Gardens Update: Weekend work

CUT OUT old raspberry canes as soon as fruit-picking has finished. Tie in new canes, leaving no more than eight stems to each plant. Tidy up strawberry beds by cutting off old leaves and removing straw. Weed if necessary. Increase stocks of hybrid berries such as loganberry and boysenberry by tip layering. Bury the tip of a shoot about six inches in the ground and firm down the earth round it. By next spring it will be well rooted. Then you can cut it off and plant it in its new home.

Cut back helianthemums as they finish flowering. Delphiniums may give a second late show if you cut down the old flowered stems. Cut out the dead heads of shrubby Phlomis fruticosa. The whorled heads are useful in dried- flower arrangements. Dry them by hanging them upside down in bunches in a cool, airy place.

Take cuttings of Camellia japonica using half-ripened side shoots and root them in pots of sandy soil. Take cuttings of zonal and ivy-leaved geraniums, choosing non-flowering shoots between four to five inches long. Cut them cleanly through, just below a joint, and push them in round the edge of a pot filled with sandy compost. Do not cover them. Keep them damp but not drowned and out of direct sunlight.

If you like exotics, try a row of Chinese radish. They come in red or white varieties and grow up to eight inches long. Sow seed in pairs at six-inch intervals and then tweak out the weaker seedling in each pair. Sow a fresh row of parsley, too.