Summer Gardening Tips
5 worth doing!
- Lawns – don’t cut the grass too short during dry weather, and a little liquid or granular feed applied a few days after cutting works wonders.
- Containers – keep baskets and planters fed and watered regularly. Miracle-Gro Liqua-Feed is new and easy to use. Dead heading encourages new flowers.
- Weeds – regular hoeing in dry weather keeps seedlings under control before they become a problem. Take out larger weeds before they seed and treat the really tough weeds such as bindweed and ground elder, carefully and directly with glyphosate [Round-Up or similar] avoiding your valuable plants.
- Pest & Diseases – slugs & snails are always with us, use wildlife friendly slug killers and barriers such as seas shells, grits, copper tape and collars. Pyrethrum sprays will control many bugs in the vegetable garden, and Provado Ultimate Bug killer is one of the most effective general pest controls. Warm wet weather will encourage Potato Blight – use a preventative spray of copper or Dithane 945 but if the disease has taken hold, cut back the haulm and remove it from the potato patch to save the crop. Tomatoes get the same problem so keep watch.
- Water properly – very important for recently planted trees & shrubs. Early morning or evening is best and mulch with bark or compost to conserve moisture.