Tips for August
‘Keep your garden blooming’
August is the time for maintaining the display in your garden.
Dead head your baskets, tubs and herbaceous borders on a regular basis to keep plants producing new flowers all summer.
Tubs and baskets need watering daily if the weather is dry, do it first thing in the morning or in the evening to avoid scorching leaves. Remember to add some liquid feed weekly.
Once bedding plants in the garden become established, they should only need watering occasionally. There’s no need to water a lawn during dry weather – it’ll soon colour up again once we have some rain.
If you’re going away on holiday, it’s advisable to get someone to water your tubs and baskets for you.
Indoor plants can be stood on capillary matting on the draining board – the other end is put into a sink full of water and the plants will take up the water as they need it. Or use one of the small self watering devices that we sell, all you need to add is the water reservoir bottle.
Watch out for signs of leatherjackets on lawns, they cause irregular brown patches and loose areas of turf on the lawn. Grubs are dark grey, brown and legless. These can appear from mid August to the end of September. If you do spot their damage spray the lawn with Provado Lawn Grub Killer. For more information on this pest go to www.bayergarden.co.uk
It’s also worth looking out for signs of vine weevil damage, the beetles chomp into plant leaves, leaving semi circular pieces cut out of the edges and the grubs eat plant roots. At the first sign of damage drench with a Vine Weevil killer – we’ve always got it in stock.
Its time now to start trimming hedges. Use secateurs on large leave plants such as Laurels to save mutilating foliage.
We’ll be getting the spring flowering bulbs in from the end of August, so its worth giving some thoughts about what you want in your spring displays – it soon comes round again!