Hello everyone, I hope you are doing well with the past few weeks of droughts and heat. The scorching days means that you will need to keep on top of feeding and watering plants in pots, as well as ensuring your beds are regularly watered too.
Summer in the veg patch, still has a lot going on including the opportunity to make new strawberry plants. They normally have four good years till their yield reduce and need to be replace. A cost-effective way to do this is to let the plantlets they produce on their runner to touch the soil. Once this has happened, they will quickly put down roots and establish. At the end of August, the newly rooted plantlets can be planted out into a new bed or pot with plenty of compost.
You can sow your hardy Autumn salad crops such as Land Cress, Rocket and Corn Salad, which can be harvested in October and November. They can be sown directly into the bed in rows, keep them well-watered and weeded.
Some flowers may now be past their best and will be beginning to fade, so it’s time to trim and prune these plants to help keep your garden looking tidy. It is not too late to cut back perennials that are past their best, like hardy Geraniums, Cat Mint and Delphiniums. Prune them back to a neat shape, they may or may not flower again this season as it depends on the weather, but they will grow fresh foliage that is much more pleasing to the eye.
Finally, your Lavender is now ready for its trim. Remove the flowers and trim back into a neat shape to stop it going woody, but remember to keep some green shoots as lavender will not regrow from wood. However, with French lavender you just need to keep deadheading. Continuing with this dead heading theme, dead head for as long as possible to encourage your summer display to bloom.
Willie the Worm
