Sports Calendar

(Neil Wormald, Sunday Times).

Weekend Tips:

- Spring bulbs are already for sale. Pot some now for the earliest display or buy them and keep them cool and dry for a month or so. Once potted they must stay cool; plunging the pots into the soil in a cold frame is ideal. Remember mice love crocus corms

- Fish out the broad-leaved weed seedlings from newly sown grass and make sure you don’t let fallen leaves lie on it; moulds soon set in during dewy autumn weather

51 glorious garden websites

Times Online's gardening guru opens her address book to share her top pick of gardening websites

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• Fruit bushes: what to grow and how to get a good crop

• Plant it now: a beginner's guide to snowdrops

• Neil Wormald’s week: a potted guide to growing chillies

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- Blue Geranium wallichianum is at its best now, scrambling into the bottoms of shrubs and other perennials. The crown is small and tight and difficult to divide, so if you want more plants collect seed now, catching the ripe capsules just before they explode. ‘Ann Folkard’ has the same self-hoisting habit and is purplish with yellowish leaves. ‘Rozanne’ flowers from June, has big blue flowers, and eats small shrubs for breakfast; useful, generous, but an all-things-to-all-men plant

- Time to plant heathers, in light, peaty or sandy, acid soil (Erica carnea and darleyensis will cope with lime if the soil is light). Plant them in full light and slightly deeper than they were in the pot.

(Stephen Anderton, The Times)

Week 2:

What to do this week:

- Keep alpine plants clear of fallen leaves as this will prevent rotting and other diseases

- Once the foliage turns brown, cut down the stems of Jerusalem artichokes to 6in above ground level. The underground tubers can be harvested throughout the autumn

- Tender floating plants, such as water hyacinth and water lettuce, should be placed in plastic containers filled with pond water and overwintered in a well-lit and frost-free room

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