Monthly Garden Diary - July 2006

Introduction

Summer holidays are just around the corner, but plants are still growing vigorously and providing beautiful flowers and abundant fruit and vegetables. Water and watering are at the top of every gardeners agenda and we will need to water in the most appropriate way if we have any hope of keeping our garden beautiful while using water wisely. A water butt or two that collects rain water from the roof is a vital reserve that will make all the difference.

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Ornamental Gardening

Although we had plenty of rain during May the hot, dry weather at the start of the World Cup tournaments means that most garden borders need supplementary watering, especially when planted with bedding plants.

In sunny borders stick to annual flowers that are reasonably tolerant of dry conditions Petunias, antirrhinums, geraniums, penstemons and verbena are used to hot, dry conditions and are not so demanding for extra attention. So too are the bright yellow and red flowers of gaillardia, a perennial that carries, attractive red daisy-like petals, that are tipped with golden yellow. They appreciate well-drained soils and a sunny position, so usually need no extra attention, even in hot, dry weather.

When planting, it’s now not good enough to dig a hole and position the root ball so it’s surrounded by plain earth. At every stage in developing your garden you must take the opportunity to add moisture holding organic matter to the soil. Whenever you are planting, dig into the bottom of every planting hole some well-rotted garden compost or some soil conditioning material that you have bought in a bag.

Your local garden centre will have plenty of soil conditioners to choose from, including Farmyard Manure, Levington Organic Blend Soil Conditioner and Miracle-Gro EcoSense Soil Improver. Placed beneath and around the roots of each plant these materials will hold much more water and encourage a bigger and deeper root system that will help to drought-proof most plants.

The other thing you can do to reduce the impact of a hose-pipe ban is to add a mulch to the surface of the soil to reduce the amount of moisture that evaporates wastefully and to keep the soil cooler. The best time to apply a mulch is when the soil is wet from a good downpour of rain or after thorough artificial watering. Then you will be trapping water where the plant roots can get at it. Some people use freshly mown grass cuttings to do this job but it is important that the lawn should not have been treated with a triple-action lawn treatment or weedkiller in the last 8 weeks. Much better if you use home-made well-rotted garden compost or buy bags of organic matter that will enrich the soil such as the soil conditioners mentioned previously. If you want to do two jobs at once and create a decorative textured finish around your flowers at the same time then you need to use decorative bark chippings such as Forest Bark or for a dark black finish that lasts for up to 12 months choose a new mulch from Levington’s Nature Scape range called Constant Colour Mulch. This is recycled wood chippings that have been specially treated with a colour fast iron based dye. It is ideal for decorating borders and paths and helps to retain moisture and suppress weed growth.

Some bedding plants such as busy lizzies, begonias, fuchsias and nemesia should be flowering in profusion if they have moisture and food available to their ever expanding roots. If necessary get out the watering can and water these plants regularly and feed them once a fortnight with Miracle-Gro All Purpose Plant Food. If water is in really short supply you may need to use grey water from the kitchen sink, the bath and from the rinse cycle of a washing machine on shallow rooted plants and recently planted specimens. Don’t worry about shrubs and trees that have bee established for more than a couple of years. They will have a deep enough root system to survive most droughts. Water used for washing up plates, pots and pans can only be used if you allow it to cool and then skim off any fat or oil from the surface and remove any food scraps. Other kitchen sink water used for cleaning and preparing vegetables is fine and can be used directly on garden plants. Bath water can be bucketed out using a plastic utensil that is not going to scratch the surface, although adding a teaspoonful of Miracle-Gro Ericaceous Plant Food will help to neutralise the alkaline soap residues.

Dahlias will be growing strongly and will appreciate plenty of water and a rich source of plant nutrients.

In the flower garden it’s time to sow the hardy biennials that promise to flower next Spring and Summer. Delphiniums and lupins can be sown without any special protection, save the time-honoured SlugClear Advanced Pellets to keep these nibblers away from the fresh seed leaves that they find so tasty. Seed of wallflowers sown now will produce plants of ideal size for transplanting into beds of bulbs at the end of September. At the same time you can think about sowing Sweet Williams, forget-me-not and Canterbury bells.

Bedding plants should be growing strongly and filling their space with big, beautiful blooms. If they are not performing up to scratch, give them a dose of rich liquid feed applied in the late evening when the sun is down so that you can wet the leaves as well as the roots. Feeding plants through both roots and leaves with a liquid plant food such as Miracle-Gro Liquid All Purpose Plant Food will make all the difference, especially if you pick off dead and dying blooms to prevent them running to seed.

Patio Gardening

It’s time to prepare the garden and patio for barbecue parties and family meals. Before doing the decorative jobs check the patio for weeds and ants. They are simple to eliminate with some extra help. Spray any weeds and gaps between paving slabs with Pathclear Gun! Season-Long. This weedkiller will not only kill all the weeds you have at the moment, it will also lay down a chemical layer on any soil surfaces so that any weed seeds that try to geminate in the next 3 months are eliminated too. Ants are just as easy to eliminate. Simply place an Ant Stop Bait Station where you notice ant activity. Break open the tiny doors to the circular black chamber that’s about the size of a digestive biscuit and allow the ants to take up the attractive bait that’s positioned inside. These worker ants will take the food they find that is impregnated with tiny amounts of insecticide back to the deepest chambers of the nest so that the nurses who are feeding the queen and the larval stages will all be killed.

Now check your patio pots and hanging baskets for fullness of flower and for freshness of foliage. If there are gaps, these can be filled in with new plants purchased from your local nursery. Position these as soon as possible so they have time to settle in. All your containers deserve a feed of soluble plant food such as Miracle-Gro which will encourage more flowers and healthy green leaves.

If there is no hose-pipe ban in your area you can quickly and easily feed pots, containers, hanging baskets and plants in the rest of the garden with the Miracle-Gro Feeder. This hose-end attachment automatically dissolves the blue crystals and delivers a jet or a shower of liquid plant food. If hose-pipe feeding is banned then you will need to revert to the watering can method of watering and feeding. Simply dissolve a tablespoon of soluble blue crystals in each 4.5 litres (1 gallon) of water or even easier, tip in a capful of the concentrated liquid version found in a familiar yellow bottle.

The Lawn

Many more people are taking the trouble to feed their lawn this year, to provide a rich green play area for family and friends and to provide an attractive background that sets off flowers and shrubs in the most traditional of ways.

Plant food technology has developed over the last few years so that many lawn foods now contain slow release forms of nitrogen so that lawns remain greener for longer from just one application.

Another benefit of this long term feeding rather than sudden flush of growth is that the grass plants are encouraged to spread outwards so the lawn is thicker as well as greener. With this in mind the gardener who has limited time to spend on lawn care is trying new products like the Scotts Lawn Builder Lawn Food range that feeds for up to 8 weeks from one application. Even more popular this year has been Lawn Builder’s Summer Long Lawn Food that feeds and green a lawn for 6 months from just one Spring application.

Similarly lawn weedkillers have come a long way and provide good control of some of the most difficult weeds from just one application. The three weedkillers you now find in Verdone Extra provide season long control from just one application.

This sort of product development that gives better results that last even longer are well worth trying, especially when it comes to lawn care.

Fruit and Vegetables

It’s harvest time for many of the fruit and vegetables in your garden. You should be able to pick and eat strawberries, lettuce, carrots, peas, runner beans, French beans and courgettes. With beans it is important to pick every couple of days for the tenderest crops and to prevent the plant from setting seed.

Once a bean plant has achieved its objective of producing viable seeds it does tend not to produce too many more flowers and therefore fewer beans. You may find that in hot weather the flowers on your runner beans fall off without setting. This is as much to do with temperature as anything else. As soon as cooler weather comes along they will start producing beans and in the meantime your French beans should be cropping profusely as they appreciate the warmer weather. Keeping all vegetable plants growing vigorously with supplementary watering if you are able and regular doses of Miracle-Gro All Purpose Plant Food will ensure they produce their maximum crop.

Keep pests away as much as possible, either by covering the crop with horticultural fleece or with the occasional spray if this is not possible. The growing tips of runner beans, broad beans and the underside of strawberry leaves and lettuce can be the first attack point of aphids in their blackfly or greenfly form. Once again a spray with BugClear Gun! or Nature’s Answer Natural Bug Killer will give fast-acting control of these sap-sucking insects that distort normal growth and pass on virus diseases.

July is the last month for sowing vegetable seeds for crops this year. As you make space after digging early potatoes and peas that have finished, sow more seeds of carrots, leaf beat, spinach and turnip. It’s also time to plant out late sprouts and Winter cabbage.

In the Greenhouse

Scientists tell us that tomatoes are good for our health and contain substances that are positively helpful in combating heart disease and cancers. What they don’t tell you is that home-grown tomatoes, ripened on the vine, taste delicious and so much better than those you can buy.

To ensure you obtain the biggest and best crop of these valuable fruits, position your growing bags on a sunny patio or plant directly into border soil in a similar sunny spot.

By now the first truss of tomatoes should be ripening and the plant needs to be fed every 10 days with a special plant food such as Tomorite. This balanced plant food is high in potash to encourage more flowers and fruit and also contains magnesium and seaweed extract to provide plenty of micronutrients that help give tomatoes a rich colour and excellent flavour.

Plants that are grown as standard one stem bushes need to have side shoots pinched out so that the plants’ energy is not diverted to inconsequential leaf growth. While you are doing this job regularly check to see if whitefly have taken a liking to your tomatoes. If they are present in large numbers you will notice that a cloud of tiny white insects fly off the plant whenever it is disturbed. You will need to spray the plants every 7 days to control the existing adults and the new adults that emerge over the next few weeks. Use a bifenthrin based product such as BugClear Gun! or a more natural one based on pyrethrins such as Nature’s Answer Natural Bug Killer and follow the label instructions carefully.