The Lawn in June
Make sure your lawns are kept moist in dry weather. This is particularly important for newly sown lawns or those freshly laid with turves.
If you are troubled with broad leaved weeds, then use a liquid weed killer for treating a moist lawn.
Grass clippings from mowing can be composted if you have not used a weed killer.
If you have not already done so, apply a general lawn fertilizer and water in.
The Flower Garden
Now’s the time to plant your annual bedding plants, but if you have grown them in your greenhouse, make sure you have hardened them off to cold nights before planting.
Use bedding plants in borders, baskets and other containers.
Use a good quality slow-release fertilizer to maintain plant growth.
It’s a busy time for planting annuals to flower this summer, but don’t forget it’s also time to be sowing biennials such as pansies, delphiniums and hollyhocks together with perennials like paeony, coreopsis and phlox.
Roses should be flowering well now. ‘Dead heading’ to remove fading flowers is essential to prolong flowering through the summer.
Did you sow ‘hardy’ annual flowers direct outside last month? It’s probably to time then to thin out overcrowded seedlings and fill any gaps.
Leave the foliage of daffodils and tulips to ‘die-down’ naturally, but trim off the foliage of other spring bulbs.
Support all tall perennial flowers through their flowering season.
The Vegetable Plot
Continue the regular sowing of salad crops such as lettuce, beetroot, radish and carrots. For lettuce and radish, continue to sow every two weeks to ensure young succulent crops.
Its time to sow runner and french beans. Don’t forget you will need support canes or nets fairly quicky once the runners start growing.
Early potatoes will be ready for harvesting, but continue to ‘earth-up’ main crop types to maximise later yields.
Forgotten to sow courgettes or outdoor cucumbers? Don’t worry! Both are very quick growing and will still produce crops.
Plant out sweet corn after hardening off the young plants.
Continue to remove the side shoots on ‘cordon’ (upright) tomatoes as they form.
Plant out summer/autumn cabbages.
Don’t forget the herb garden! Basil, dill and parsley can be sown at this time.
Sweet Corn can be sown direct outside into finely raked, fertilized soil.
They are best grown in ‘blocks’ to aid pollination. Space the rows 18” apart and space the seed 6-9” apart, with 2 seeds per hole.
The Fruit Garden
Keep a close eye for pests and diseases. They are far more easy to treat if caught early!
Cover the developing fruit of strawberry as they begin to ripen. Otherwise you’ll be sharing them with the birds!
Your raspberries and blackberries will be growing fast, so tie them in to the support wires to keep everything tidy.
Should some of your fruit trees have a ‘heavy set’ of small fruit, it’s an idea to thin some out to keep the final fruit size large.
Prune plum and cherry trees.
Garden Shrubs
It’s a good time to prune early flowering shrubs once they have finished blooming.
Clip evergreen hedges like privet.
