BEFORE ditching tired summer container plants, cutting down perennials or digging up bolted vegetables, spend a little time gathering seeds for an abundance of flowers and fruits next year.

Self-seeders include poppies, foxgloves, lady's mantle, aquilega and love-in-a-mist, which will pop up all over the place in future years. If you want a more organised display, collect the seeds before they self-sow, so you can control where they appear in the garden.

Saving seed is an economical way to build up numbers of species to create drifts, but remember that seed from highly bred plants will not come true and should be viewed as experimental only.

Seeds from many plants, including nasturtium and nigella, should be stored in paper envelopes in a cool, dry place until you are ready to sow them under cover in early spring.

Choose a still, sunny day to gather seeds, looking for seed-heads that have turned brown and seem on the verge of splitting. Collect semi-ripe seedheads of rock plants and perennials in paper bags, hanging them in a dark, well-ventilated place. Seedheads from some species will open, releasing the seed into the bottom of the bag, making it easy to collect.

Others need to be prised open to extract the seed.

Early-flowering plants may have already self-seeded. Look around and you may be able to save some of them, increasing your stock without having to sow seed. You can dig up the seedlings, pot them up and label. Treat gently, like unrooted cuttings, until they become more established. Place pots in a cold frame or shady part of the greenhouse. Alternatively let them grow on a windowsill indoors.

Newcomers to saving seeds may be worried about how to handle them. Some gardeners have a variety of sieves with different sized holes to filter the dust and other debris from the seeds. The most important thing about saving seeds is to keep them dry. Ideally, store them in small paper envelopes in airtight jars in a dark, cool room. To keep moisture at bay, pop a sachet of silica gel crystals into the jar.

Gardeners who have an abundance of particular types of seeds may use seed-swap forums and websites such as Seedy People (www.seedypeople.co.uk) and Over The Garden Gate (www.overthegardengate.

net) to get in touch with other seed-swappers. The Tree Council is also encouraging gardeners to gather up tree seeds with the launch of its Seed Gathering Season, which runs until October 23.

This is the best time in the year to gather seeds from many of our more common trees. Conkers, acorns, birch cones, beechnuts, ash helicopters, rowan berries and apples are just some of the fruits and nuts ripe for gathering in the autumn and nurturing to grow into trees.

The Tree Council is encouraging the public to organise anything from guided walks to workshops and other activities to gather seeds, nuts and fruits to grow a whole range of trees. In smaller gardens, go for smaller trees like rowan, hazel, birch and cherry, or shrubs like dogwood and the native viburnums (guelder rose and wayfaring tree).

For details of events during Seed Gathering Season, go to the treecouncil.org.uk.

Jobs this week

❃ Fix greasebands round apple and pear trees to stop insects reaching fruit-bearing branches.

❃ Check over strawberries and remove any new runners.

❃ As temperatures decline, reduce the amount of damping down in the glasshouse or frame, as high humidity and low temperatures can encourage fungal infection.

❃ Plant evergreen shrubs and conifers while soil is still warm.