Long summer days and warm evenings make July and August a wonderful month for enjoying your garden. Colour, scent and wildlife will be filling your outdoor space and no doubt you’ll be putting your garden furniture to good use!
Enjoy and take it easy but don’t forget that maintenance will keep your garden blooming longer and a little sowing now will make autumn just as beautiful.
1. Reap the rewards
There will be plenty of fruit and veg that’s ready to be picked in July and August! Pick heavy crops from your fruit trees to create room for more growth – apples, pears and peaches can be enjoyed in a simple fruit salad or packed into a delicious pie! Pick those runner beans and enjoy them with a little butter and salt and watch for aphids which multiply quickly.
Strawberries will start to ripen and you may want to cover them with a net to avoid birds from stealing. When they’re ready, pick in the middle of the day when they taste most sweet in the sunshine. Tomatoes may also be ripening up ready to be popped in your mouth as you wander around the garden!
2. Planting
Whilst summer is in full swing, we mustn’t forget about next season. Sowing now will create a beautiful garden in autumn and there’s even time for more crops over the coming months.
If you’d like more tomatoes then you can still move transplants from your greenhouse and kitchen window ledge and enjoy fruit in the latter part of the summer. Similarly, fast-growing leafy vegetables such as salad leaves, radishes and rocket can be continuously sowed and enjoyed.
Start planting autumn bulbs now in pots and borders and sow perennials and biennials such as fox gloves and wall plants for bloom next year.
In terms of vegetables, start sowing now for a hearty autumn crop:
Vegetables to plant in summer for autumn:
- Beetroot
- Broccoli
- Cabbage
- Carrot
- Cauliflower
- Parsnip
- Kale
3. Maintenance
With plenty more hours of sunshine, you’ll need to water your garden daily and do so in the early evening so your flowers don’t fry in the midday heat. Feed your potted plants, dead-head summer bedding and veg where needed and keep weeding and tidying your borders. Now is also the time to keep watch for bugs and deal with them early on!
Pruning shrubs that bloom early in the season will allow for fresh growth and cutting back perennials like geraniums and delphiniums will encourage a second bloom. Roses will continuously flower if you keep up with dead-heading.
Your climbers will be getting tall and must be staked and tied with room to expand if you’d like further growth. Overgrown hedges will make your space feel smaller, so take care of them now for a neater garden – our 40v Cordless 53cm Hedge Trimmer will make light work of the task.
July is a time when you can see the direct results of your garden maintenance as everything continues to grow and bloom in response to the work you put in. For gardens that are a joy to spend your summer in, all you need is the right gardening equipment. For cordless garden equipment you can trust in all seasons, we’re here for you.