Dinner in a tub
Plant more salad greens in pots
Containers are an excellent choice for growing salads over the colder months: the soil temperature in pots is warmer, the drainage is better and you can easily shift smaller tubs into a more sheltered spot if the winter weather turns ferocious. Plus, you can keep them close to the house for easier harvesting! It’s probably too cold for lettuce seed to germinate outside this month, so start in trays under cover if you want to sow seed, or plant out seedlings instead.
In the rose garden
July is the perfect month for rose pruning, so don’t put it off any longer. It isn’t all that difficult unless you are attempting to prune hoary old ramblers.
We prune to remove unsightly or dead wood, to encourage the natural process of renewal, and to keep the rose a manageable size. You need strong gloves and sharp secateurs, and you may need a small saw to remove very thick, old branches at the base.
First, remove dead and spindly branches and then step back and take a good look at the plant. You may decide to do nothing more – or you may decide to make clean cuts just above an outward facing bud-eye. Reducing the bush by one third is considered to be moderate pruning – but the bush may need only the removal of dead and spindly branches.
Immediately after pruning is a good time to spray with copper and winter oil to kill overwintering bugs. The newly pruned and sprayed roses will appreciate mulch around their roots.
Keep hands and feet off wet soil
Last week I talked about soil being friable – that’s the crumbly texture plants thrive in. But it’s easily destroyed at this time of year. Every time you dig, work or step on wet soil you push the soil particles closer together, squeezing out the air and water. This leads to compacted soil with poor drainage and reduced aeration, so when you come to plant it again in spring, your plant’s roots will struggle. It can take a whole growing season for surface compaction of the topsoil to reverse, and deeper compaction can last for years.
If you must travel across your vege beds, use a plank to distribute your weight. Don’t leave soil bare either, or rain drops will cause what’s called splash erosion. This is when the top layer of soil particles is disturbed, causing a thin crust to form on top of the soil’s surface which will bake hard in summer and block water from penetrating to a plant’s roots.
If there’s nothing you want to plant – and given it’s a bit cold now to establish a cover crop – then cover soil with several layers of old newspapers and pile mulch on the top. If you have inherited a garden and you are working with compacted soil, then you can take steps to remedy it. Once your soil is dry enough to safely work, add gypsum, and dig in organic matter such as aged manure, composted bark or a commercial product designed to improve soil structure, such as Yates Dynamic Lifter.