Sorrel good, garlic bad

The garden is ripe with good stuff at the moment and we're now reaping huge rewards from the raised beds. They've turned what was a nondescript paved patio cluttered with plastic pots into a fruiting, shooting paradise.

The good: Tumbling Tom Cherry tomato nibblers, Aurora bush tomato cookers, a snaking squirming green frond of glorious acorn squash, which threatens to make it to the top of the metal staircase and overwhelm the couple in their flat upstairs, stubby rows of lettuce, Little Gem and Salad Bowl, rocket, a patch of perpetual spinach, spray of chives, a flowering peppermint tub, two verdant rosemary bushes, a heady lavender, a sorrel patch (the find of the season - sorrel is a thick salad crop, a perennial, strong taste of lemon/apples/gooseberries) a fence-long barcode of Trail of Tears French beans, like rich exclamations, and two mini-greenhouses full of sweet and chilli peppers, some of which are deep green and wrinkled. I'm hoping these'll ripen a bit before the insects tear the life out them.

Defensive / companion planting has done well this year - I sacrificed some sweet peas in amongst the beans, and also some marigolds, which gave their lives so that the coriander might live. The nasturtiums, which are planted in the walking boots that pounded the round globe with me for a year, just look nice.

The bad: The garlic has fallen over and wilted to death through nothing more than utter neglect, some of the squash haven't taken so have started to rot and wither on the vine (remedied by an early-morning nudge with a big phallic paintbrush, which does the fertilising), left-too-long flowering oriental leaves which taste bitter and unkempt.

It's been a good productive season this year, without the sorrow of male-only courgette flowers. Hats off to The Real Seed Company who specialise in heritage seeds and early cropping varieties and show you how to save your seed. The River Cottage Veg Patch handbook has been bloody useful too.

This winter: keeping my spinach up for as long as I can hold it; and finding lettuce that'll withstand the first frosts. Next year: how to encourage the strawberries to fruit with a bit more vim.