If you are an apple grower, you should have had a bumper crop this year.

But now is the time to apply a greaseband around the trunk of your tree, not only on apples but also on pear, plum and cherry trees.

The female winter moth will be making her way up the trunk fairly soon in order to lay eggs in crevices in bark. The eggs then hatch out at the time of bud burst, damaging emerging buds and fruitlets.

They develop into looping green caterpillars that make their way back down the trunk to pupate in the soil ready to emerge as adults next autumn. Often the damage is not noticed until early summer when the foliage is fully open and full of shot-holes. By then, the only type of control is spraying, something that should never be done when pollinators are about.

They don’t only go for fruit trees – oak, sycamore, hawthorn, beech, hazel, dogwood and mountain ash can be attacked. Greasebands are tied around the trunk of the tree and should be kept free of detritus to remain sticky enough to trap the females and stop them from getting into the branches.

Leaf-drop is coming upon us so if you have a pond, make sure to get a net over it before the leaves come down. That way you will avoid the build-up of decaying vegetation lying on the bottom and robbing the water of oxygen.

But before leaf-drop, let’s enjoy the colours. Most Acers give good autumn foliage along with Amelanchiers, a plant not grown enough in my view, giving lovely early summer blossom on a tidy tree or shrub. Another star is the Liquidambar styraciflua, known as sweet gum. These are pyramidal shaped trees with lovely glossy leaves in summer turning a magnificent dark orange/ crimson in autumn.

They are slow to leaf in spring and one should not despair if a young tree isn’t showing leaves – they often don’t leaf-up until early summer but are worth the wait. At maturity, they will reach 15 metres high by 8 metres wide so not for the smallest garden! Not for a small garden either is the scarlet oak, Quercus coccinea, and the red oak, Quercus rubra.

Both are native to North America and have larger leaves than our native Quercus robur; both produce fabulous autumn colours and hit heights of 20 metres plus.

In gardens, the Sumach tree, Rhus typhina, probably shows off its autumn colours to the maximum. However, it is a suckering so-and-so that can dash across a small garden and pop up on the opposite side. The fernier leaved cultivar ‘Laciniata’ is better behaved.

Many trees that thrive on acid soils are also the best colourers.

So if you are planning autumn leaf tours, it may be that many of the best coloured specimens you see will, unfortunately, not tolerate the generally alkaline soils in these parts. We make up for it – just think of all the flowering cherries and the lilacs that thrive instead!