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the base of trees with garden compost to maintain general health, and water well in dry summer weather. Avoid over-feeding with nitrogen fertiliser.Spray the whole tree or bush with Bordeaux mixture during late January and repeat two weeks later to kill

congested growth to improve the airflow. Also minimise the use of high-nitrogen fertilisers, as these lead to lots of soft, leafy growth, which is vulnerable to an attack. Get rid of weeds as they can spread the fungus.Spray ornamental plants

.In the lawn, your best bet is to dig out affected areas and replace patches of lawn with weed-free turf. In other parts of the garden, just dig it out. Mind you, it's worth bearing in mind clover has nitrogen-fixing nodules on its roots, so it acts

and provide a lovely, springy, dry surface to walk on. This means I don't need to don my wellies if I've just nipped up to harvest a few vegetables for lunch.You can't top dress beds with fresh wood chips as they leach nitrogen from the soil during

's important to provide them with supplementary fertiliser. The basic nutrients required by plants are nitrogen (N) for leaf and stem growth, phosphorus (P) for root growth and potassium (K) for flowers, fruit and to maintain healthy growth. Fertiliser

I'm as keen on improving my soil with manure as any other allotmenteer. I love it all - chicken, cow and best of all, horse manure. A good dollop of well-rotted manure does wonders for your soil, enriching it with nitrogen, phosphates and potassium

add a good dose of nitrogen to compost heaps.I think we've seen that nettles are much more useful than midges: nobody has ever considered making soup from midges. We should also be grateful that we don't have any of the southern hemisphere nettles

hoped the clover would fix nitrogen in the soil, which would directly feed the chillies and encourage new leaves to grow. This seemed to work, and before long the plants were in full leaf and flower and attracting lots of hoverflies.I did get some

building up, careful planning means that one crop will benefit another if planted before it. For example, potatoes are brilliant for breaking up the soil for deep-rooting peas and beans. They, in turn, fix nitrogen into the soil, which benefits nutrient

will release nitrogen into the soil very, very slowly.Spent mushroom compost consists of horse manure and straw and is a very useful soil conditioner. You will also get an unexpected crop of mushrooms for a few weeks after application.Urine (whether belonging