Take a good look at favourite plants in your garden and decide whether there is anything you can salvage with future propagation in mind.

Borlotto Firetongue and runner bean pods that were selected in mid-September and laid out on the greenhouse bench to dry off have done just that. Their skins are like parchment so it's time to pull them apart, collect the beans and store them in paper bags. The same can be done with favourite pea varieties, good quality potato tubers, sweet corn and a host of other vegetable plants. In each case the paper bags are stored in a dry, frost-free environment until time comes to activate growth next year.

Seed from favourite tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers and peppers will also store effectively but the collection process can in some cases be rather messy. Ripe tomatoes are cut open and the juicy pulp spread over the surface of a kitchen towel to reveal the seeds. These are flicked onto a clean tissue with a knife blade, then spread out and allowed to dry off over several days on the greenhouse bench or windowsill. Next stop for them is the storage envelope, with variety recorded, and cool dry treatment until required. Typical of this are two special tomatoes Wallace`s Turkish Delight and Chinese Chemistry Thompson which have reproduced true to form over a few years now.

Cucumbers, courgettes, giant marrows, pumpkins and the rest are simply cut open and the seed is scooped out, with a dessert spoon if necessary. But onions are a little different. When the bulbs have ripened off in October, one of good size and shape is selected for seed production. It stands on the greenhouse bench until fresh roots appear at the end of the year. This is the signal to pot it up to encourage new growth, and as it is a biennial, all energies then go into seed head development.
When the flowers appear fertilisation can be encouraged by light dusting with a fine brush or passing a gloved hand gently over the blooms. When the deed is done, flowers have faded and capsules have formed, place the seed head into a paper bag until there is time to spend on separating seed from dead tissue.

What are the chances of saved seed turning into plants identical to the parent from whence they came? If the seed is saved from a first generation hybrid you can expect a mixture of characteristics reflecting the parent plants but if it came from a species, the offspring will be identical. Common examples of this are Rosa rugosa and Berberis darwinii. The fruits of both have surrounding tissue which appeals to certain birds, and they are the key to dispersal. This is why we find large patches of rugosa, colourful in fruit, out in the countryside, and berberis seedlings springing up in the garden.

The seed heads of some annuals are certainly worth saving. Several gardeners I know collect tagetes (French marigold), Nigella (love-in-a-mist) and calendula (pot marigold) every autumn. When a piece of land has been set aside for these and other hardy annuals, it is not unusual to find several reappearing in successive years. It follows that if the seed pods of Iris foetidissima, so popular in floral arrangements, or those of Eccremocarpus scaber (Chilean glory flower) are collected, they will give rise to many plants.

At a recent garden club meeting one member brought in a huge bagful of glossy, black tree paeony fruits. The photograph that accompanied them highlighted a large yellow bloom. Needless to say they had all vanished before the evening was over.

Given this propensity plants have for reproduction, take a good look around the autumn garden and see if you are missing an opportunity to multiply your assets. What you will do with the extra plants might not be clear at present but there will always be someone out there just waiting to offer something exciting in exchange.