Don’t forget the garden tasks!

Yesterday was the longest day of the year and with this brings extra light and warmth which will have encouraged a burst of growth in the garden – both in terms of your most treasured plants and blooms, but also with the weeds!

To give your garden a good spruce up and to keep on top of things, MOLLY MAID, the housecleaning professionals, recommends that you undertake the following essential garden tasks for June.

Lawn

• Water your lawn during hot weather, particularly newly seeded or turfed lawns. Do not allow new lawns to dry out.
• Warm weather brings along rapid weed growth, so remember to apply specific lawn weed killer to tackle this problem.
• Remember to feed your lawn with fertiliser.
• If you are experiencing prolonged dry weather, set your mower blades higher to reduce stress on the grass.

In the Garden

• Now that the risk of frost has passed, it’s time to plant up containers, hanging baskets and planters as well as the annual summer bedding plants.
• Lift and divide clumps of snowdrops and bluebells once the leaves start to yellow.
• Dead-head your roses if they are repeat-flowering types. Otherwise leave the seed heads on for decoration.
• Remember to dead-head and cut back oriental poppies after flowering. Cutting them close to ground level will stimulate new foliage.
• When your sweet peas start to flower, keep picking them to encourage more blooms.
• Give tall and floppy perennial plants a hand and stake them to prevent wind or rain damage.
• If you still wish to sow seeds of annual plants, it’s not too late!
• Any bulb foliage should be cut back as soon as it has died naturally.
• Tie-in and train climbing plants ie Honeysuckle and clematis to supports.

Vegetables

• It’s a busy month for vegetables in terms of sowing many of them such as, French and runner beans, kohl rabi, courgettes, marrows and cabbage.
• All variety of lettuces and radishes should be ready for early potatoes will need harvesting when the tubers are egg sized.

Fruit

• With strawberries, stop watering them when the berries are changing from green to red. If you have fruit trees such as apples, pears and plums and you have had little rain, consider watering.

Pests

• Continue the campaign against slugs and snails – use pet-friendly slug pellets, drench the ground around hostas with liquid slug killer to exterminate slugs below the surface. Keep an eye out for snails and pick them off.
• Caterpillar and aphid infestations can be dealt with by hand if caught early enough, but should the situation veer out of control you will have to resort to insecticides!

Good luck completing all your necessary garden tips for June and enjoy the fruits of your labour.

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