Peter's tips for July & August

Where has summer gone?

Where has summer gone?  Don’t panic it’s on its way back!!

The summer months are when herbaceous plants erupt into flower and give you so much colour, form, texture, insect food for bees and butterflies, and wow factor.  Many of us love the ‘Cottage Garden’ look or the ‘Prairie’ planting effect created by Piet Oudolf or Dan Pearson – naturalistic meadows of perennial planting, just stunning.

Long grass waving around in the wind with the light glowing through the slender stems and meadow brown butterflies and ringlets.

Lockdown has had a profound impact on the way we observe nature and our surroundings, whilst walking, running or cycling close to home or local patch.  Hopefully we will use this experience to look after our precious planet.

There’s still plenty to do in July….

This month is the month for watering and feeding, dead heading of old flowers, more seed sowing and summer pruning.

Vegetables: All will benefit from liquid feeding to help produce bumper crops.  Vitax Tomato Feed is a good all round feed not just for tomatoes.  Courgettes, sweetcorn, beans, raspberries and fruit trees will all benefit.  Vitax Organic Liquid Seaweed is great for leafy vegetables and stressed plants looking a bit yellow, lacking vigour or drought stressed.  Regard this as a tonic for plants, I wish there was a version for us!

Flowering plants: Use a general purpose feed and look no further than the new Q4 All Purpose Liquid Feed.  If you want specific feeds for certain plants then these are available from Vitax too – Orchid, Rose, Strawberry, Tree Fern, Tub & Hanging basket, Fuchsia, Ericaceous Feed.

Jobs around the garden:

• Garlic, shallots and early onions and potatoes can be lifted and dried thoroughly.  Use the cleared areas to re-sow salad leaves, beetroot, carrots, pak choi, turnips, French beans and a late sowing of runner or climbing beans.  By sowing in July you will extend the season well into the autumn until the first frosts.
• Dead-head roses, day lilies, gazanias – anything where the flowers have faded and died - this will guarantee more flowers to come.  If you leave the flowers to turn into seed pods all the energy goes into producing seeds instead of flowers.
• Weed: hoeing on a sunny, dry day is so satisfying.  You cut through the weeds just below the soil surface and allow them to dry and shrivel up in the sun.  I often use a Swoe for the job, a sharpened Swoe or hoe makes life a lot easier too!
• Lawns: many of us are not cutting lawns so often to encourage the wildflowers which in turn bring in the bees and butterflies.  Grass left for three weeks between mowing’s will have a dramatic effect on clover flowering in a lawn, which is a nitrogen fixer so helps keeps the grass green.  Leaving areas of lawn long will create areas for young frogs, toads and newts to grow up and feed on the invertebrates, slugs, worms, beetles, woodlice etc.
• Pruning: it’s time to cut back weigela, philadelphus, and summer flowering shrubs.  Cut out old flowered stems even reducing some to the ground if they are old and gnarled.  This will rejuvenate the plant and produce new stems in one year. 
• Wisterias: cut back all straggly growth to approx. 4” in length, creating spurs.  Off these spurs you will get next spring’s flowers.  Some thin growth can be removed completely unless you want to extend the size or continue training the wisteria along a wire.
• Vines: cut-back excessive growth to in front of the grapes which are formed.  This will allow more light and air around the grapes.
• Summer pruning: peaches, plums, gauges, cherries, nectarines – any fruit trees with a stone inside.  Fan trained trees need new stems tying in and side shoots reduced to approx. four leaves.  Cordon apples and pears can also be pruned to allow more light and sun to ripen fruit, prune as peaches.

Enjoy the scent in your garden from honeysuckles, summer jasmine, star jasmine, roses, lavender, marjoram and salvias.

Watch out for moths at night and butterflies by day.

Above all, relax and have a glass of your favourite tipple and sit in your favourite surroundings. Time out.

Enjoy the summer! Take care and happy gardening.

Peter

About Peter Mills:

Peter has over 35 years experience in horticulture working in garden centres before becoming a radio gardening presenter with BBC Radio Southern Counties. Working as freelance consultant, Peter works with the RHS as an external advisor as well as trouble-shooting many gardening-related problems for a range of clients.