Gardening: Here's your weekend to-do list, with Brian Kidd

• Now’s the time to re-start cyclamen. Remove the tuber from pot and remove old compost around tuber. Remove dead leaves. Check there are no white grubs below tuber. They’re vine weevil grubs and must be destroyed. After washing pot and allowing to dry, repot in fresh John Innes No2 or 3 ensuring corm is planted to half its depth. Water, leave outdoors off the soil until September or place the pot on a cool windowsill and the cyclamen will flower in winter.

• Did you know this is the best time to take cuttings of all types of shrubs? Just take off side shoots of any kind of shrubs – yes even camellias – put them into a sandy compost mix in the shade and they will root in three weeks.

• Bud roses on to rose stock planted last October. If you have never budded roses before and you like a challenge, get hold of a good book on how to propagate plants. Propagation is very rewarding. When successful, you feel great!

• Do you need to replace the strawberry bed? This is the time to put 3in diameter pots filled with compost into the soil close to where you see strawberry runners. Peg the tips of the runners into the compost by using wreath wires bent over like hair pins. The runners root in a few weeks. You will then be in a position to plant the new plants wherever you want them and at a time to suit you. Strawberry plants in pots can be planted at any time. Find the plants which produced the best fruit, the ones with red leaves are not good enough to propagate. Be careful.You may be surprised at the size of the berries on the new plants, it makes all this effort worthwhile.

• After enjoying rose blooms as cut flowers, remove the dead head and remove all the leaves apart from the top pair and cut below the lowest joint on each stem. Place the stems in the greenhouse in a pottery vase (not a glass vase ) – the stem bases need to be in the dark but the leaves must be in the light. Once the roots appear, fill the container with vermiculite. This will encourage masses of new roots. Pot each rooted cutting into 4in diameter pots and plant out next spring.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​