Paul Gargan
The month of June is when all the hard work you put in earlier in the year starts to pay dividends. Shrubs and perennial beds are full of lush new growth – their colour looking more vibrant in the bright sunshine.
As the weather gets warmer and drier, grass growth will slow down, but the lawn still needs to be cut. If you cut it every week (twice in 10 days is best) it will make the job a lot easier then leaving it until it becomes a hated chore. Cut in a different direction each time. This prevents the grass from lying down in the direction of the cut and becoming long. Always remove the cut grass from the lawn and compost it. That is unless you are using a mulch mower but these don’t perform very well in Irish weather conditions.
If you have daffodils naturalised in your lawn, as long as the required six weeks have gone by since they finished flowering, you can cut the foliage or just run the mower over them with the blades set high, for the first cut, rake off and compost the leaves, then cut to your normal height.
Some spring bulbs such as daffodils, snowdrops and bluebells are left in the ground but others such as tulips and hyacinths should be dug up, dried off and stored in a cool shed for the summer.
Weeds
Keep weeding your beds, little and often is best. Annual weeds are less of a problem now as they become shaded out by plant growth, but perennial weeds can get out of hand if you let them. Bindweed can quickly take over a bed if you let go. If you have it and don’t want to use chemicals, you must dig it out making sure to get every piece of root, as even the tiniest piece will regrow and take over.
If you don’t want to dig, then train the bindweed up a bamboo cane. When there is enough of it take out the cane and put the bindweed in a plastic bag and spray it with a glyphosate-based herbicide, taking care not to get any spray on any nearby plants. Tie the top of the bag and leave it. It will take approx. 14 days for it to work. Glyphosate kills from the root up. Use it very carefully, following all the instructions on the bottle to the letter.
Plant out summer bedding now, when the frosts have finished. If they are in hanging baskets, they may need watering every day. Check all baskets, tubs, containers and windowboxes every day to make sure. If they feel dry or light, water them and feed them weekly. Also deadhead them weekly. They will flower until the first frost if you water, feed and deadhead regularly.