Look sharp: scrub up for the season
General chores
With garden demands easing off, there may be time now to catch up on maintenance of structures, such as replacing broken fence palings, tidying up garden borders, repairing chipped steps and so on.
Take tools under cover and give the metal parts a good clean – even a scour with steel wool to remove any incipient rust. Wooden handles should be oiled to stop them drying, and thus extend their lives.
Sharpen blades of spades and cutting tools – if that seems too hard, taken them to a local tool repair shop.
Ornamentals
Plant trees – in holes twice as big as the pot of bag the tree has come in. Mix compost into soil at bottom of hole, fill hole with dirt, pressing down firmly, and water in well.
After flowering, dahlia tubers may be left in the ground over winter in all areas but those prone to heavy frosts. Cut back to ground level and cover with a layer of compost or pea straw.
In milder areas, sweet peas may still be sown – in rich, free-draining soil in a sunny spot.
In mainly frost-free zones, marguerite daisies may be sheared back ready for another flush of flowers in six to eight weeks when not much else is flowering.
Increase supplies of perennials by root cuttings.
Cut off roots a pencil thick from vigorous clumps and insert in pots filled with a 50-50 mix of compost and river sand. Water lightly and keep under shelter outside. Repot in spring, and plant out in autumn.
Lifting the blades on your lawnmower over winter will reduce stress on lawn turf.
Edibles
Feed brassicas with a nitrogen-rich fertiliser or compost, and side-dress leeks with fertiliser. Plant kale, perpetual spinach and savoy cabbages. Sow broadbeans, plant garlic.
Lime any clear ground – a handful per square metre.
Weed asparagus beds, then spread compost over them.
Prune pipfruit trees anytime from now until early August. Remove spindly, diseased or crossing-over branches.
Prune gooseberries, removing weak, diseased, old or crowded branches. An open cup-shaped bush is ideal with up to seven main branches on a short trunk.
Plant raspberries in rich, moist soil.
All deciduous fruit trees may be planted until the end of August.
Fertilise citrus with sulphate of potash.
– Mary Lovell-Smith