Gardening tips for the summer

The National Garden Scheme shares the things to add to your to do list in August.

It highlights cutting back summer blooms that are past their best and giving the garden a good tidy.

Make sure you water your plants during the warmer months, with plants in containers needing more attention than those in beds and borders.

If you have an area of long grass that housed flowering bulbs, followed by summer flowers, these will be dying off now. Once they have died off, mow the grass as soon as possible. This will ensure that the site has time to recover this season, and that the cut grass will stay dry and be easy to remove rather than sodden, which it is likely to be if you cut in a few weeks’ time.

If you want to grow strawberries make sure in August you plant out the new plants into soil that has been really well enriched with old compost and manure.

Herbs are great for foliage but make sure you take off faded flower heads and deadhead your plants to ensure good shape and strong production into the autumn.

The summer is also a good time to pick the herbs fresh and then freeze them so you have plenty of herbs for the winter.

The NGS says: “August is the month when most of your summer flowering plants have finished flowering and are looking pretty mournful. You’ll be surprised what an improvement it makes if you deadhead them, (especially the perennials) and in many cases you’ll stimulate a welcome second flush of flowers in a few weeks’ time.”

If you grew salad crops for this summer and want to keep doing so into the autumn, you need to find some cloches and cover the piece of prepared ground so that you can plant and protect lettuce seedlings.

Pansies grow really easily from seed and you can sow them now for flowers next spring. Just remember that you need to keep the seedlings under cover until the spring.

Making good compost takes effort, and you don’t want yours to go to waste because your compost heap dries out in the summer. If you give it a good soaking in dry spells, you can ensure that the process of decomposition will continue.

For fans of grow your own, if you have worked hard to grow runner and French beans the more you pick the more you encourage growing.

If you’ve got a decent crop of potatoes, you’ll be lifting more than you can eat now, so you need to have a good storage place to keep them for the winter. It must be dry and dark, and it helps if the potatoes are as clean as possible when they go in.

There is lots to keep you busy over the next month to make sure your garden continues to grow and prosper through autumn, winter and into spring and summer.

For more hints and tips visit ngs.org.uk/

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