Paul GarganGarden seats are not just for decoration – use them.
Gardening is all about creating a space, not only around your house, but in your head.
When you garden you become immersed in your task, forgetting all about the problems of your day/work. It’s the menial tasks such as hand weeding or deadheading that give the most rewards. So when finished, sit and enjoy the fruits of your labour. Garden seats are not just for decoration – use them.
Keep hand weeding and on a dry day hoe beds, so that the weeds dry up and die in the sun. If you haven’t already got one, get a water butt.
Water newly-planted trees, shrubs and perennials during dry spells. It can take two years for newly planted trees and shrubs to become self sufficient in water.
Check hanging baskets and windows boxes daily as sun and wind can dry them out very quickly. Deadhead weekly.
During very dry spells lawns may burn and become brown. This is only temporary, the roots are still alive and it will recover very quickly when it rains. Don’t be tempted to water it – you are just wasting water. In lawns that are regularly watered the roots don’t go deep looking for water, they stay close to the surface therefore increasing the need for watering.
Fruit trees
Summer prune fruit trees- especially the stone fruit cherries, flowering cherries, plums and members of the sorbus family. These trees are prone to bacterial cankers and silver leaf, and pruning now helps avoid these diseases.
As many fruit trees are too big for smaller gardens, people tend not to plant them. Winter pruning encourages more vigorous growth while summer pruning reduces it. Summer pruning of apple, pear and plum tress consists of reducing the new long shoots to approx 8cm from the base.
Any inward growth towards the centre of the tree can be removed altogether. If this is done in late July, it helps to control vigour but doesn’t affect fruiting.
After flowering, wisterias produce very long tendril-like shoots.
To ensure abundant flowering next year reduce these shoots by two thirds. This process may have to be repeated several times during the summer months as the plant continues to grow. It is also spur pruned in winter back to two buds.
You can encourage the shoots of many climbing plants to root by laying a stem on the ground, pinning it down with a u-shaped piece of wire and covering a short section with soil. Next year when it has rooted, cut and dig up your new climber.
Try this with ivies, jasmines, wisterias, climbing hydrangeas and Virginia creepers.
This also works with strawberry plants. Just pin the runners into small pots sunken into the ground and filled with seed compost. In the autumn ‘cut the cord’ and you have new plants. Strawberry plants should be replaced every 3-4 years.ery 3-4 years.