Your garden: Maximise small spaces

Expert advice on what to do for your garden this week.

Vegetables

Inter-cropping is a good way of making the maximum use of a small space, using an area for more than one crop.

Lettuces may be grown along a line intended for outdoor tomatoes, which usually are planted between Labour Day and the middle of November.

Lettuces are cut before the tomato foliage is big enough to bother them.

Salsify (Tragopogon porrifolius) and Scorzonera hispanica are root vegetables southern gardeners could try, as they stand well over winter and the flavour is improved by frost.

Sometimes called vegetable oyster by those with vivid imaginations and no idea of the flavour of Bluff oysters, salsify has white roots eaten boiled when 2cm to 3cm thick.

Scorzonera, which has black skin, is more vigorous and is grown and cooked in the same way.

For best results, treat these vegetables like parsnips, sowing seed in lighter soil that has had no manure added for at least six months.

Thin to 10cm apart when the plants are big enough to handle.

Kohl rabi is closely related to turnips and tolerates hotter, drier conditions than white turnips, has greenish-white or purple bulbs and can be harvested from golf-ball size.

Celeriac, or turnip-rooted celery, is worth growing for its bulbous roots, which usually are cooked but can also be used in salads.

Seed tends to be slow to germinate and sowing in seed trays and planting out when all danger of frost has passed is recommended.

Flowers

Potted freesias that have finished flowering can be given less water and left to gradually dry off and put away for the summer to rest in a warm place.

Cyclamens are one of the most popular plants for indoors.

Plants that have flowered over the winter and during the spring will now be declining. Withhold water gradually until the foliage ripens off.

Pots stored in a shady part of the garden can keep the soil moist enough to keep the corms in good order until late summer.

Hedges can be an attractive garden feature. To train young plants into a hedge, trim them at least three times a year.

The first year's cut should be severe, to produce plenty of basal growth. Keep the base clear of weeds and grass, or the plants will be inclined to open up.

Young hedges on poor soil will benefit from a mulch of compost or other manure to feed the roots for the next six months.

Lawns that have become patchy because of grass grub damage or the removal of lots of weeds can be encouraged with a dressing now of one part superphosphate, three parts sulphate of ammonia mixed and spread at the rate of 30g per sq m.

Apply this mix now and in early autumn as growth restarts after summer.

Mossy soil can be dressed with the same mixture, with the addition of a half-part of sulphate of iron to suppress it.

Some damage to the leaves of nearby grass will appear, but recovery is quick.

Fruit

Strawberries will start to flower in most districts this month.

Hand-weeding is the safest method around strawberry plants, which have feeding roots close to the soil surface.

A mulch of compost around the plants will provide valuable nutrients.

Straw or pine needles laid over the compost will help protect the plants from fungus diseases.

Any strawberry plants with yellow-edged, colour-streaked or crinkled leaves have probably contracted a virus disease caused by sap-suckling aphides.

Remove infected plants and destroy them.