Is your garden toxic? Five plants to watch out for It’s TLC time Laying

AS the curtain falls on strawberries and summer rasps, plan for next year’s delights. The drought has hammered this season’s crop so you’ll need to apply more TLC than usual.

Even though I’ve doled out as much precious water as I could spare, it wasn’t quite enough. Fruits were generally smaller, the crowns put on a little less growth and one or two older strawberries pegged out.

But the healthy young specimens I planted last autumn have done well, throwing out lots of runners beneath the straw mulch that had kept the ground reasonably moist.

I like taking runners from young plants, so start by snipping back, clearing away and composting this year’s old leaves and fruiting stalks.

I usually recommend a good haircut to encourage a fresh flush of foliage, but am leaving newish leaves just now to reduce stress. Then thoroughly water the bed, applying a top dressing of compost.

Dig out and remove all the weaker plants and then look for runners on healthy ones. Select one runner from each, snipping off all but the first developing mini-plant.

Fill and sink a larger than usual 13cm pot well into the ground close to the mother plant; peg the stem to the ground and plant in the moist compost. Keep well watered.

In September, cut the new plant’s umbilical cord and plant in a new bed. Because strawberries remain in the ground for four years, prepare it well.

Dig over, add in good, well rotted compost and rake to a fine tilth. Space plants 30cm apart, with 45cm between rows, and look forward to a good harvest next year.

If your plants aren’t strong enough to produce good runners or you simply want new stock, try to get hold of replacements this autumn. Strawberries naturally take root towards the end of the fruiting season to get well established before winter. I’ve found my autumn planted strawberries have weathered this year’s drought much better than any I put in during the spring.

So, order early from a reputable nursery, such as Welsh Fruit Stocks, or from your local garden centre, aiming to get your strawberries in the ground no later than October.

Check exactly when mail order firms dispatch their plants, as it could be in mid-January, when your bed is rock-hard or covered in snow. To my cost, I have sometimes found I can’t even keep the potted plants alive