It might surprise you, but the winter season, and more especially Christmas should be at the front of your mind, especially if you intend growing your own Christmas pot plants.

For some, like poinsettia and Christmas cherry, it is already too late.

These can either be purchased later in flower or now as half-grown plants. It is much too late for seed or cuttings.

Schizanthus or butterfly flowers can still be sown, so too the lovely blue flowered browallia, and if you grow traditional cyclamen rather than modern hybrids these must go in during the next week or two.

Older varieties of cyclamen make magnificent plants, but the seeds that are sown now will not produce blossoms for this Christmas. They are unlikely to flower until 2001.

The faster maturing modern hybrids are sown during March and flower the same year. If you look in the classified advertisements of home gardening magazines during the next week or two, young plants for growing on will often be seen offered for sale.

Potted up straight away in a good soil-based compost they will produce first class plants in time for Christmas.

Look out for silver foliage varieties, for in addition to the beautiful flowered sorts there are those that are worth growing for their leaves alone.

Foliage pot plants for winter can still be sown in the warmth of a greenhouse. The various decorative asparagus ferns will make sizeable pot plants by the turn of the year if grown unchecked in a good multipurpose potting compost.

The glossy leafed aralia is a similar proposition and fine coloured foliage coleus or Indian dead nettles are of a more intense hue during mid-winter from a sowing made now rather than in early spring. The plants will be smaller, but lush and not woody.

Bulbs will shortly be appearing in garden centres for potting up for Christmas flowering. Paperwhite narcissus and Kriezerskroon tulips are amongst the first to appear along with forcing hyacinths which descend upon the British public every August 10.

Immediate potting is desirable, for even though these first imports of bulbs from Holland are specially prepared for early flowering, if not potted and safely tucked away in the cool by the beginning of September they are rarely in full bloom by Christmas.

Philip Swindells

WHAT'S NEW

The Fireworks range of pelargoniums, available in five different colours has just been launched in Germany. They will be available in the UK next spring.

Illumination is a bright golden-leafed hardy periwinkle for ground cover or hanging basket use.

Gold Rush is a golden foliage Metasequoia or dawn redwood.

Q Is there a non-chemical way of preventing cabbage white butterfly caterpillars attacking my brassicas?

A The best method is to erect a cage over your brassicas straight away, covering it with a very fine garden netting. This denies access to the butterflies which lay the eggs. There is no simple way of dealing with the caterpillars once they have arrived, other than simply picking them off.

Q I have bindweed growing in my hedge. How can I kill it without damaging the hedge?

A Use a herbicide in which the active ingredient is glyphosate. This is absorbed by green foliage and is taken down in the sap stream, circulating into the roots, killing the bindweed from the inside. As the weed is climbing over the hedge it is going to be impossible to spray without damaging the hedge foliage, so mix up the spray and dab it on to some of the weed foliage with a paintbrush.

Q I have an overgrown hebe which is just finishing flowering. Can I cut it back now?

A It would be extremely unwise to do anything other than to trim it now. It can be cut hard back in late spring.