Don’t let caterpillars blitz brassicas
ERIGERON GLAUCUS ‘SEA BREEZE’
■ MOST houseplants are in active growth now so will need regular watering and feeding. ■ CHECK brassicas (cabbages, broccoli, turnips, brussels sprouts) for butterflies laying their eggs – often you will find them on the underside of leaves. Remove these, as when hatched as caterpillars, they can completely exfoliate your plant.
■ KEEP fruit bushes well watered in dry spells to allow fruit to swell. Plums, pears and apples can be thinned out this month. This happens naturally as well – it’s called June drop – but if you want bigger fruit, remove some of the smaller fruitlets.
■ MOVE citrus fruit outdoors for the warmer months.
■ POP a few nasturtium seeds in the ground or pots for a cascade of flowers in late summer.
■ CONSIDER installing a water
ARE there foolproof plants? If so, this is one and it’s gorgeous.
Making a pretty carpet of lilac pink daisies which have big yellow centres, this beach aster is very hardy and will flower its socks off for you.
A lovely seaside plant, it can tolerate salty winds as it hugs the soil. Perfect for alpine and rockery gardens, it’s low maintenance, and in full sunshine it will flower throughout May, June and July. Grow in fertile, well-drained soil – it dislikes very wet positions. It’s perennial so will die back during winter – you can clip them back after flowering to tidy up. barrel to conserve rainfall.
■ CONTINUE successional sowing of salads, and outdoors sow cucumber, sweetcorn, squash, French, runner and broad beans.
■ EARTH up potatoes. New potatoes may be ready to harvest, depending on when planted.
■ PRUNE spring-flowering deciduous shrubs such as kerria, philadelphus, forsythia, ribes and weigela as soon as they are finished flowering.