Our basil is blooming beautifully just now, which is a problem, as basil's blooms mean fewer and smaller leaves. Pick off the flower stems as soon as they appear, keep them well fed and watered, and your basil can grown almost waist high, though unless you're in a subtropical or hotter area it probably won't have time to before frosts cut it.

Basil also grow surprisingly well from cuttings, especially right now, when spring-sown basil bushes have grown big enough to have snappable wood. Break off a woody branch, trim it neatly – ragged bits can rot – choose a medium-sized pot and fill with potting mix. Then poke in the cutting, leaving only two leaves on top. Water well, place in your hottest and sunniest spot in the garden and wait. It should put out new leaves within a fortnight.

As the weather gets cooler head to the supermarket and buy a transparent plastic container, the biggest you can find. Place the pot in it, then put on the lid. You can fit half a dozen pots in a large plastic crate, but even a large drink container will give enough insulation, hopefully, to keep your basil growing when the temperatures go down to about minus 3 degrees, and hopefully even lower, especially if you can hang it above some sun-reflecting paving or by a heat-retaining wall.

And it's worth it. Don't be fooled by the lush basil bunches in the supermarket. Basil's fragrance and flavour is held not just in the leaves but on their surface. Sniff a supermarket bunch then sniff some freshly picked leaves – the difference will be incredible, not just in strength but complexity.

The giant plastic container trick also works with pots of French tarragon, which dies back in cold weather. Bung it in its insulated container and it will keep giving you leaves well into mid-winter. If you want to make doubly sure, wrap the container in a blanket overnight, or even lug the whole thing indoors into the warmth – the soil will be neatly trapped inside as well as any dribbles of moisture. You can leave it in the middle of the living room with no worries – just don't forget to take it out the next morning when you go to work.

And if you think there won't be enough warmth in your winter-touched garden, even trapped within the plastic, balance it between your windscreen and your steering wheel when you park in the sunniest spot in the car park. Double insulation, double growth … and fragrant tarragon, or even ripening cherry tomatoes, just when the summer scents are fading. And lovely summer scented basil, to see you into the heart of winter, with only a few months' gap before you smell and taste it all again.

Note: Using a large plastic container is also a useful trick if you want to take cuttings of ornamentals. Bung snappable wood into the potting mix, as above. Water well. Put lid on. Wait. There's little evaporation in the box and lots of heat, so you only need open it once or twice a week. But to be safe, zap both pot and soil in the microwave for a minute to kill mould spores. Do not zap the cutting, unless you want a cooked cutting.

This week I'm:

* muttering about an article complaining about the shortage of cauliflowers – doesn't anyone understand "seasonal" any more?

* cauliflowers are only truly creamy white and sweet in cold weather. Heat turns them tough and sulphurous and they would no longer be anyone's favourite veg. It's summer time. Get it? Tomatoes, basil, cucumbers, tiny crisp zucchini, fat-fleshed capsicum that taste of sunlight instead of ethylene and cool rooms, eggplant, crisp beans, long snake beans …

* I can't believe anyone with working taste buds truly believes they can eat every variety of food year round. Perhaps all too many taste buds have only known flavours reduced by long and cold storage, made tasty again only by spices and sauces or char-grilling methods to replace the vanished flavour.

* apologising to the wombats – our carrots haven't done much this year, to be frank – nothing at all. Supermarket carrots for the wombats ...

* definitely, probably, possibly going to get around to planting the winter veg seed this week. Or next week. This is the time to make the great decisions. Battle caterpillars for broccoli and broccolini? Will we really eat a dozen red cabbage? Winter radishes? Japanese apple turnips, sweet and crunchy, especially when baked in a little olive oil or even raw? Do we have enough silver beet? And mustn't forget, red cos lettuces ...

* admiring the asparagus which is almost as tall as I am. Which should mean great fat spears next spring, purple and Dutch giant asparagus as well as the more common varieties which, to be honest, may look a bit different but all taste alike – delicious.

* waiting for the hydrangeas to bloom flagrantly again now we've had some rain, so I can pick some to dry to fill the vases in winter, pale and parchment coloured and textured, and some giant banksias to complete the arrangement.

* filling vases with branches of chillies, bright shiny red against green leaves. As we get about 300 chillies a year, and eat perhaps 10, this is a useful thing to do with them. Bell peppers look extra gorgeous, dozens of bright red or glowing orange bells hanging from each stem.