Path through the maize | In Fiona's Garden

The worst heat of summer should be behind us, and autumn with its turning leaves and its colourful hips, haws and berries isn't far away.

My new vegetable garden has made good progress and the sweet corn is almost ready to harvest.

Corn has a weird growth habit - the tassels at the top of the stalk are the male flowers and the tiny, silky ears within the leaf axils are the female.

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Wind blows the pollen from the tassels onto the ears, to produce the cobs that we harvest and eat (immediately, if possible, when they're their sweetest).

I grew only a small crop as my vegie gardening is still largely experimental, though I'm loving the learning process, but keen vegetable grower David Mather (The Land, June 16, 2022) assures me corn is perfectly easy given plenty of compost, mulch and water.

March is my favoured planting month (The Land, February 23, 2023) and is an ideal time to move evergreen perennials like pokers (Kniphofia), grassy leaved Liriope muscari with hyacinth-like purple flowers, and cranesbills (hardy geraniums).

Evergreen shrubs with fibrous roots such as abelias, sweet bay (Laurus nobilis) and Russian olive (Eleagnus) can be moved now, though you may have to sacrifice some autumn flowers, but not cistus, ceanothus or Garry elliptica: their root systems are too delicate.

The key to success in moving evergreens is remembering that shifting a plant disturbs the balance between roots and foliage, so you need to prune the latter to compensate for any loss of the former.

This is essential with evergreens as they are continually losing moisture through their leaves.

Lift your shrub or perennial with as big a root ball as you can manage, drop it into a prepared hole, re-fill, tread down firmly and water in well. Watch it closely for the next few weeks, prune again if necessary and keep up the moisture.

Ideally we'd all plant our shrubs in the right spot in the first place, but let's face it, no-one is perfect. I'm always moving shrubs and perennials around and the only one I lost was a deciduous beauty bush (Kolkwitzia), probably because it was too big and too old.

I would have been better off taking cuttings.

March is a key sowing time for vegetables.

This autumn I'm trying broad beans, beets, carrots, spinach, silver beet and spring onions.

But lots of other vegetable seeds can go in now: check sowing times on the packets of your favourites. Sweet peas can also be sown in March.

Bulb planting can start now, though tulips can wait until May.

It's not too late to order bulbs and mail order growers still have plenty in stock.

Last March task is to remove old, tatty leaves of oriental hellebores (H. orientalis), the better to enjoy the flowers when they emerge in winter.

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