Garden diary

What to do in the garden in June

• Lime applied now will soon be incorporated into the soil. Add compost and/or manure once it’s absorbed.

•Weed out any persistent perennial weeds. Do you have docks where the foliage snaps off? Do yourself a favour and dig them out. I must take notice of this, it’s bad when you recognise the individual weeds.

• Head for the shed and put some rainy day time into tool maintenance. Clean, oil, sharpen, mend. Gardening is hard work and blunt tools do you no favours.

• While in the shed, check over summer stakes, stores of string, seed packets, etc so when spring does arrive you’re ready to swing into action.

• Take time to read those gorgeous gardening books from the library and friends that may just spark some lovely plans and projects for your patch.

• It’s winter: enjoy the wood fire and the ‘final warm’ you may be getting from your own firewood. The first ‘warms’ were cutting down the trees, loading the trailer, unloading the trailer, stacking the wood, and filling the wood box.

• Plant garlic and shallots any time over the next six or so weeks and mulch immediately to save hours of fiddly weeding between plants. Seagrass and straw are excellent.

• Remember the garden wanders with friends last summer, when plants were offered but it wasn’t a good time to move them? Well now it is, so go for it.

• Watch for bulb spears when weeding, which will poke through from now onwards. Mark them with a stick, rock, label or whatever takes your fancy.

• Winter walks on stormy beaches can be a chance to collect seaweed washed up on the beach.