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.
Early apples are for eating now; late ones will sit in a cool shed until spring if you pick them right, wrap them and keep them apart. Here is how to tell which is which, what the storage room needs, and what to do when something starts to rot.
Leeks are ready when the shank is thumb-thick and the flags stand stiff, not on a date. Early types come out from late August; hardy winter ones stand through frost and are lifted December to March. Here is how to read the row.
Most people ask this in August, and August is almost always too early. Spring-sown parsnips are rarely worth lifting before the tops die back in October, and they taste better after a frost. Here is how to read the row.
Cutting back perennials in the UK is not one decision with one date. Some plants need the old growth off before winter, some do better left standing until late February, and a few will rot or freeze if you cut them now. Here is how to tell them apart.
Frost, not the date, tells you when to lift dahlias in the UK. Here is what to look for on the plant, how it changes from Cornwall to Scotland, when leaving them in the ground is a fair choice, and how to dry and store the tubers so they come through to spring.
Autumn is when most people start asking, but a pond does not read a calendar. Here is the water temperature that settles it, the fish behaviour that confirms it, and what the job looks like from September to March.
Pelargoniums die at the first frost, so the job is picking a method that suits your space and moving before nights drop to 5C. The signals to check on the plant and the forecast, what to do from September to March, and which of four methods suits a windowsill, a porch, a greenhouse or a garage.
Daffodils go in a month or two before tulips. Here is the UK planting window, the soil signal that overrides the calendar, and what changes when the bulbs go into grass or a pot.
Two cuts, six months apart, and they do different jobs. Which buddleja you have decides the timing, and getting that wrong costs a whole year of flower.
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.
