Gardening | Brian’s Kidd’s weekend to-do list

• Paths are slippery at this time so try to clear fallen leaves. Water on Brintons patio cleaner diluted in water. This will kill the moss. After watering the path, leave the solution for about an hour before brushing off the moss with a stiff broom.

• Our lawns at home are still very wet. It would be wise to insert a garden fork into the turf to the full depth of the tines and then scatter sharp sand over the lawn’s surface. Brush this gently into the grass and it will prevent slipping when walking on the lawn.

• Thank goodness most of the leaves have now fallen. It has been a mammoth task picking them up. If you have not done this yet, rake them together so the wind is blowing towards the heap you are creating. Once there is enough to gather, grab them and put them into a large old compost bag so they will rot and become leaf mould. Sprinkle on one part urine to seven parts water, the best activator and it’s free!

• At the allotment, thanks to the wet weather, some of the Brussels sprout buttons look as if they have rotted. Leave those which still look a bit green because after Christmas they will burst open to form what looks like little cabbages. It’s a bit fiddly preparing them in the kitchen, but these can be very useful to eat and the leaves taste as good as spring cabbage.

• If you enjoy growing lettuce in a cold greenhouse, another batch of winter lettuce can be sown now for harvesting in March. Look for the variety Rosetta, produced by Suttons seeds.

• A horrible job, but as soon as all the leaves have fallen, this is the time to clean out the garden pond. Water lilies can be divided now. You will need to do this if you found the water lilly leaves grew long leaf stems which were nine inches over the top of the surface of the water. How do I know this? I’ve got to sort ours out.

• This is a very good time to think about changes in the garden, as we are all a day older than we were yesterday. What changes would make the garden easier to look after? Do you need that flower bed in the middle of the lawn? Why not move the bird bath into a border? Have a look and think about it.