July means holidays, long days and (hopefully) sunny weather, giving you a chance to really enjoy your garden. In between watering, weeding and deadheading to keep everything looking its best, don’t forget to take some time to relax and admire the flowers! Here are our top 10 gardening tips for July.
Top 10 gardening tips for July
-
Plan ahead for fabulous flowers next Spring by sowing biennials like Foxgloves and Wallflowers in seed trays or modules in a greenhouse.
-
Deadhead Roses regularly to keep them flowering. Sweet peas and cosmos will also flower for months if regularly deadheaded, and they make beautiful cut flowers for the house.
-
Cut hardy geraniums back hard when they start to look leggy and tired, and they will produce a flush of fresh new foliage and flowers.
-
Once bearded irises have finished flowering, lift and divide overgrown clumps. Re-plant them with their rhizomes partly exposed so that they can be baked by the summer sun.
-
Give wisteria its summer pruning, cutting back all this year’s long whippy shoots to 5-6 leaves from the main stems.
-
Water tomatoes regularly, especially container-grown tomatoes. Keeping the moisture level in the soil consistent reduces the risk of fruit splitting.
-
Your vegetable and fuit bushes will appreciate a fortnightly boost with a high-potash liquid feed such as tomato feed, which promotes the development of flowers and fruit.
-
Mound up the soil around the stems of maincrop potatoes (this is called ‘earthing up’) to stop the sunlight from reaching the tubers and turning them green. Remember, green potatoes are toxic! Harvest the first early potatoes, digging up one or two first to check whether they are big enough – if not, leave them to grow for a few more weeks
-
Mow the lawn regularly, raising the blades to a higher setting if the weather is dry.
Whether it’s plants to fill the border or some late bedding plants to fill tired pots you’ll find everything you need in our centre to help you get the best out of your garden this summer!
