Its July!! The school holidays are approaching and so this month so here are your jobs to do:
1. Hoe weed seedlings so they don’t take over veggie patches or in your borders.
I’m quite relaxed about weeds but they can take water and light from your plants so keep them thinned out. Use a hoe on a warm day to cut the tops off from the roots and they will shrivel up and die on the soil surface without you needing to remove them.
2. Deadhead summer bedding, perennials and roses to encourage them to keep on flowering.
Sweetpeas can be cut every other day and brought inside or gifted. You’re trying to trick the plant into producing more flowers by making the flowers disappear. The plant only wants to flower to produce seed and once seed is ‘set’ it will stop flowering so we want to interrupt that by removing the flowers! Do this with secateurs or with something like Catmint or Geraniums you can take your shears to them and they should produce a 2nd flush of flowers.
3. Water and feed pots and fruit and vegetables consistently to encourage growth and flowering or fruiting
Plants in pots are dependent on you for everything. They need watering (nearly) every day in dry weather and feeding regularly. Think of them like new born babies who need a structured routine of feeding! Fruit and Vegetables are hungry and thirsty. Raspberries, courgettes and tomatoes need lots of water to swell and produce the fruit you want .. but don’t be haphazard as leaving them to dry out for long periods and then swamping them with water won’t help them grow healthily.
4. Now is the time to sow the seeds of biennials*
You can collect the seed from dried flower-heads such as Forget-me-Nots, Foxgloves and Honesty for flowering next year and start them off in trays now. Pot on when they are large enough to handle and then plant out into the garden in the Autumn for flowering next Spring.
*Biennials have a two year life cycle. In year one they put on their main root and foliage growth and in year two they produce their flowers, set seed and then die.
5. Relax
Enjoy your garden this month, all you hard work has paid off and you have a space to spend time in, either alone or with the family. Picnics on the lawn, playing swing-ball, picking raspberries, lounging with a book, BBQing or camping overnight … relax and enjoy!
Let me know how you get on, and if you have any questions email me renee@thegirlwhogardens.co.uk.
Or book a Garden Hoedown for an hour of one-to-one garden therapy and you’ll come away with a personalised action plan to get the most out of your garden!