Gardening: Your to-do list for the weekend | Brian Kidd

• Feed indoor cucumbers twice a week with a high nitrogen liquid feed. This will encourage rapid growth and more little cucumbers will form in mid-August. If white patches are appearing on the leaves, apply a thick dusting of sulphur powder to prevent powdery mildew from spreading.

• Sow large-rooted radish for winter stews. Simply sow them in a drill outdoors.

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• Trim off the dead flowers on sunroses – helianthemum. This will encourage new growth which will produce masses of blooms next summer.

• Sow short rows of Autumn King 2 carrots. These can be left in the ground for digging during the winter. • Cover the row with insect barrier mesh (Keydell Nurseries have it stock) suspended by half-circles of plastic water piping to keep carrot root fly away from the seedlings.

• Spray roses with Multirose to keep blackspot and rose-invading insects under control.

• Sow cress three days before sowing mustard in trays anywhere indoors. Home-grown mustard and cress is very easy to grow and tastes excellent in salads. This is a good crop with which to introduce children to gardening.

• Softwood cuttings can be taken now from your favourite shrubs such as camellias and daphne, many others too that people often think are difficult to root. Time is of the essence. Take cuttings from side shoots four to five inches long taken off with a heel. This means simply pulling them off and trimming off the skin which comes away with the cutting. Take off all the leaves, just leaving the top four and the growing tip and insert them into a 50/50 mix peat substitute and sharp sand. Put the cuttings in little pots in a deep box with a sheet of glass over the top. Shade the glass and keep the cuttings moist. They will root in about six to eight weeks. Daphne may not root until spring.

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