Well it all caught up eventually didn’t it ? The muddled weather somehow patched a timetable together that just about gave us spaces to get the planting done. There were a few crazy days at the start of June as folk suddenly realised that before they blinked, they would be going on holiday. So, they just went for it and between the showers (sometimes a badly understated term) gardeners came and they bought.

The scattering of warm days encouraged the growth of new plantings and suddenly the beans were up the canes and the bedding plants grew to dinner plate proportions. Everything went swimmingly, as long as you’d protected against bird and snail damage. The pigeons were on the case, the jackdaws scuffed the lawns and in Staverton Village Ravens ripped up tomatoes, whilst snails oblivious to all modern management demonstrated new climbing skills. I didn’t need to pinch out anything, nature did it for me.

As we move forward into July, the key word has to be maintenance. There will be a constant need for watering, feeding, dead heading and harvesting to ensure an extended season of satisfying productivity. There is always great puzzlement over the feeding choices and time after time I refer people to tomato feed. It is usually cheap and delivers most of the must have now menu. It is great for most flowering and fruiting crops. If you are striving for crop perfection then you can spend big money on purported dedicated food, but tomato food will get you by.

You can still be planting and sowing this month if the mood takes you. French Beans and Peas together with leaf salads are all worth the trouble and will be offering produce as you hit September. This is also the time for sowing some wallflowers and over wintering biennials. If you can find a bit of light shade sow the wallflowers into shallow drills and then transplant them in a couple of months. Being tap rooted they don’t really enjoy being pot grown from seed.

It’s mad to consider that in a month we will be looking at bulb planting again and if you can find them, things like Nerines and Autumn crocus will both benefit from July planting.

And finally, just lift the blade on the mower a little. Harsh cutting of the lawn through the summer months can result in damage if the weather does suddenly turn hot.

Happy Gardening

Chris Evans
www.dundrynurseries.co.uk
www.thebutterflygarden.org