Life

Things to do this Week

1 Plant dwarf bulbous irises for winter colour.

2 Tidy your pond by deadheading marginal aquatic plants and removing excess growth from submerged oxygenating plants.

3 Check for reversion on variegated shrubs and trees and remove all-green shoots.

4 If your potatoes are small due to dryness in early summer but rain has now fallen,

encourage them by dusting fertiliser between the rows and hoeing in.

5 Pick over bedding dahlias to remove any seedheads, which helps to keep the plants in flower.

6 As fruit ripens on trees, their weight increases. Check over the branches to see if any need support.

7 Earth up French beans to the bottom leaves and feed weekly with quarter strength liquid manure until the crop is finished.

8 Pinch out the growing tips of wallflowers to make the plants bushier.

9 Remove the growing tips from greenhouse tomatoes to encourage the fruit to develop more rapidly.