Avoid an ambush.

Although you can no longer buy Derris after it was linked to Parkinson's disease, there are plenty of organic pesticides based on plant oils and pyrethrums.

One day you can have a great gooseberry plant, the next it looks like a box of matches - all the leaves eaten, a sorry state. It is usually gooseberry sawfly but magpie moth and others clear these plants out very quickly. You need to be on the ball with them because they go so quickly.

The plant usually recovers for the next year but the lack of leaves means rubbish fruit. There's also the risk of a fungal infection which you wouldn't notice now but may appear next season.

Order your gooseberry bushes and my new range of professionally grown plug plants at mrdigwell.com.