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Q: How do I eradicate asparagus beetle and stop it spreading across allotments? - Mrs S. Bolton, London W6

A: Here’s a pretty enough beetle – black with yellow blotches – but it can do a great deal of damage since both the beetle and its larvae eat the plant, chewing the leaves and nibbling the bark until the whole stem dies. It weakens the plant enormously and the crop is reduced.

The best defence is hand-picking of beetles and larvae (creamy-black with six little legs); there are two generations per year so keep your eyes peeled. If you have a great number of plants, you may want to spray with pyrethrum, but when the asparagus is in flower it should be done in the late evening when the bees have gone to bed.

You can’t stop the beetle spreading to other allotments. More to the point, how will you stop it coming back to yours? Everyone has to work at his own patch if you are all to get free of the beetle.

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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Q: I was given a beautiful azalea by my mother 20 years ago. When I was trying to remove old soil from the top of it the whole plant snapped off in my hand! Will it recover? - Terry Langford, London SW7

A: Probably not, sorry. There’s an outside chance that if you stood it somewhere cool and kept it just moist (no feeding), it might throw a shoot from the stump, but I doubt it. You should never lift or move a plant with a heavy rootball by holding or pulling on its stem.

When a gale puts great pressure on a plant the energy is absorbed by the flexing branches. Manhandling puts all that pressure on the base of the stem, causing it to break easily.

Q: Two years ago, I bought a tree fern which had two small ferns on the trunk. I potted them up and the fronds are now 5ft long, probably young tree ferns. Can I keep them in a British garden, or what is their future if I plant them in pots? - N. Scoble Wheatley, Oxford

A: Tree ferns that are transported as dry trunks can often have smaller ferns (and of different kinds) germinate from spores lodged on the fibrous trunks – a great home for small ferns wanting heavy shade.

Tree ferns spend a few years building up a crown on the ground before they start to produce a trunk, so the ideal thing in a mild area is to plant out young ones in moist shade, give them winter protection, and forget about them for a few years. In gardens that get regular bouts of frost they would be better grown in pots under glass, at least in winter. But have you room for two ferns 7ft across?

Maybe you could hang the pots out of the way on chains from a conservatory ceiling in winter, like great fans. Yes, you can grow tree ferns in pots for ever.

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