What to do if you haven’t much time
- Apply and renew mulches
- Water plants thoroughly through hot spells
- Hoe or hand-pull annual weeds
- Fill any gaps in borders with bedding or perennial plants
- Deadhead plants
Other jobs
Trees, Shrubs & Hedges
- Watch out for greenfly and leaf-rolling on roses
- Prune mature deciduous shrubs that finish flowering
- Continue taking softwood cutting
- Keep on top of training climbing and rambling roses
- Propagate climbers by layering
Perennials
- Remove old leaves and flower stems of hellebores
- Cut back oriental poppies – they’ll look terrible right now but new leaves will grow in a month or two. They’ll flower again next year.
- Deadhead Euphorbia robbiae and E. characias
- Continue to stake tall-growing perennials
- Deadhead lupins and delphiniums
- Take cutting from pinks
- Cut down the foliage of bulbs that have been naturalised in grass
- Plant out cannas
- Lift and divide bulbs that have finished flowering
- Plant anemones to flower in autumn
Fruit & Veg
- Continue to harvest all crops as they mature
- Water and feed plants regularly
- Plant celery in trenches prepared during winter or spring
- Plant out celeriac raised earlier
- Plant out runner beans
- Sow radicchio (red chicory), Chinese cabbage, peas, salad vegetables, turnips
- Plant out sweetcorn, tomatoes, marrows, courgettes pumpkins and ridge cucumbers
- Plant out all winter brassicas
- Plant herbs in containers
- Remove cloches from strawberries
- Control grey mould on strawberries
- Put up pheromone traps
- Continue pruning and pinching out shoots on wall-trained fruit
- Gooseberries can also be thinned for larger fruits
- Don’t thin apples and pears
- Continue tying in new canes of blackberries and hybrid berries
Lawns
- Mow lawn regularly
- Don’t forget edging
- Feed lawn with liquid fertilisers
Containers and bedding
- Plant out summer bedding plants
- Sow polyanthus and winter pansies
- Plant up a hanging basket
- Water and feed all plants regularly
- Plant up half-hardy annuals and tender perennials in containers outdoors
Under cover
- Damp down regularly
- Water and feed all plants regularly
- Shade the greenhouse
- Pot on all young plants and seedlings that are ready
