe beetroot, golden beetroot, which looks and tastes great in salads, and a tall cylindrical type called ‘Alto’ that is very easy to slice because of its shape. It’s one of my favourite vegetables to grow and to eat. I love the small baby roots in early summer, which are so sweet. By late summer and autumn we are pulling the main crop roots, which are larger but still very tasty. Boiled, roasted or pickled, they all taste wonderful. Jill also uses it in lots more adventurous ways in the kitchen. To enjoy beetroot through winter and into spring, I lift and store in late autumn before the weather turns too wet and cold.…

There is a subtle alchemy to composting. Mix the ingredients together correctly, and you will create a super-powered growth formula tailored to your garden. Compost made from your own garden waste will contain the right balance of nutrients needed by the plants growing in your garden. But what if we take composting to the next level? If you want a way to make composting faster and create a better finished product, you need to try hot composting. It’s rather like a game: you have to get the conditions right to achieve the right temperatures. And when all the pieces are in place, that’s when the magic happens. But what you need to be able to achieve these conditions is a sound knowledge of how composting works, so let’s dive in.…

BUTTERNUT SQUASH, PEA & SPINACH FRITTATA A simple, protein-rich dish that’s full of colour and flavour – perfect hot or cold. Great for using up any roast veg you may have Prep time: 15 minutes Cook time: 25 minutes Total time: 40 minutes Serves: 4-6 1 small butternut squash (approx. 500g /1 lb), peeled and diced  1 tbsp olive oil 1 small onion, finely sliced 100g/3½oz fresh spinach 100g frozen peas 6 large eggs 50ml/¼ cup milk or plantbased alternative 50g/1¾ oz cheese (feta, cheddar, or vegan alternative), crumbled or grated Salt and black pepper, to taste Optional: pinch of nutmeg or chilli flakes 1. Preheat the oven to 200°C (180°C fan/390°F/gas 6). 2 Place the diced squash on a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil, and roast for 20-25…