Get on track for Autumn!

To get the best displays from your winter and spring hanging baskets and containers, plant them now. Plants to use include ivy, dwarf conifers and dwarf shrubs, winter-flowering pansies, hardy primulas and polyanthus and add bulbs to extend the display. Check out our extensive range of plants, containers, baskets, basket liners, brackets and compost - and remember to add a controlled-release fertiliser.

Now's the time to give your houseplants some tender loving care. Most houseplants will need less water than in summer and you can stop feeding foliage houseplants. Autumn and winter-flowering houseplants will benefit from feeding with a high potash liquid fertiliser every 7 to 10 days. If your plants have been enjoying the summer outdoors bring them back inside before the weather deteriorates.


Force bulbs for Xmas display
Now's the time to buy your prepared hyacinth and other bulbs to guarantee flowers for Christmas. Plant them in pots or shallow bowls, leaving the neck of the bulb just exposed above the compost. Then place somewhere cold and dark for 10 to 14 weeks.  They can be moved into the light and warmth when the flower buds start emerging. Remember to pick up your bulbs, bulb fibre or compost, pots and containers and labels to ensure beautiful bulbs for Christmas.

Take cuttings from all your half-hardy bedding plants, such as fuchsias, bedding geraniums, marguerites and osteospermums, to ensure you have plenty of plants for next year. Take the cuttings just below a leaf, remove the leaves from the lower half of the cutting and dip the end in hormone rooting powder or liquid. Then insert the cuttings in pots of cuttings compost. Cover the pots with a polythene bag or put them in a propagator and place somewhere warm and sheltered.  Don't forget to pick up everything you need for successful cuttings, including pots, compost, dibbers, rooting hormone, labels and propagators.

Autumn is nature's natural time for planting. We have a wide range of hardy trees, shrubs, herbaceous perennials, roses and climbers in stock. Dig in plenty of compost, composted bark, or other bulky soil improvers, and add a slow release fertiliser such as bonemeal - or controlled-release fertiliser to the soil. Make sure all plants are well watered before and after planting.

Liven up your lawn by removing the build up of dead grass, moss and other debris with a spring-tine rake or powered scarifier. Then aerate the soil with a hollow-tine aerator or garden fork and add a top dressing. Then apply a granular autumn lawn feed or, feed, weed and mosskiller. Finally re-seed any gaps with the correct lawn seed mix.

Protect fruit trees
Now's the time to apply grease bands around the trunks of fruit trees to prevent damage later on from wingless winter moths. Carefully rubbing off any loose bark will remove hiding places for other pests. To kill over-wintering pest eggs use Growing Success Winter Wash when all the leaves have dropped. Spray peaches and nectarines with Dithane 945 or a copper fungicide to help protect against peach leaf curl. Finally, always pick up all fallen diseased leaves and destroy them.

Get your garden ready for winter with a good autumn tidy up. Rake up any leaves and other debris and compost them, but diseased leaves should be disposed of. If you have a lot of leaves to rake up consider buying a garden Vac instead. Clean the bamboo canes and other supports with Jeyes Fluid or Armillatox and give the patio a good cleaning with the same products, or indulge yourself with a pressure washer.

Don't throw away your spent bedding plants, kitchen waste and other material - turn them into valuable compost for improving your soil and mulching your beds and borders. Even those fallen tree leaves can be turned into leafmould. Making good compost and leafmould is easy with our wide range of compost bins, compost and leafmould accelerators, leaf rakes and collectors. Just ask if you need any help with successful composting.

Greenhouses and cold frames should be prepared now, ready for overwintering tender plants. Start by cleaning them with Jeyes Fluid or Armillatox. Then put up bubble wrap double-glazing to keep it warmer during the winter and to help cut fuel bills.  Horticultural fleece can also be draped over plants to help provide a few extra degrees of frost protection. Check your heaters to ensure they're in full working order or buy a more efficient replacement - and buy in plenty of paraffin or gas if you use these types of heaters.

Plug any gaps in the garden with spring bedding plants. Choose from wallflowers, bellis daisies, forget-me-not, winter-flowering pansies, violas, hardy primulas and polyanthus. And remember to add some spring-flowering bulbs too.

Keep your garden full of colour throughout autumn with our plants of the month. Choose from ericas, hydrangeas, potentillas, asters, echinacea, phlox, rudbeckias, hardy chrysanthemums, cyclamen and winter-flowering pansies. And remember those plants that are grown for berries, autumn foliage colours and the wide range of evergreens.

Make a new lawn
This is the best time to make a new lawn or replace one that is past its best. Good preparation is the key to success, so work over the soil incorporating compost or composted bark, rake and level the ground, walk over it to settle the soil, add some general granular fertiliser and rake again. Water well and keep the soil moist to ensure rapid establishment.

Pest watch
As temperatures start to drop, outdoor pests become less active and diseases start to become dormant but you should still stay vigilant. Clearing away leaves and other debris will remove hiding places for pests. Fallen diseased leaves should be raked up and destroyed. Badly diseased stems and branches are best pruned away. The cooler, damper weather means that slugs and snails will become more active, so protect vulnerable plants with a suitable control or trap. This is also the last time you can treat plants for vine weevil grubs. Spray peaches and nectarines with Dithane 945 or a copper fungicide to help protect against peach leaf curl. Indoors, pests and diseases will remain active. Early identification of a problem will ensure it doesn't get out of control, so check your plants regularly for telltale signs.

For a splash of early summer colour next year, sow Californian poppies, annual poppies, godetia, larkspurs and a number of other hardy annuals now. Simply sow them where you want them to flower in soil that has been improved with compost or composted bark.

It's time to pick some of those apples, but don't be impatient as many varieties including Cox are not ready until later this month. As the apple colours up, just place the apple in your palm and gently lift, if the apple comes away in your hand I'd say it's ripe and ready to eat or cook. If you want to enjoy apples into the autumn lay in trays and place somewhere cool, and frost free.

Grow Blackberries
Many of you will have enjoyed blackberrying perhaps with the children or even the grandchildren. If you grow your own the crop the large berries will be within walking distance. "Bedford Giant" can be trained on a 6-foot by 6-foot trellis panel, cutting out the old wood and tying in new, the fruit is so easy to pick and the thought now of those blackberry and apple crumbles! Now's the time to plan and plant the fruit garden, look out for large berried blackberries like "Black Beaute" and get planting!

Grow Blackcurrants
If you were brought up on blackcurrants as a child, you will have had them stewed in pies made into tarts and even jam. Some of the newer varieties not only crop better but have really sweet fruit that you can eat straight from the bush like "Ebony". Prepare the ground well with plenty of organic material in the soil if you are going to plant some, perhaps your own compost or some well rotted manure, a good sunny position will give the best fruit. Now is the time to plant those bushes.

As areas of your vegetable plot become clear don't stop planting and sowing, Lettuce and cabbage plants are sometimes still available not forgetting you can still sow a short rooted variety of carrot and perhaps some winter varieties of radish like the Large Black Spanish or the China rose. They may need some protection when the weather gets colder but you will enjoy those vegetables later in the season.

Grow Tomatoes
Tomatoes growing outside as the days cool will cease to ripen, so why not lift the plants remove the fruit and get cooking. Believe it or not its not just chutney that green tomatoes can be used for try checking out soup, fried green tomatoes and even jam. If you don't fancy that, place those green tomatoes in a brown paper bag with a ripe banana, that should ripen them.