Gardening: Your jobs for the weekend, with Brian Kidd

• Runner bean seeds can be planted indoors now. You don’t need a greenhouse. Sow in insert cells in a window. They will be ready to plant out the day after Wickham Fair, the traditional day after which there should be no frosts – we hope! Keep some seeds to plant during the third week in June. The later sowing will ensure you have tender beans into the autumn. Remember, runner beans look wonderful in wigwam shapes of canes in a flower border.

• Fork over areas where summer flowers are intended. Scatter over 2-3oz of Vitax Q4 fertiliser to each square yard and lightly rake this into the soil. The fertiliser will then be active once plants are planted after mid-May.

• If you notice worms lying on paths, they have tried to get some water and can’t get back into the soil. Pick them up and put them under the soil. Once out of the ground, they can’t get back.

• Sow marrow and courgette seeds indoors.

• Do you love spring greens? Try sowing seeds of the summer cabbage called Hispi. It is an F1 hybrid and has green leaves while young. Sow single seeds in insert cells, plant out once large enough to handle and eat the greens in 12 weeks. They can be sown like this every four weeks until August.

• Continue to cover emerging shoots on potatoes and use the compost and potash as suggested last week to prevent slug damage. Scatter slug crystals between rows. These will not harm birds. They kill slugs by dehydrating them.

• Examine roses to check for greenfly. A quick squeeze here and there where the groups of aphids are seen may keep them under control but a spray of Multirose will be even more effective.

• Support broad bean plants. A very good way of doing this is to insert 4ft-long canes upright every four feet along both sides of the row and then tie in horizontal canes, a bit like a fence. The horizontal canes are four inches above each other. This is a good wind-resistant method and especially good on exposed sites where high winds often break the plants when they are laden with pods.

• French beans, either the dwarf varieties or climbing types, can be planted directly into the ground. Dwarf beans are best planted eight inches apart in double rows 12in between rows. There are usually quite a few ‘misses’ so sow a few extra seeds at the end of rows and these can be used to fill gaps. Scatter slug crystals because slugs and snails eat germinating beans as if there’s no tomorrow.