Gardening: This week's jobs in your garden | Brian Kidd

• This is the ideal time to plant nerines, amaryllis and colchicum bulbs. Choose a place where they can bask in sun and they will provide a lot of pleasure in the autumn. I am mentioning this early because they are snatched up quickly when they arrive at garden centres.

• Take 5in-long cuttings of pinks and carnations. Trim off all the leaves apart from the top seven and insert into a 50/50 mix of sharp sand and vermiculite. Water with a half-strength feed of Maxicrop Growth Stimulant. It’s amazing how this encourages easy rooting.

Looking for more work?! Here are last week’s tasks

• Thin bunches of indoor grapes. Hopefully, the last thinning for this year. Dust sulphur powder on to the stems holding the fruit and use Copper Mixture on leaves with powdery mildew.

• Disbud dahlia bloom buds every few days to encourage flowers on longer stems. Look at every stem and at the top you’ll see three buds. Leave the one in the middle and nip out the two on the side.

• Tie in stems of chrysanthemums so they grow long stems with blooms.

• Divide or move peonies now. When replanting, ensure the tops of the rhizomes (thick roots) are on the surface of the soil. If planted too deeply, they don’t produce flowers. If you don’t want to move or divide them, scrape away the surface of the soil below the foliage so you can see the top of the rhizomes. They will then flower next summer.

• When watering the garden, only water essential things, it is a waste of water spraying foliage. If the ground is very dry, water the SOIL on the most important parts. Put a bucket underneath baskets to catch surplus water. If your soil is very dry it would be a good idea to use a garden fork to break up the soil and the water will not run away.

• Please put water out for the birds. Thank you.