10 jobs to do this week...

1 Plant a honeysuckle
Deciduous honeysuckle (Lonicera periclymenum) ‘Graham Thomas’ is one of the best honeysuckles for fragrance and its large, creamy white and yellow flowers will continue to bloom from July to September. It’s also a favourite of bees and moths. Although most honeysuckles are fast growing, they’re easy to keep in check with regular pruning.

2 Established plants in pots can often be overlooked at this time of year when watering and feeding routines are relaxed. But now is the time to improve the soil for plants in long-term containers so that they are ready for the growing season. Scrape away the top 5cm (2in) of soil and remove any weeds. Add fresh compost and a sprinkling of granular feed such as Growmore. Water and top dress with a mulch of gravel or bark to conserve moisture. If the plant is small enough, consider re-potting into a larger container.

3 The cup and saucer plant (Cobaea scandens) is a superb exotic climber that is satisfying to grow from seed. Its beautiful bell-shaped flowers are a picture in summer and because it’s best grown as an annual, it is perfect for covering empty walls and trellises while you wait for new permanent climbers to establish. Soak the seed for a couple of hours before sowing and sow in a propagator at a temperature of at least 18C (65F). Sow each seed on its edge and just cover it with compost or perlite. They should germinate after about three weeks. You can also sow eccremocarpus and ipomoea now.

4 Always hold seedlings by their leaves rather than by the stem or roots as they can be very easily damaged. Keep them in a greenhouse or cool light room indoors and only water sparingly until they have developed a strong root system to avoid losing them to damping-off diseases.

5 If cactus roots are starting to appear through the drainage holes of their pots, its time to repot them. Water the plant a couple of days beforehand to moisten the roots. Wear stout gloves to remove the cactus from its pot, or wrap a thick strip of newspaper around the plant and ease it out. Check the roots for pests and diseases and then pot on into a slightly bigger container. Cacti like an open, free-draining compost such as a 50:50 mix of John Innes No 2 and perlite. Tap the compost gently around the roots, but don’t firm it. Water sparingly. A thin layer of grit or gravel on the surface will help with drainage.

6 It won’t be long before all the hanging baskets are back in action so now is a good time to give them the once over and get them ready for planting up later on. Brush them out to get rid of old compost left over from last year. This will reduce the chance of fungal disease being carried over to this year’s plants. Check the chains on your baskets, too, so you don’t go to hang them up and then find that the chain won’t support the weight! Make sure none of the links is weak and unhinge them to make filling and planting easier in spring.

7 Pruning dogwoods and willows now will give the shrubs plenty of time to produce lots of long stems for next winter’s displays. Prune down to almost ground level. Young plants need to establish for a year or two before you start hard pruning. If left unpruned, dogwood and willow will lose their vigour and stem colour will gradually fade year after year. Neglected shrubs should be pruned to within about 30cm (12in) of ground level. New stems will re-grow to about 1.5m (5ft) tall each year. Feed shrubs with a general-purpose fertiliser after pruning.

8 Get the ground ready for sowing hardy annuals now. Hardy annuals are a real gift to the garden because you can sow them direct into the soil without the need for pricking out, potting on or hardening off. They give reasonably early colour and are a cheap way to fill a border in a new garden. To prepare the ground, remove weeds and fork over the soil to break up large clods, as long as weather conditions allow. Rake the soil to break it down even further until you’ve got a nice even, clod-free surface that you can sow straight into in a couple of weeks’ time.

9 Slugs, snails, squirrels and rabbits are all threats to spring bulbs such as lilies and tulips. They’ll munch their way through the emerging shoots especially when the weather is cold and food is in short supply. Sprinkle slug pellets around the bulbs and cover the shoots to protect them. Chicken wire or netting may not look very pretty but it works well. The netting from around fruit and veg packs is a low cost solution or use plastic cloches made from squash bottles, cut to fit.

10 You can increase your stock of chrysanthemums now by propagating from cuttings. Take them from fresh young shoots growing from the base of your plants. Snap them off just below a leaf joint using your thumb and finger. Each cutting needs to be about 5cm (2in) long. Dipthem into hormone rooting powder and insert into multi-purpose  compost mixed with perlite. The warmer you keep the cuttings, the quicker they will root but a minimum temperature of 7C (45F) is best and 20C (68F) is close to the optimum temperature for rooting. You can take dahlia cuttings in the
same way.