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Gardening diary - our weekly guide and topical tips for your English country garden and allotment.

Week 46 November 11th - November 18th

Feed the birds over winter. Keep dead leaves out of the pond. Give the garden a general clear up and the lawn a final cut. Dhalias will turn black after the first hard frosts of autumn. If you have large stocks of dahlias some could be left in the ground as they will very likely survive the winter. If you need to be sure of keeping your stocks or want to increase a particular variety then dig them up and cut the tops off two or three inches from the tuber. If they have very large stems then you could push a screwdriver right through the middle of the stem to allow the sap to drain out, brush off excess soil and carefully dry the tubers and store in a frost free shed. After a few weeks you can put them into a box of moist peat for the remainder of the winter. They need checking over every few weeks and you are likely to loose a few before spring arrives. In the spring you can see new growth emerging around the base of the old stems. Once you are happy your dalias have survived the winter and you can see new growth emerging you can split you tubers into pieces taking care to ensure that each piece that you split off has at least one growth point on it. Alternatively you can bring your dalias into gentle heat early in the spring and then when you have shoots a couple of inches high you use them to make cuttings. Another link. and another and another. There is no shortage of online advice for taking dahlia cuttings.

This weeks blog - what I did in the allotment this week