Jobs to do this August

1. Winter herbs

   Pot up small plants of thyme, sage and rosemary into 12.5cm (5in) pots of John Innes compost. Pop them on the patio and keep them well watered. By autumn, they’ll be the perfect size for placing on the kitchen windowsill where you can harvest them all winter.

2. Lawns

   Don’t cut the lawn too close in hot, dry weather. Adjust the blades to cut at a height of 4cm (1.5in). Don’t water it unless absolutely necessary.

3. Taking cuttings

   Take cuttings of bedding geraniums, fuchsias and marguerites. Use a gritty compost and they’ll root really quickly. By autumn, they’ll be stocky young plants ready for over-wintering indoors and flowering next summer.

4. Winter flowering pansies

   Keep winter flowering pansies in the coolest part of the garden until early autumn. If they get too warm, the plants grow very straggly and will need to be cut back.

5. Next year's strawberries

   Fancy some extra tasty strawberries next summer? Buy some young plants – Flamenco and  Florence are especially good – from your garden centre. Pot up them up now and you’ll get bumper crops from June onwards.

6. Greenhouse tomatoes

   Pinch out the tops of greenhouse tomatoes to help the fruits ripen before the colder weather sets in. Take off the lower leaves if they start to turn yellow.

7. Next year's lilies

   Once lilies have finished flowering, cut off the old blooms and start to feed the plants with Flower Power once a week. This will help build up the bulbs for next summer’s display which could be even bigger and better than this year’s!