Your complete library of expert gardening tutorials, step-by-step growing guides, and seasonal garden advice. Whether you're starting your first seeds or perfecting your harvest, find everything you need to grow healthier plants and create the garden of your dreams.
Deciding when to sow broad beans for overwintering in the UK is less about the date than about what your ground is doing. Here is how to read your own plot, and when a February sowing beats a November one.
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.
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.
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.
Turn a wet autumn carpet of leaves into the best free soil conditioner in the garden. Six steps from collecting and sorting through to bagging, keeping it damp, and knowing what one year and two year leaf mould are each good for.
A step by step autumn clean for UK greenhouses, in the order that saves the most work: empty it, sweep it dry, wash the glazing, disinfect the frame and staging, then clear the gutters, floor and water butt before the frosts arrive.
A step-by-step autumn plan for clearing lawn moss in the UK: kill it with iron sulphate, scarify it out, aerate, overseed and fix the conditions that invited it in.
