These days you can buy an abundance of non-seasonal fruit and veg in the supermarkets.

But this reproduction of a second world war Dig For Victory propaganda poster that I have framed on my kitchen wall reminds me that there were times when we relied on what we could grow seasonally.

It's still a great idea to try and have fruit and vegetables available on your plots all year round. It saves on all that supermarket plastic packaging and transport miles. And you can't beat the taste of your own fresh veg in winter!

At our community allotment, we have already got some hardy cabbages, kale and chard growing for winter cropping and we are now sowing and planting veg for late winter, spring and early summer cropping.

We were donated several packets of alliums for overwintering - 2 varieties of onions, 2 varieties of garlic and some shallots - so we planted the onions today. We will plant the garlic and shallots in the next few weeks.

Emmanuel, Sam and Nigel prepared the plot by taking out any stray weeds, raking and leveling. Then we measured out a grid for spacing the onions.

Nigel: "It's very interesting, mathematically!"

Then we planted out all the sets in the grid pattern and watered them in.

Overwintered onions don't keep stored for long but it's well worth planting some to fill the beds and to harvest early in the season.

We will keep you posted through the autumn/ winter on the progress of our crops.