As summer is fast approaching, this time of year in the garden can feel like all systems are go, with our outdoor spaces seeming to come to life overnight.
With blooms bursting into action, this is the wonderful time of year to admire an abundance of vivid petals and to awaken your senses with an array of charming floral scents. Sweet and delectable fruits are also waiting to be plucked to create a variety of culinary delights. And that’s not all you can harvest, with a number of nutritionally rich vegetables also ready to be enjoyed for home-grown kitchen goodness. A month cherished with extra sunshine and warmth, let’s get ahead of June with this simple gardening checklist.
1. Make sure to water well
As temperatures begin to rise and the sun puts his hat on, this can be a rather thirsty time for plants (especially freshly planted ones!). If your garden has a particularly sunny or drought-affected space, then it is very important that these areas are paid close attention to. Mornings are the perfect time to water your plants as at this time of day the garden is much cooler. However, watering in the peak of the day can lead to your plants losing vast amounts of water through evaporation.
2. Lower your mower
June is a busy time of year for mowing, with grass growing like crazy once that first splash of sunshine arrives. At this point of the month, to keep your garden looking sharp and tidy lots of us adopt a weekly mowing routine. For a crisp and aesthetic touch, we suggest lowering the cutting height on your mower at this time of year. With little moisture, moss is unable to form in the warmer months, allowing you to cut your lawns on a lower setting than the spring months before.
3. Prune your spring flowering shrubs
When deciduous shrubs flower in November-June, you want to ensure that these are pruned as soon as possible after flowering. Forsythia, Philadelphus and Weigeila are a few examples of plants that would be best pruned at this time of year, especially benefitting from having the older branches removed. You should aim for previously flowered branches to be cut back to a straight shoot, encouraging stronger and greater growth.
If you are lucky enough to have a glorious wisteria growing within your garden, then this is also the perfect time to start thinking about a wisteria summer prune too.
4. Harvest your home-grown delights
With salad weather on the arrival, June is the best time to begin harvesting your home-grown goodies. Lettuce, radish and mixed salad leaves are all ready to be plucked from the kitchen garden to enhance a variety of scrumptious summertime salads and recipes. We can also find new potatoes popping up in the garden too!
5. Stake tall plants
The gorgeous weather and excellent growing conditions that we find in June encourage many garden perennial showstoppers to bloom beautifully! But these conditions can also cause your plants to mature considerably quicker and expand in size at a much speedier pace than other seasons. So, to ensure that your plants can continue to flourish without the threat of collapse, then it is best to get ahead of the growth by giving them a helping hand from a sturdy stake support.
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