Ask Alan podcast series

Perhaps you have gone without washing your dishes or left them in the sink while traveling and returned home to find them covered with mold.

Summer pruning is an often overlooked task, but if anything, it’s just as important as chopping plants back when they are dormant in winter. Cutting back plants in summer has a host of benefits, not least in helping to restrict the size of your plants and stopping them outgrowing their allotted space. It can also promote future flowering and fruiting.

If you’ve ever had an ant problem at home, you know how irritating it can be. They’re incredibly stubborn little pests and, unfortunately, it can be challenging to figure out which home hacks actually work. One non-toxic solution people often suggest is using coffee grounds to kill these little visitors—but does it work?

Pruning plants in summer is just as important for some plants as winter pruning. By pruning in summer, you can reap the rewards of better displays from ornamental plants. You’ll also encourage bigger crops from fruit trees and bushes. Removing new summer growth before it turns woody reduces growth-promoting nitrogen, allowing potassium to build up – and more potassium means more flowers and fruit. You’ll also keep plants, such as shrubs, climbers and rambling roses, within bounds and maintain an attractive shape.

As temperatures rise and summer sets in, it pays to give your container plants, and especially bedding plants, a little time and care so that they keep on flowering and looking their best, right into autumn. The secret, as Alan Titchmarsh explains above, is to water, feed and deadhead them regularly, and choose the right location – here’s how.

Charming Shade Container Garden Ideas Need new container ideas for your shade garden? Get inspired by this gardener's collection of planters, featuring lush foliage and even a few perennials from her garden. Summer container garden ideas for shade

Be it ferns, trailers, vines, or any other kind, plants in hanging baskets take home decor to the next level! But watering them the wrong way could quickly lead them to wilt, dry up, or perish entirely. To water plants in hanging baskets, it’s essential to consider various factors.

Bailey Nurseries

There are plenty of performance interior paints and coatings for walls, trim, and furniture that are purportedly durable against scuffs and cracks, and that boast waterproof, water-resistant, or water-repellent properties. While these qualities render them suitable for spaces and surfaces that come into contact with water and cleaning agents—such as a kitchen, bath, or tabletop—they aren’t necessarily durable for painting the exterior, or any exterior component, of your home.

If you look after your roses in autumn, they will get safely through the winter, coming back healthy, vigorous and full of flowers the following year. The key autumn rose care jobs are tidying up, removing spent blooms or diseased foliage, and pruning. Watch our video guide above as Alan Titchmarsh demonstrates how to prune a rose in autumn. Autumn is also a good time to plant a rose.

When summer's sweltering heat and humidity arrive, not everyone is blessed with the luxury of central air in their home. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t keep your home cool during the long summer days.

“Impossibly unaffordable” are two words that Californians are probably less than thrilled to hear. In a recent report from Chapman University in Orange, California, and the Frontier Centre of Public Policy (FCPP) in Canada, that’s exactly how four California metros are described. The 2024 edition of Demographia International Housing Affordability shows San Jose, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego listed among the top 10 least affordable housing markets—not just in the United States, but worldwide.