Gardening: It's midsummer... so get heathers ready for winter | Brian Kidd

I don’t know about you but I love heathers, especially those which bloom during the winter. On sunny winter days they cheer up the garden. But they have now finished blooming and need some attention.

Clip off all the dead blooms with scissors and give the plants a top dressing of leaf mould to which you add just a tablespoon of Vitax Q4 fertiliser in a gallon bucket of leaf mould.

Mix it well for this will encourage the plants to grow, so do this now.

Drench with a watering can with a rose, using rain water, and in a few weeks we will be able to take some cuttings.

These are taken during the third week of July and should be about three inches long.

There are two ways of taking the cuttings: the first is to pull off side shoots three inches long so that they come off with a heel.

Using scissors, just nip off the skin part back to the woody part.

The second method is to cut the stems just underneath a node. There are dozens of nodes on heather stems and sharp scissors can be used to do this.

Holding the cutting firmly, use the thumb nail to remove all the little leaves so that the stem is bare apart from the top one inch.

Dip the cuttings into a liquid rooting solution for 30 seconds and insert the cuttings, 24 to a standard seed tray.

The compost needs to be very sandy, so 50 per cent sharp sand and 50 per cent leaf mould is ideal and they will need to be kept in a shaded spot, preferably in a cold frame, but note that no heat is needed.

Cuttings will root in the autumn and in the spring you will see them beginning to become a lighter green at the tips.

This indicates they have rooted and this is the time to nip off the tips and put them into little flower pots.

Put each one into a three-inch pot is an acid compost. John Innes ericaceous is best but add 20 per cent extra sharp sand as they do love sandy acid composts.

If you read these articles you may have seen another tip I often give and that is once you do the top dressing, pull the outer stems towards the centre of the plant and peg the stems down with 10in-long wreath wires bent over like hairpins.

The stems often root and can be cut off the plants about nine months after pegging them down.

This is also a good idea when you see plants becoming bare or woody in the centres. Heathers are only expected to live for a relatively short time before being replaced with vigorous rooted cuttings.

If, however, you take the advice of bending the ends towards the centre of each plant, this will prolong the life of each one because the stems, once covered with ericaceous compost, send out roots and the old plants are rejuvenated.