Growing Great Gardens
This month is one of the most bountiful times of the year in the garden – make sure you harvest all that is cropping and enjoy the spectacular sights on display in the ornamental garden.
This Month: The Garden as the summer Playground
It’s a fact of modern life that gardening is undertaken spasmodically for many people: most of us get some time off this month and we try to do a bit of work in our own ‘patch’. Don’t suppress the urge to do this just because you think it may not be the season – here is the Living Earth recipe for great holiday gardening!
Weeding: The urge to fill the trailer, wheelie bin or garden bag with knee (or thigh) high unwanted plants always comes upon us after Christmas – often after a big cleanout in the house. Most weeds are easy to spot since they’re much taller than they were a month back…If the ground has baked hard use a trowel, grubber or fork to get the root out as well. Losing the canopy of weed cover means the turned soil dries out more rapidly. Increase the watering to desirable plants in the vicinity after the weeding process and layer on some Living Earth More than Mulch to keep them ‘afloat.’
Pruning: Well if you must, you must but remember that foliage cut back in the height of summer leaves the plant naked and vulnerable, thus it’s highly likely that cropped hedges and shrubs will show ‘sunburn’, which will take some time to grow out. Also, cutting back is satisfying when you create a new vista or uncover plants you’d forgotten were there, but remember newly exposed foliage will also burn in the bright sunlight.
Planting: Often a few days in garden is rewarded by a shopping expedition to the local Garden Centre. Follow the rules of planting – soak the root-ball in a bucket of water ‘til the bubbles stop rising. Dig some Living Earth Compost through the soil to aid water retention. Pour a bucket of water into the planting hole and plant after it has drained away. Regularly soak new plants in the cool of the evening.
Garden Diary
• Feeding: Your plants don’t need it; the sun is doing its job. There’s a chance that, if you pile on the fertilizer in this heat, the plant will ‘burn’ as a result.• Remove spent crops and put in plants of lettuce, basil and other herbs that will provide those wonderful flavors to late summer dishes. Staking up is very important for climbing crops such as beans and tomatoes and to encourage production for melons and cucumbers where space is limited. Lemongrass is a wonderful flavorsome plant for fish dishes and syrups for fruit salads and you’ll find it in garden centers now.
• Once they flower a light daily water ensures a great crop of runner beans.
• Pick blackcurrants as they ripen to ensure strong growth for the rest of the season – this determines next year’s crop size.
• Don’t weed out flowering nasturtiums – it seems white butterflies lay their eggs on them in preference to cabbages.
• Deadhead roses, hydrangeas and flowering perennials that have finished their first flowering.
• Pollen rich flowers, particularly yellow, attract beneficial predators in the battle against aphids. Try to have plenty in the flower and vegetable garden.
• It’s holiday time – you’re allowed the rest of the month off!