If you are using them for cut flowers use gloves to pick them so you don*t get covered

If you are using them for cut flowers, use gloves to pick them, so you don*t get covered in their milky sap. I also love the orange-vermilion coloured Euphorbia griffithii varieties which are superb in late spring and also colour up in ochre and red in the autumn. Also, remember to give them a balanced liquid feed every couple of weeks to build them up and prolong their flowering season.a.. Euphorbias, with their bright acid-green flowers are some of my favourite plants in the garden and for flower arranging too. Their colour is perfect to mix with rich crimsons and purples, and it*s brilliant with whites, blues and yellows as well.

With petunias and nicotianas, just pull off the dead and dying flowers With pelargoniums, you need to use scissors or secateurs Cut the flower and stem back to the bud below. if you*ve got baskets and pots of annual bedding plants, petunias, pelargoniums or nicotianas, they will be flowering thick and fast by now and will need dead-heading every few days. This will act as a mulch over the paths and prevent the germination of annual weeds.Sarah Raven also runs courses on how to make a cutting garden Tel: 01424 838181a.. You can use a rotavator, but do make sure you mix the manure in well.Once your soil is ready, mark out paths with spray paint or dry sand poured from a bottle. I would go for four rectangular beds with their central corners chopped off to allow room for a central sweet pea tepee. You want to be able to reach every plant and make the paths wider than 18in to avoid treading on things. Cover the paths with a 2in layer of washed inland sharp sand if on poorly drained soil, or sterile compost on sand or chalk.

Dig one out to the depth of your spade and line the base with the manure. Dig the next, placing the soil you remove over the top of the manure in the trench next door, so burying it deeply away from the light. The problem with farmyard manure is that it often contains a potential forest of weeds, so it is best to dig it in, keeping the seeds away from the light.If you have the energy, dig over the patch in a series of trenches. You need to enrich it with lots of slimy, sticky organic material such as farmyard, pig or horse manure. If the lumps are bigger than this, repeat the whole process.If you're on a light, freely-draining sandy or chalky soil, you have the opposite problem. It's light and easy to work, but water drains straight through it, leaching out the goodness in the soil. It's miraculous: the consistency changes immediately and it becomes a joy to work.

If your top soil has lumps 2 or 3in across, you're nearly there All you need now is a rake. Don't make the mistake of ordering builder's sand: it is too fine and won't break up the lumps nearly as well.Carpet the patch in a 2in layer of grit and further 2in of mushroom compost or, even better, your own home-made stuff Then dig or rotavate the whole lot in. The organic material will feed the soil, the earthworms and microbes They are key to the health and productivity of your patch. The inland sharp sand will break up any heavy clods.Inland sharp sand is much cheaper than horticultural grit. Sandy soil is rough to touch and you can make pits easily with your hands.If your plot is on clay or peat, you need to add barrow-loads of washed inland sharp sand to lighten the soil You should dig in lots of compost on a clay soil, too. Many of them will just rot away.Rub some soil between your fingers: clay is smooth, slimy and often bluey- grey Peat is treacly-black Water won't drain away instantly in either soil The opposite is true of sand and chalk You will normally see the lumps of chalk through the soil. Plants find it difficult to push through and hate sitting in a pool of cold water through the winter and early spring.