– Scarlet lily beetles are around again. Squish them as you would a lightly cooked frozen pea.

– Nip out by hand seedling broad-leaved weeds (buttercups, plantains, dandelions, etc) in recently sown lawns, before they can smother the seedling grasses.

– Time for heather lovers to get planting, into light, peaty or sandy acid soil; Erica x darleyensis and carnea will take lime, but it must still be light. Plant them a couple of centimetres deeper than in the pot for a denser result and – if you need them – a ring of rooted cuttings ready for spring.

– Royal blue Geranium ‘Rozanne’ is in full flower and the perfect infiltrator for spring-flowering shrubs such as spiraeas or philadelphus. It will scramble a metre up into their branches.

– Time to pot up bulbs (hyacinths, narcissi, crocuses, etc) for spring if you have space to keep them cool and just moist. Plunged in shady ground is perfect. Do remember that mice love crocuses and sheds.

READERS' QUERIES

I have a big clump of nerines and they produce bright pink trumpets every autumn. For the past year or two they have not done so well and I have dug up the clump to divide it. Most of the bulbs are tiny. What is happening? Mrs J. Pritchard, Lincoln

Nerines are one of the joys of autumn. They will go for years without the bulbs being divided, the clumps sometimes humping themselves out of the ground like molehills; at least this gives them the good drainage they need, although it also puts them at risk of frost damage in severe weather. Normally they are planted with the neck of the bulb just showing above the soil. This is the time to divide them.

They are not hungry plants and will grow happily enough even in sand, but in the end they need something to live on. An old clump will have, say, 30 per cent good, fat bulbs (like daffodils’) and the rest – scores of them – will be thinner and weaker. Replant only the biggest bulbs, 12-15cm apart. The small ones will all make good, too, given space and a year or two to fill out. Why not run a line down the edge of a sunny path, or the foot of a south wall, or between clumps of lavender? They look fabulous with blue Salvia patens. There are pale pink nerines to be had, too.

I have yellow corydalis growing in paving cracks at the back of the house and every year at this time it looks miserable. Should I feed it?

Here’s a plant every garden should have: Corydalis lutea. Mounds of pale, ferny foliage covered in clusters of little yellow trumpets and happy growing in the meanest of moist cracks. Yes, it does get shabby after a few months, but there’s no need to feed it; just rip off the tops, literally, right to ground level, and a new flowering mound will appear soon enough. I do mine two to three times a year. If you do the deed now, there is still time for it to freshen up and, given a kind winter, it will look neat until you give it its spring rip-off. It looks dreadful in a pot, and is usually grown from seed or scrounged from someone else.

There’s a white version, Corydalis ochroleuca; chic in a shady corner, but a bit on the grey side for me.

stephen.anderton@thetimes.co.uk

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