LAST MONTH'S harvest is now in full swing. There are still some soft fruit pickings to be made, but these will soon give way to top fruit: apples and other tree-grown fruit. The old country orrchards are now brimming with that old reliable dessert apple, Beauty of Bath, which will be ready for plucking shortly. In more recent planntations, this apple has been replaced by the variety George Cave, a seedling of Beauty of Bath and generally regarded as being superior. Some gardens are fortunate enough to boast an even earliier and, in many ways, finer apple, the Gladstone.

ABOUT THIS TIME every year we await, with a mixture of impatience and forlorn hope, that most elusive of creatures, the heatwave. Should we get it then the majority of us will relish the garden but quietly forget about gardening. Only the enthusiast will regard the plight of his plants and even then water shortages may make things difficult. Howwever, all this may be wishhful thinking so in the meanntime let's get down to some useful work.