If you have patches in your lawn that are looking pale and sick for no apparent reason, it may be there are some bad guys down there munching away at the roots.

These could be leatherjackets, which are the grubs of daddy longlegs, or chafer grubs, which are the young of the cockchafer beetle.

Leatherjackets are a grey-coloured, tubular shape about 1” long. Chafer grubs are smaller, a creamy colour with a brown head similar to vine weevil grubs to look at but with legs.

One trick is to soak the area and then lay a black bin liner or similar, well held in place, over the area for a night. Come down in the morning, whip the thing off and see what’s come to the surface. At least that way you’ll know what you’re dealing with.

What to do next? You could always collect them and put them on the bird table for your feathered friends to scoff. Alternatively, there are various formulations of nematodes available that can be applied to the area.

I shall explain nematodes again, as I have had a few people ask about them. They are microscopic critters, some good, some bad. An example of a bad one is the eelworm that causes Phlox stems to die. Here, though, we are talking about the good guys that can help us in our battles. Nemasys is one of the companies that produce these things and they will have to be ordered in.

They arrive through the post and have to be used immediately, being mixed with water and then applied as a drench. The temperature has to be right for them to work – too cold and they will die. These ones invade the bodies of the bad guys, killing them.

If you are concerned about using chemicals, these ‘biological controls’ are your best resource. There are all sorts available, even minute parasitic wasps that are used in glasshouses to control whitefly. You can also buy in ladybird larvae to help with aphids.

We have been using a drench to combat vine weevil around our plant area and in all of our plants. But time is tight on these things so plan to use them, even as a preventative.

Bare-root wallflowers are now available. These are cheaper than potted ones and now is the time to get them into the ground for a good display next May. They are biennials, so they put on root and leaf growth the first year and then flower the next year.

They will have been lifted from the fields by the growers and packed ready for you. I think they look especially good when grown with tulips that will flower at the same time and, as both come in a range of colours, you can choose your look each year.

Some people leave them in for a few more years, but they will grow leggy and not flower so well – best to treat them as bedding and hoick them out once they’re over.

Another biennial for planting now is sweet william, but these come in packs rather than bare-root. Polyanthus are also a good early spring flower and often go for years.