Weekly jobs

Finish off planting up summer containers, but if you include tender plants, make sure you shelter them or cover them with horticultural fleece overnight if frost is forecast.

Shade greenhouses with shade netting to stop them becoming overheated and keep the windows and doors open during the daytime.

Propagate marginal plants from cuttings including brooklime (Veronica beccabunga) and water mint (Mentha aquatic). Insert cuttings in pots of mud and place in a bowl filled with water so that it just covers the surface of the pots. The cuttings should root quickly.

Continue sowing beetroot to provide crops throughout the summer.

Continue to harvest asparagus.

Fill in gaps between border perennials by sowing the seeds of hardy annuals straight into their flowering positions. Summer-flowering bulbs and foliage plants in pots will also add interest.

As tulips fade, snap off the dead heads before they have a chance to make seed. This will help the bulbs concentrate their energy on producing next year’s blooms.

Cut back ceanothus and other springflowering shrubs including forsythia.

Give topiary, such as box balls, a quick trim after a surge in spring growth may have left them out of shape.

Watch out for lily beetle and pick them off before they damage your lilies.