Keep cutting back all early summer perennials and shrubs before they make seed. cutting will promote a new lot of blooms, but remember to feed what you cut back because they will need help to make the new growth required of them. I am still filling the wheelbarrow time and time again with all the cutting back then filling the gaps with summer annuals.
I have just harvested sweet peas which I let go to seed after a wonderful blooming, then replenished the soil with manured compost and planted this seasons seeds for hopefully another show before winter. Sweet peas need a rich soil to grow in the same place year after year, if no compost or manure is added they will come up but struggle.
Roses are budding up again from the pruning after the first flowering, it takes about six weeks from cut to new bud. I neglected the spraying this summer so finding many rust effected leaves to remove and destroy, I have been lucky enough to acquire another trailer load of donkey manure so spread a little around the drip line of most roses before that day of heavy rain, food after the first heavy flowering is a must to keep them healthy until the end of growing season.
It's been a dry summer for rhododendrons, camellias, azalea's and hydrangeas, they all do best in moist soil so have given them all a dressing of blood and bone watered in when giving them a good soak when needed.
Already because of this dry Summer I have lost a couple of well grown conifers and a good sized maple, I just did not realise they were suffering until it was too late, so keep an eye on established tree's and shrubs as well as the newly planted during hot months.
English lavenders ( The tall straight single flower head type) can be cut now and bunched for drying, the fragrance is fantastic and once hung and dried will give off this fragrance through the winter months to remind us of the hot summer days. Picking must be done when the flowers are fully out and completely dry. If you have very woody lavenders, it's a good time now to cut them back by two thirds. They will regrow fresh and bushy and make hard wood again before winter. If they are too old and woody dig them out and replace with new.
Lawn weeds can be sprayed out during dry days, use product at the suggested strength and consider spot spraying for the sake of the worms, if too heavy handed even the grass will be affected. There are a few different lawn weed sprays on offer, even some that weeds and feeds at the same time. All lawns should be back to growing after that down pour and with a feed on the next rainy day from they will remain green and lush. I have been having great success with Nitrophoska on the lawns.
Fruit and Veg: It's proving to be a bumper year for both fruit and veg if the water has been kept up, corn and pumpkins have really taken off now after a slowish start, and gardeners are telling me their tomato plants are producing and ripening really well this year so pollination has been good with the sunny days bringing the bees and insects out. Plums are plentiful as well, because I am still picking black currents I added them to my plum sauce this year which got the thumbs up: The colour is deeper and I feel the currants improved the vinegary flavour that is usual for plum sauce. Looking back through my notes the growing pattern of dull days over the last five .years may have been broken, lets hope so. Keep rotating root and leaf vegetables to get the best results, i.e where carrots have been growing, plant lettuce. I have just sown carrots and parsnips, picked all the board beans and replaced the spot with lettuce plants, and planted another row of peas.
Cheers, Linda.
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