This has been a curious spring, with generally warm temperatures but also very cold outbreaks. One frost we had in early October has left scars in the garden, with magnolia leaves badly damaged, iris buds demolished and even griselinia leaves tipped with black.
It makes me even more cautious about planting tomatoes, despite it being the traditional time to plant all sorts of summer-fruiting vegetables. It varies tremendously according to where you live. Many coastal areas will be perfectly safe but if you are growing plants in cooler, inland areas it pays to wait a week.
But there are lots of other vegetables that can be planted with surety of success, and it is also a great time to prepare gardens for the more tender crops, such as tomatoes, pumpkins, zucchini and peppers.
If you have a glasshouse, or a sheltered area on a veranda or porch, you can get a bit of a jump-start on the season by buying some plants now and potting them up to grow on for a week or two before planting. I like to have a few potted tomatoes under way in the middle of September, some of which I will keep in the glasshouse throughout the season. Others will go out out in the garden as advanced plants, giving me a flying run at getting some fruit early in the season.
Tomatoes do best in well-drained soil so I dug out a bed and popped a lot of our own compost into it, a sprinkling of lime and handful of general fertiliser too. You could use sheep pellets or something similar, but make sure it is well dug in and placed quite deeply in the soil.