Nature is Calling

It has turned orange and it is late September. Cut now and it may slump before the 31st; leave it and one frost can end it. Here is how to read the fruit, not the calendar.

A bare plum in February looks like the obvious moment to prune. It sits deep inside the nine months when a fresh cut is an open door to silver leaf. Here are the two safe windows, and the signs on the tree that decide which one is yours.

Order this cover once and it may be the best you have owned. Order the same listing again three years later and 26 of the last 100 UK buyers say what turns up is a thinner, shinier thing, and seven of them sent it straight back.

Seventy litres on the badge, a 60 x 35cm bed in the listing's own diagram. Here is what the MoverX folding wagon really swallows, and which buyers it leaves stranded in a field.

Autumn is not the month for the main rose prune. Here is the one cut worth making before the winter gales, which roses should not be touched now, and what waits until February.

Nobody buys a hori hori for the sheath, and then they spend their reviews arguing about it: cheap nylon that will not survive a working environment, says one buyer with 40-odd hours on the blade; worth having precisely because the tool is so sharp, says another. The blade starts a second argument, over the word Razorsharp.

Fill one of these to the brim with wet hedge cuttings and you will not be lifting it into a hatchback. That is the interesting part of Singwow's best-selling 500L sacks: the fabric copes better than the buyer's back does.

Mild, damp autumn nights keep UK slugs feeding on broad beans, sweet peas and winter salads long after summer ends. Here is how to protect autumn seedlings now and cut next spring's slug pressure at the same time.

Clouds of flies around your compost bin mean exposed scraps and a wet mix, not a lost cause. Five practical steps for UK gardeners: identify the fly, bury and cover, rebalance and turn, trap the adults, then fly-proof the setup for good.

Most leaking hose connectors need nothing more than a fresh washer, a new O-ring or a re-cut hose end. This step-by-step UK guide shows how to find the leak point and fix it for good.

Cloudy hot tub water usually traces back to the filter, the sanitiser, the chemistry or water that is simply worn out. Here is the order to fix them in, and the routine that keeps a UK tub clear into autumn.

A full pre-winter service for UK garden tools: scrub off soil and sap, disinfect and sharpen blades, oil metal and wooden handles, sort batteries and petrol, and store everything dry until spring.