e-mail Jane Owen with your gardening questions: jane.owen1@timesonline.co.uk

Is it true that cardboard will stop my compost getting hot? Jack MacArthur

If it gets wet during winter cardboard will slow the compost down even more than compost naturally slows during winter. Come next year it will heat up and compost very nicely so long as you keep adding layers of green and brown waste.

I have a climbing plant by the name of lonicera periclymenum serotina it is in a pot 22 inches diameter and 19 inches high. I have had the plant for two summers and it has hardly grown. It is in good compost and the water in the saucer does not seem to evoporate in warm weather. What steps would you advise for the plant to thrive. Derrick Gabe

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Late Dutch honeysuckle (i.e. Lonicera periclymenum ‘Serotina’) is a lovely, scented old tart, rather like all her relations. She will grow almost anywhere and survive almost anything but, in order to thrive, she needs to have plenty of root space. I have never seen this issue discussed but I have tried growing it in various large containers without much success. The honeysuckle lives but doesn’t do much. I would plant out your honeysuckle, cut back the more woody stems and, in spring, give it a thick mulch of compost or rotted manure.

I have developed an interest in Aquilegias and would like to find out more about them. Is there anywhere that I can get information about propagation and types of aquilegia from? Can you also suggest anywhere that specializes in Aquilegia seeds? Many thanks for your help. Janine Cort

They produce lovely flowers – harbingers of spring – and make rewarding plants although the tendancy of cultivars to revert, plus aquilegia’s urge to cross fertilize with everything in sight can be confusing. The experts in the field are Touchwood Nurseries which has a national collection of aquilegias and an excellent seed list.

Will miniature roses survive indoors? Dee Fellows

Marginally longer than cut roses. Roses do best outside and so, if you must keep them indoors, keep them in the coolest, light-est room you have. Come the spring put them outside with a good dose of mulch in order to revive.

I keep finding lacewings indoors. How will they survive and how can I make them go outdoors? They are so fragile I don’t want to touch them. Susheila Brown-Duncan

Just leave them be. They have probably found an ideal place to roost, if that is the right term. Lacewings used to breed in the heat of my Aga flu. I assume they lived on household insects. That must be how your lacewings are surviving. Do not try to move them.

We still have about two rows of carrots that I forgot to lift. My work-shy other half says we should leave them in and pull them as we need them. Our ground is sandy and we live in Suffolk. Can we leave them in? Fiona Long

A lot of people add a thick layer of straw or mulch to protect carrots from the frost and them lift the carrots as and when they are needed. In your fast-draining soil your carrots should survive this treatment – so long as you don’t have too many underground slugs.

e-mail Jane Owen with your gardening questions: jane.owen1@timesonline.co.uk

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