Gardening: Weekend Work

DIG MAIN-CROP potatoes to stop damage from slugs. These burrow into the tubers and prevent them from storing well. Choose a dry day and leave the potatoes on the surface for a while so that the soil shakes off easily.

This is a good time to plant an evergreen hedge, such as yew - provided your soil is reasonably moist, or you can water it in well. Put up a protective screen, perhaps in polypropylene, to shield young plants through autumn and winter until the roots are well established.

There is plenty to harvest in the kitchen garden - blackberries, raspberries, tomatoes, sweet peppers and pumpkins as well as early varieties of apples and pears.

If you "layered" border pinks and carnations in summer, these should now have rooted and can be severed from the parent plants.