· I saw tissue cultured Eucalyptus ficifolia plants this week in local nurseries. They are in reliable pink, orange and red colours and trying to get them true to colour from seed when I was a nurseryman, was the bane of my life. This has to be a most significant breakthrough for the gardener who has salivated over these sensational native flowering trees in January-February in Kensington’s streets, but never been able to get the ‘right’ colour.

· Hydrangeas are everywhere at present and looking great as gifts too, but do you know that the rich deep pinks and the bright blue cultivars have been bred to stay that colour and do not take kindly to attempts to turn them another colour! The white varieties stay white no matter what, so it’s really only the pale pink flowering types that make the colour change gracefully and that process starts in July next year.

· Gifts for gardeners who have the whole it all: "Bullfrog sunblock gel" is rated SPF30+ and lasts 6 hours in the garden and even 2 hours in water or under a sweaty brow. Gardeners can all use a few packets of plastic labels and another pair of gardening gloves. Try a pair of rigger’s yellow leather gloves for the keen rose wrangler.

· If you have one of those you-beaut micro-irrigation watering systems, it must be time to re-program it for the holiday season. Remove the drippers if you have that type and clean them of the salty residues, wash in clean water and replace. If you have a bleed line at the end or your circuit, make sure you flush it or the salt gets more and more concentrated at summer goes by and will knock the last few plants about or even kill them.

· Powdery mildew is starting to creep in on the bunches of grapes under shady pergolas around this area, so spray with a water-soluble sulphur known as ‘Microfine’ alias ‘Sulfine’ last year, at 2 grams per litre of water. Do not use copper based sprays, they are useless against powdery mildew on grapes and who wants to eat grapes tainted with traces of the heavy metal copper?

· If your grape vines are getting too crowded, they can be summer pruned to reveal more of the grape bunches to the sun and that way recurring attacks of powdery mildew can be reduced. Downy mildew on the other hand is moisture related and controlled with Mancozeb®, but it taints wine, so best used on ornamental vines or table grapes that get washed.

· In these hints I forever seem to be telling folk how to kill things. Well with all this recent rain, the insect population is about to explode outside the backdoor. This week I noticed Black Lawn Beetles on the move, earlier than usual. They can be controlled by sprinkling chlorpyrifos over your lawn (sold as "Lawn Beetle Blitz" locally), but keep your pets away for a day or two!

· Small green caterpillars are defoliating lots of plants at present, but enter the garden first thing in the morning and they are more easily seen and squashed manually, rather than resorting to a spray. Even a light shake of the plant sees them fall to the ground all curled up.

· ‘Potted colour’ is all the rage at present with gardeners trying to crib a few weeks with their Christmas bedding schemes. ‘Potted colour’ just refers to annuals that have been potted on into 125mm (5") pots so they are already in flower and by planting the whole pot somewhere conspicuously, they soon look quite established.