Blog, Gardening Advice
Top Gardening tips for August
The school holidays are in full swing, we all keep our fingers crossed for more than a few days of sunshine and we may even be lucky to have a couple of weeks away from the normal day to day routines.
Whilst we are enjoying the last few months of Summer this is a wonderful time to enjoy the garden and appreciate all the flowers in bloom. However, there is always something to do in the garden, whether it’s sowing new seeds, starting on your Winter vegetables or deadheading – we’ve covered our top 10 tips for August!
OUR TOP TIPS
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- Keep up the deadheading. Roses, daylilies, dahlias, cosmos, calibrachoa and pansies will all keep on flowering for longer if regularly deadheaded, and they make beautiful cut flowers!
- If the weather is dry, water camellias and rhododendrons regularly as they start developing their flower buds for next year’s display.
- If you haven’t already, be sure to snip your Dahlias once they have four true sets of leaves, this way they will produce more side shoots and will flower for longer. It’s a win win!
- Trim faded lavender flowers to keep the plants looking tidy, taking care not to cut too far back into old wood. Check down the stems to see where new leaf buds appear and cut above these.
- Now’s the time to prune rambling roses. Remove one in every three old stems and tie any loose growth into supports. Shorten side shoots by approximately two-thirds.
- Summer prune wisteria, cutting back all this year’s long whippy shoots to 5-6 leaves from the main framework. As well as keeping the plant under control, this encourages it to produce flower buds for next year.
- Water container plants regularly in dry weather and feed flowering plants fortnightly with a high potash liquid feed like tomato fertiliser. When feeding container plants, always water them first so that the compost is damp – this improves nutrient uptake and avoids damage to the roots.
- Annuals like nigella and poppies will be setting seed now. Collect the seed in paper envelopes for sowing next spring – and don’t forget to label the envelopes!
- Remember your garden wildlife when the weather is hot. Keep bird baths and ponds topped up to give birds and insects somewhere to drink and cool off.
- Prune summer-fruiting raspberries once you’ve finished harvesting, cutting back all this year’s fruited canes to ground level.
- Salads aren’t just for summer! Sow lamb’s lettuce, mizuna and rocket now to give you fresh salad leaves in autumn and early winter.
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