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We’ve finished clearing out all the summer containers and started replanting them with winter bedding. I really love potting up plants, especially in late-autumn and winter when any dash of colour is welcome in the garden.A trip to our local market

I’m cross! I'm fed up and I bet I'm not alone in my anger. I keep buying so-called frost-proof pots, but they always seem to break anyway.I tend to buy pots and containers marketed as being 'frost-proof'. It's the most sensible option as (in theory

, winter hardiness. In particular, what should be sold as a suitable ingredient for a winter container or bedding display and what should not? Take the cyclamen. Often for sale at this time of year as a small potted plant, it's generally labelled 'winter

), the compost, the feed, the potting-on compost, the containers, in some cases the pest-sprays, the lighting and heating sometimes too. And that is not including the man-hours - probably the most unreliable, stressful and costly element in the equation!The other

harvested potatoes, and sorting them into bags. But my approach to ornamental crops is much more random and haphazard: I just notice what has done well and what has been disappointing.This year, the pelargoniums growing in containers near our front steps

out containers ready to refill with fresh compost for autumn and winter pot displays, one of my children exclaimed "look what I've found ... one of those leaf bee things!" Sure enough, there in amongst the compost were several beautiful cylinders, each

of tinfoil clad cardboard behind the trays and pots, to reflect useful light from the window back to the plants.But, if you are unlucky and your seedlings do succumb to damping off disease, bin the offending seedlings and infected compost and start again