Get into gardening

Vegetable Garden

The following vegetable crops can be planted outside now: lettuce, Chinese cabbage, spring cabbage, endive, kohl rabi, radish, winter spinach and turnips for their green tops.

Tip:
Hot and humid conditions can spread potato blight really quickly, so it’s worth considering spraying your crops with a chemical fungicide to stop an attack.

Bedding Plants

Keep your bedding plants healthy by deadheading, watering daily, and feeding with a good quality fertiliser. Pick flowers regularly to encourage more blooms.

Climbing plants

Encourage the spread of your Clematis by layering (it has a better success rate than taking cuttings).

Prune Wisteria to improve growth.
Stake and tie up any plants that are starting to droop.
Water and feed sweet peas.

Containers

During the hot weather, water pots and hanging baskets at least once a day and remove any dead flower heads. Also use a feed once a week to keep everything looking great.

Fruit

Pick individual blueberries when they turn a dark blue colour. If you like a more intense flavour, leave the berries on the bush for a few days after they’ve ripen.

If you pegged down some strawberry runners last month, they should be ready to cut free from the parent plant and plant out separately.

Continue cutting out old fruited canes on raspberries.
Pick autumn raspberries.
Prune cordon and Espalier apples (water trees if necessary).
Trim and prune strawberries to stop them spreading.

Greenhouse

If your greenhouse suffers a lot from high humidity, you might want to invest in an extractor fan or automatic vents.

Lawn

After mowing your lawn, check for hollows (large cracks) and bare patches – repairing any damaged areas. If you're planning to seed a new area of lawn this autumn, start preparing the ground now. Remove any weeds and stones, levelling the soil with a rake as you go.

Perennials (winter surviving plants)

Give your soil a boost of nutrients with a green manure. Scatter seeds over the surface of the soil and water in well.

The weevil and its larvae can be one of the most destructive pests in a garden. Use biological controls (available from Homebase) around vulnerable plants before the grubs begin to hatch.

Carry on removing dead flower heads from plants in bloom.

Roses

If you see large purple spots on the surface of your rose leaves, it's probably suffering from black spot. If you notice raised orange patches, it’s suffering from rust. Remove any infected leaves and burn straight away to stop it spreading. Roses growing in dry sheltered areas (against walls) are prone to powdery mildew. Keep roots moist by using organic matter in autumn and applying mulches in spring.

Shrubs

Give lavender a light trim as the flowers fade – it stops the plant from becoming leggy and helps trigger flowering next year.

Water and feed the shrubs regularly. And don’t forget to use rainwater and ericaceous feed for plants like Rhododendrons.

Trees

Water all newly planted trees well for the first year – it takes at least a year for new roots to develop deep into the soil for the tree to be fully settled in.

Vegetables

Pick courgettes a few times every week.
Finish sowing beetroot for an autumn harvest.
Water tomatoes daily and increase feeding.
hardy salad seeds (like lambs lettuce) for a crop over winter.
Pick sweetcorn, carrots and other vegetables as they become ready.

If you have not done so already pinch out the tops of Cordon tomato plants to prevent them from growing too tall. This will also improve the ripening fruits.

Sow spring cabbage, Chinese cabbage, chicory, winter lettuce, autumn onion, radicchio and turnip.

Mung beans can be grown throughout the year (indoors in a seed sprouter or in a jam jar with muslin secured with an elastic band – rinse daily).