WILL HART'S GARDENING DIARY contributed by www.hartgardens.co.uk     SEPTEMBER   FRUIT   ·         Pick perpetual strawberries, autumn fruiting rasps, blackberries, blueberries, plums, damsons, peaches, figs, and early and mid season apples, pears.   ·         Order new fruit trees and bushes.   ·         Complete summer pruning of apples and pears.   ·         Prepare for fruit storage, clean wooden trays and boxes.   ·         Prune plums and damsons immediately after cropping.   ·         Remove dead wood on wall trained cherries, shorten pinched back shoots and complete tying in, cut out or tie down strong vertical shoots.   ·         Continue to plant strawberries.   ·         Complete the pruning and tying in of summer fruiting gooseberries.   ·         Prune blackcurrants. take cuttings from healthy plants.   ·         Cut off mildewed tips of gooseberry shoots and dispose of, take cuttings.   ·         Cut off old canes of blackberries and hybrid berries after fruiting and tie in the new, in cold districts bundle the canes together after leaf fall and tie to a lower wire during October or November before frosts begin.   ·         Give final sprays to apples against bitter pit.   ·         Outdoor vines protect ripening fruit from birds by covering by netting, fold back leaves to also assist ripening.   ·         Remove any damaged or mouldy grapes; check 2 or 3 times a week.     LAWNS   ·         Increase interval between mowing and slightly increase the height of cut.   ·         Worms usually become active at this time of year, no longer any chemicals the amateur can use, use a besom to sweep away worm casts, these make ideal weed seed beds if left alone so that the mower runs over them.   ·         Use an autumn fertilizer if the lawn is pale and thin.   ·         Carry out lawn repairs towards the middle or end of the month, bumps, hollows, broken edges and bare patches can be corrected.   ·         Scarify first then spike any compacted areas, then top dress with proportions of soil, peat, and sand.   ·         Treat any areas of diseased turf with a suitable proprietary fungicide.   ·         Tackle moles this month.   ·         Best time for sowing grass seed for new lawns or repair work.     GARDEN            ·         Prepare for planting new hedges this autumn by digging a 3ft wide strip by however long and incorporating well rotted manure into the subsoil.   ·         Propagate shrubs such as privet, Lonicera nitida, Lavandula, Rosmarinus, Aucuba, shoots 6-9" with a heel and insert into 3" deep in a slit lined with sand.   ·         Keep roses tidy remove faded blooms by pruning back to a good bud lower down the stem.   ·         Plant bulbs in lawns by removing a square of lawn, place bulbs in hole and place square of turf back.   ·         Untidy looking vigorous climbers can be tidied up now by just pruning to shape   ·         Gladiolus corms should be lifted once the foliage has died down, dry and clean the corms and store in a frost free area until time to replant. The above helpful advice has been reproduced by kind permission of Will Hart, whose experience includes working for Blackburn Rovers FC (as a groundsman at their Training Ground, Academy and Ewood Park), for the Sultan of Oman (at his French residence in Fontainebleau, south of Paris) at the 1999 Martell Grand National at Aintree and for a variety of different sized local gardens and estates.  Impressive credentials I am sure you will agree! Please visit his site at www.hartgardens.co.uk