Gardening tips for July

While we have our fingers crossed for a warm July, the hotter weather can cause your flowers to struggle, so it’s important to take care of the plants you’ve worked hard on growing this far.

• During hot spells, check your beds, borders, pots, and baskets to see if the soil has dried out. If so, give your plants a good drink of water – some smaller plants might need watered twice a day.

• Regularly deadhead your bedding, container, and basket plants, and any other repeat-flowering perennials to enjoy a longer display of blooms in your garden. This is also a great way to keep your garden looking great during the summer months, as it gets rid of any wilted or dying flower heads to make way for new ones.

• Your flowers may benefit from a liquid feed, particularly your container plants, roses, and our outdoor Plant of the Month, dahlias.

• When the weather gets warmer, cut back on your water usage and keep your grass looking green instead by raising the cutting height of your lawn mower blades when trimming your grass. Don’t worry if your grass browns in the heat, once it rains again it should return to its usual state quite quickly.

• After cutting your lawn, don’t forget to finish it off by trimming the edges with a grass trimmer or edging shears to keep it looking neat and orderly.

• Prune any fast-growing hedges in your garden, like Leyland cypress. Make sure to tie-in any ramblers too as they continue to grow.

• Weeds thrive in dry, warm weather, so continue hoeing any weeds around your beds or vegetable patches in dry weather, as this gives you the best chance of not allowing them to re-root.

It’s a good time to start planning the vegetables you might want to grow in time for your favourite autumn and winter dishes, especially your Christmas dinner! This month is the perfect time to start sowing many autumn vegetables which you can harvest and use later in the year, such as:

• Carrots

• Beetroot

• Leek

• Dwarf French beans

• Early peas

• Turnips

• Lettuce

• Radishes

• Spinach

• Spring cabbage

Now’s also the perfect time to start growing your own strawberries – young strawberry plants are still available in-store and ready to be planted outside in beds, large pots, or hanging baskets.

Stone fruits such as cherry and plum can be pruned this month. These types of trees are susceptible to fungal diseases through open wounds if they’re pruned in winter, so doing it during the warmer months helps reduce the risk of infection.

If you live in the north of the UK, then you might need to nip out your tomatoes. Use your finger and thumb to nip out the very tip of the plant to stop pit stems growing longer and for ripe and tasty fruit to bloom.

Vegetable crops like tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers still need regular feeding with a high potash tomato fertiliser.

BBQs taste better with a side salad, especially if it’s one you’ve grown in your own garden! If you want to add some homegrown crops to your summer salads, then late sowings of beetroot, radishes, lettuce, and salad crops grow quickly in the warm soil.

If you have a bird bath in your garden, keep it topped up with fresh water and make sure to clean it whenever it starts looking grubby. During this time of year, many birds will be in competition for food too, so keep your bird feeders full and consider having multiple feeders on display in your garden.

For those with a pond, keep an eye out for frogs and toads which might start to appear this month. Plant foliage around your pond to keep these critters safe from predators.