Here’s our gardening reminders for the month of August:
1) Now is the last chance to prune stone fruits such as cherries and plums. Choose a dry day in order to prevent disease entry through the wound. If you have peaches or apricots under protection, prune them now to prevent silver leaf disease.
2) Cut back the long whippy growth of Wisteria to within 3 buds of the old wood if they are not required to extend the area covered by the plant.
3) Keep watering those containers! Placing the plant in a saucer-shaped dish will be a great help in making the water you apply remain available to the plant.
4) With the weather so dry it is an ideal time to concentrate on the removal of perennial weeds, either by hand or with the aid of the chemical Glyphosate.
5) Check that weeds are not spreading under larger shrubs where the shade has kept them that little bit more moist and able to seed.
6) Towards the end of the month cut back the canes of fruited cane fruits to ground level, and tie in the young shoots which will provide next year’s harvest.
7) Keep dead-heading the best flowering plants to encourage new flowers and stop them setting seed. Apply a liquid feed as plants will require added nutrition to counter the dry weather and heavy watering.
8) Keep hardy and half-hardy annuals well-watered and weed-free. Try not to walk on the beds as the plants damage easily.It is usual to place a plank across two boxes to help with weeding and the removal of spent flowers.
9) Trim fast growing hedges, and don’t forget the weeds in the hedge bottoms!
10) Remove rose blooms as they fade and don’t apply feed after the end of July, as late soft growth would not be hardy before winter.
11) Complete the lifting of last seasons’ bulbs and dry them off naturally in light woven sacks for maximum ventilation.
12) Take cuttings of shrubs, heathers, hydrangeas and fuchsias.
13) Keep an eye on the whole garden and spray as necessary against pests on dahlias and Chrysanthemums in particular.
14) When going on holiday and concerned about indoor containers being watered, try placing a full bucket of water on the garage floor and placing your pots around it on their own saucers.
Using a piece of wet string about the thickness of a bootlace, tie one end to a piece of old cutlery and place in the bucket. Push the other end into the compost of a pot. Place strings from bucket to all pots.
Posted 1st Aug 9:21am