RHS Gardening Through the Year: Month-by-month Planning Instructions and Inspiration

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Sweep up any patio areas removing any dead leaves or foliage and use the best pressure washer to clean the paving of mildew. Whatever your level of skills in the garden, expert advice from the well-known gardener, Ian Spence, will help you keep your garden thriving all year round. RHS Gardening Through The Year is a must-have for anyone who has a green thumb! Powdery mildew often affects both ornamental and edible plants in early autumn. You can use a fungicide on ornamental plants, but there are none available for edible plants. We recommend watering plants regularly as a way to prevent the disease.

The early bird catches the worm, and the early shopper catches the best range of potato varieties. Look out for 'potato days' at local garden centres or gardens; these usually offer a great choice of potatoes to buy, plus expert advice.Lift and divide established clumps of rhubarb to renew the plant and get more. Sections taken from the outside of the plant are better than those from the centre. It may seem a strange time of year to be thinking of a spring-flowering plant, but now is the time to feed hellebores. Calcified seaweed is great for the job, but a general feed, such as Growmore, would also work well. After feeding, mulch around the plant, ideally with spent mushroom compost. To keep them at their best for as long as possible, put them in a well-lit spot in a cool room. The long leaves of narcissus look good when supported by a few twiggy stems from the garden. Pumpkins and squash should be raised off the ground to ripen in the sun before harvesting. If the weather is wet, cut them early and bring them in to ripen in a greenhouse or sunny windowsill. To cure the fruits for storage, keep them in a warm room for a fortnight, then put them somewhere dry and cool but frost-free. The best advice is remove any infected growth that you find. Ashwood Nurseries, which specialises in hellebores among other plants, recommends cutting off all the foliage, diseased or not, to help stop the new season's growth becoming infected with the fungus. It will also stop the leaves obscuring the flowers are they emerge.

Once all risk of frost has passed, put out summer bedding plants and pot up some of the best plants for hanging baskets for guaranteed summer color. This month, our gardens begin to react to the lengthening days, with flowering daffodils and fat buds of blossom on the best flowering trees preparing to erupt. After flowering, prune climbing and rambling roses and tie in stems securely to prevent any breakages in extreme weather. Kew Gardens has a comprehensive free resource for KS1 schools and home learning about how we can protect life on the land. The next three months are the busiest in the productive garden, for sowing and planting, and there’s nothing more summery than harvesting your veg and cut flowers!If you have a lawn, now is the time to show it some TLC with some autumn lawn care. Rake it thoroughly with a wire rake to remove the moss and thatch and then spike it to aerate the soil and improve drainage. A sprinkling of phosphate feed wouldn’t go amiss either. Most trees should be pruned in winter, but cherries, plums and damsons are best trimmed in summer to prevent silver leaf disease. Choose potatoes without long shoots or any signs of mould. When you get them home, tip them out of the bag into a seed tray or an old egg box and leave them in a cool, light place until you plant them, otherwise known as chitting potatoes. This will discourage the sprouts from growing too long. If you're learning how to grow potatoes, earth them up regularly as the foliage grows, keeping any tubers well covered. Putting out high-fat (high-energy) foods for birds in winter will help our feathered friends to get through the worst of the weather. Adjust the quantity you put out according to demand, regularly wash bird feeders and throw away old food. If squirrels are a problem in your garden, take a look at our Best Buy squirrel-proof bird feeders.