Summer is just around the corner so start planning ahead and set aside some time to get your garden ready.
Jobs for June
- Hoe borders regularly to keep down weeds
- Be water-wise, especially in drought-affected areas
- Position summer hanging baskets and containers outside
- Mow lawns at least once a week, weather dependent
- Plant out summer bedding
- Stake tall or floppy plants
- Prune many spring-flowering shrubs
- Shade greenhouses to keep them cool and prevent scorch
- Lift and divide clumps of snowdrops and bluebells once the leaves start to yellow
Jobs for July
- Deadhead bedding plants and repeat-flowering perennials, to ensure continuous flowering
- Dead-head your roses to keep them looking tidy. Leave the flowers in place if your rose produces attractive hips (seed pods)
- Care for plant while on holiday (adjust irrigation system if got one/ ask friends or relatives to water the plants and keep an eye on the soil moisture)
- Water pots and new plants if dry, but be water-wise
- Prune your deciduous Magnolia
- Clear algae, blanket weeds and debris from ponds, and keep them topped up
- Give the lawn a quick-acting summer feed, especially if not given a spring feed
- Stop rust damaging Hollyhock foliage by pruning out affected leaves and/ or spraying with a fungicide
- July is a good month to spray ground elder, bindweed and other persistent weeds with a glyphosate-based weed killer the plants during high summer have lots of leaf surface area with which to absorb it
- Spray roses with insecticide and fungicide
