Important tasks to sort now

Ruth outlines some of this week’s most pressing tasks

MID-SPRING is such a time of promise that the temptation is to spend every spare hour out in the garden.

There is so much to do, be it planting and propagating, sowing seeds, potting seedlings, that it’s hard to know where to start.

In the excitement of getting the garden ready for the summer, make sure you don’t neglect your indoor plants. We have a small castor oil plant on a windowsill and one day I noticed it wasn’t looking healthy and some of its leaves had shrivelled and dropped.

Closer inspection revealed an infestation of white, fluffy mealy bugs that had been feeding on the plant and covering its leaves with a revoltingly sticky substance called honeydew.

This in turn attracts sooty mould, which covers the leaves in black particles, so it wasn’t surprising the plant didn’t look in tip-top health.