December

Lawns
In mild areas the lawn may just benefit from whiskering with a light rotary lawn mower. If you only have a heavy cylinder mower, leave it well alone.

Not a bad time to give the mower a good clean down, getting all the old caked grass off and oiling metal parts. If it needs repair, get it done now, while the service firms are quiet.

Pruning and Training
Prune gooseberries and currant bushes.

Now is a good time to make cuttings of roses. Select some 12 inches lengths of firm young stems, and set them right way up and three-quarters buried. They can be put straight into the final position, perhaps against a fence. Or if you want several to fill a bed, set the cuttings in a row in partial shade somewhere out of the way. By next autumn they will have grown away and can be moved to their final positions.

Flowers
There should be plenty of shrubs showing the odd flower in the garden now, including Viburnum farreri, winter jasmine, wintersweet (Chimonanthus fragrans).

Check over greenhouse plants for aphid problems, and nip off dead or yellowed foliage. A mild dry day is a good time to sweep and scrub out the greenhouse, removing any sources of infection.

Keep potted azaleas in cool conditions as far as is possible if you want to grow them on rather than throw them away. 50F/10C is fine for azaleas.

Poinsettias can be kept warmer, but avoid overwatering by giving it little and often into the saucer. Keep them out of cold draughts.

Seed catalogues are coming out now. Time to choose what you want to grow next season. Garden centres stock a broad range, but nowhere near as many species or varieties as the catalogues can offer. So much is available as mini-plants now that you may wish to see what is available there too, before you plan your summer colour. Mini-plants can be ordered through the post too.

Kitchen Garden
Prune apple and pear trees.

To stop weeds next season amongst raspberries and strawberries, residual weedkillers can be applied now, as soon as the plants are leafless. Or you may prefer to use a heavy mulch, perhaps applied over a layer of newspaper.

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