Search and rescue sums up this month in the garden. I love to plant closely; it saves on the watering and weeding. Plant combinations suddenly take on a life of their own, which I find really exciting. However, it is a dangerous game, because with a few days of rain some of the more precious plants can get completely swamped.

In between the showers I have started taking cuttings. Many of the cuttings are of shrubs and other plants that aren't very winter hardy, so they will be housed in a heated propagator over winter. Next spring as the weather warms I will pot them into larger containers, and with a bit of feed they will quickly catch up. I try to keep a trough handy, so that any broken pieces of wind blown plants will provide new plants. With all the wind we've had they are filling very quickly.

Dead-heading at this time of the year can lengthen the season considerably, as can feeding, but be careful. Over–feeding with a general fertilizer will probably produce lax stems. I switch to tomato fertilizer which is great to encourage fruiting and flowers and also ripens the wood, hopefully making them more winter hardy.

Some of the annuals are setting seed already, so as soon as the sun shines for a few days they will be collected. I put them into envelopes that I have saved from junk mail. Each year's harvest is very different, so having a good selection means that I can experiment without too much expense.