10 jobs for this week

1 SOW COREOPSIS
You can get your hands on FREE coreopsis seeds with this week's Garden News. They will be real eye-catchers if you plant them in a sunny part of your garden. ‘Sea Shells Red’ is a rustic-coloured mix of yellow, orange and red with brown centres. Once your plants start blooming, they can keep going into October and the flowers are good for cutting. This variety grows to about 70cm (2ft 4in) tall. ‘Sea Shells Red’ is a first year flowering perennial, so if you sow now, it should flower from July this year, and for many more. Sow later for flowers next year.

2 PRUNE HEDGES
If your hedges are looking untidy, trim them back into shape before the spring when birds are looking for nesting sites. Prune out thick long stems which you can save and use for pea sticks or as supports for veg and even border perennials. Weak stems can be shredded and composted or added to a bonfire. Make your garden tidier for spring and gather up and dispose of any diseased leaves and plant material left after recent snowy and wet conditions. These can go on the bonfire too. The ash will help improve soil. When it's cooled down, it's rich in potassium.

3 PINCH OUT SWEET PEAS
Sweet peas sown indoors at the end of last year should have put on good growth by now and even outdoor plants should have survived the cold. When the plants are about 10cm (4in) tall, pinch them out to encourage strong, stocky plants and to stop them turning leggy and spindly. Using a sharp knife (or a sharp fingernail!), cut out the growing tip of the plant just above a pair of leaves. You can also start feeding your sweet peas now.

4 TOP DRESS ALPINES
Top up alpine areas in your garden and alpine containers with grit. Alpines can begin to rot if their bases get too wet in winter so adding extra grit to the base of the soil or compost will help keep their crowns dry. Be generous and add a good thick layer underneath each plant. Make sure you get the grit right underneath all the leaves because it is the centre of the plants that are prone to damage from the cold and wet. If you've had lots of casualties, make sure new plants are planted with their crowns slightly proud above the soil surface.

5 FIRM IN WALLFLOWERS
If the soil has a chance to dry out in the coming weeks, check your wallflowers to make sure they are firmly rooted. Although these are very tough plants, wet and windy conditions can unsettle them and they won't grow well if they're not firmly anchored. Draw more soil around the base of each plant and firm it down. You can also add a layer of mulch. If in doubt about the wetness of the soil, keep off it to avoid compacting it.

6 HEATHERS NEED A TRIM
Autumn-flowering heathers will benefit from a tidy so trim them now. If left to their own devices they soon become woody, leggy and lacking in vigour. Cut bare or broken stems back to the base and lightly shear over the rest of the growth to remove spent flower stems and encourage fresh new growth in spring. This should keep plants vigorous and healthy and make them last as long as possible. It will also encourage them to spread. Large heathers can be cut back slightly harder if they’re too big but they don’t respond well to really hard pruning.

7 TIDY SHRUBS
Variegated evergreen shrubs will often ‘revert' back to having plain-coloured leaves that can spoil their effect. Eventually reverted shoots can take over a plant completely. Prune out reverted shoots now to prevent a future problem. Take the stems back to where the reversion starts, cutting just above a leaf or leaf bud. Shrubs that are prone to reversion include euonymus, Elaeagnus ebbingei and pittosporum.

8 POT UP YOUR CUTTINGS
Keep an eye on fuchsia cuttings and pot them on into their own pots if they've sprouted into life. Carefully tease them out of their pots with a dibber and pot them up into 8cm (3in) pots of John Innes compost. Also check hardwood cuttings taken last autumn. Gently tip up their pots to see how much of a root system has been developed. If the cuttings have developed strong roots then you can pot these up into their own pots, again using John Innes. This will give roots more space to develop.

9 SPROUT GLADIOLI CORMS
Give stored gladioli corms more warmth now to encourage them to grow. This may give you flowers slightly earlier in the year. Check corms and discard any that are soft, rotten or diseased. Stand them upright on seed trays and put somewhere that gets plenty of light. About 10C (50F) is ideal to start them into early growth. Plant out your newly-sprouted corms at the end of March or in early April.

10 MOW YOUR LAWN
This won't be a job for everybody but if conditions are dry enough and your grass is on the long side, you can mow now to get your garden looking tidier again. This will save you having to do battle with thick, long grass in the spring, which can take several cuts to get down to a manageable length. Make sure the lawn is firm enough to take the weight of you and your mower without becoming spongy. Mowing a lawn when wet can compact the soil and make it airless, which will leave it more prone to disease. Don't be tempted to take too much grass off, just give your lawn a light trim.