Blooming marvellous! This year started slowly in the garden, with bluebells, daffodils and snowdrops all in flower simultaneously in some areas of the country, but June and July is the time to sit back and reap the rewards of your labour. Indeed, we have already had plenty of opportunities for barbeques – and hopefully more hot weather is on the way.

Top Ten Tasks for Summer

1. Watering

2. Weeding

3. Mow your lawn

4. Plant our summer bedding

5. Staking

6. Prune Spring Flowering Shrubs

7. Check Clematis

8. Pond Care

9. Unleash your inner David Bailey

10. Give your lawn a fast acting summer feed

GOING ON HOLIDAY?

Consider a water computer and a network of hosepipes to irrigate your garden while you are away. This small box of tricks costs around £40 and can be set to water for as little or as long as is necessary. Deluxe versions even have built in rain sensors. Clever eh? Just remember to carry out a few trials runs before you fly!

DID YOU KNOW? 

Because of the large numbers of insects and other invertebrates that feed upon the leaves of oak trees, they can look tattered and full of holes by late July. Oaks solve this annual problem by then producing a second flush of leaves, especially on young trees. This phenomenon is called “lammas growth”, because it occurs around the time of Lammas, the Celtic festival of first fruits, on 1st August.

There is an old saying regarding Oak trees, which are usually one of the last trees to come into leaf in the spring – “Oak before Ash, in for a splash; Ash before Oak, in for a soak”. Perhaps it’s best to leave long range weather forecasting to the experts (just not Michael Fish)

Lawn Problems - Annual Meadow Grass

At this time of year when so much in the garden is lush and green, you may notice isolated yellowy-green patches in your lawn.

Annual Meadow Grass is slightly lighter in colour than most lawn grasses, and has the annoying habit of flowering (going to seed) incredibly close to the ground. This means that it is not touched by lawn mowers. In just a few days, hundreds of seeds are blown over the lawn, germinating quickly and spreading this pesky rogue grass to the rest of your lawn.

The solution? You have two choices. One answer is to spot treat with weedkiller, or dig out offending areas, replacing with a little topsoil and new grass seed. A two litre coke bottle with the bottom cut off, placed over the “bad grass” allows you to spray through the bottle top, avoiding “good grasses”.

The second choice? Yep, you guessed it. Live with it. Be honest, it could be a lot worse. You could have moles....

Article written by David Salisbury