Trimming irises and tidying tools – Gardening tips for June

Now it’s June, the mad rush of spring gardening is abating – a little. We might even dare to take some time to sit in the garden and just enjoy it occasionally!  

There are still jobs to be done though, like dividing the irises, thinning fruit and protecting our newly-planted out flowers and veg…….

Looking after the irises

Our late-flowering bearded irises were a big hit at our Open Garden at the weekend, but they are finishing now (their dead flowers are revolting, aren’t they!). These are plants that really benefit from a bit of love and care every 2-4 years, or you start to get fewer and fewer flowers each spring.  

Dig up the rhizomes (the fancy name for horizontal underground stems), snap off the oldest, gnarliest bits and throw them away, leaving the youngest bit of rhizome with some leaves and roots on it. Then trim down those rather scraggy leaves to about half, making a neat fan. 

Trim any long roots and plant the rhizome very shallowly back into the soil, with the rhizome on the sunny south side of the leaf fan, so that it can be properly baked through the summer. All that’s needed then is a good drink of water, and they can be left to grow on happily. 

Get tooled up with a bag

Again connected with our Open Gardens, there has been a LOT of weeding, dead-heading, tying-in, trimming and general fuss going on round here recently……and every task seems to need a different garden tool!  It has reminded me to mention that anyone who gardens needs a tool bag to keep by their side whenever they are out among the borders.

You know what it’s like – you go out with your trowel to do some weeding, realise you haven’t got the kneeler and go back for that, then you see something that needs tying back, so you go back for twine and scissors, then something needs a trim so you go back for some secateurs.  By which time, you’ve put down the twine (or the trowel) somewhere among the plants and have to spend 10 minutes looking for it.

A small strong showerproof bag could contain all those essentials and more besides – labels and marker pen, a hand rake, pack of tissues, packet of mints… …You can keep it in the shed or by the back door and just grab it whenever you head outside. We actually have some brilliant Burgon & Ball ones in our online shop at the moment (one would make a great Father’s Day gift, by the way). Honestly, it’s a hugely useful piece of kit for any gardener, I reckon.

Potted veg

Don’t have space for a veg patch but still want to grow your own ? I have become a great fan of growing salads and veg in pots and containers.  It seems to keep the plants much safer from pests that  would invade, nibble or destroy them, for a start.  Veg actually looks rather nice in pots I think, especially very attractive things like ruby chard, but you can pretty them up even more by planting edible flowers like marigolds or nasturtiums in amongst them.  You need to be a bit more ‘on it’ with the watering, but even there I feel that I can gauge things a bit more than when they are in the garden soil.

You’re still in good time for sowings of every sort of salad, carrots, peas or French beans, so sprinkle some seed into pots, window-boxes, even hanging baskets, and have a bit more of the fun of growing-your-own and a bit less of the pain of it.

On the subject of carrots, my friend Dave (a much better veg gardener than me!) says that he hates wasting seedlings that have gone to the trouble to grow (so do I!), so he delays the carrot-thinning job until the ones he’s pulling out are at least large enough for a small meal, even if the ones that are left in the ground don’t grow so large, as a result. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Nifty upcycling

If you have ever planted out some new seedlings or plug-plants into the ground or containers and overnight suffered the infuriating disappointment of a patch devastated by slugs, snails, cats or pigeons, or just strong winds, it is easy to make mini-cloches out of 2- or 5-litre plastic drink bottles. Just cut the bottom out of the bottle, and put it over the plant/plants, tucking the soil round the edges a little bit. 

Keep the cap off, for ventilation, and don’t leave it on all the time, or the plants will heat up too much. Not a long-term solution of course, but it should keep the annoying critters off until the plants are big enough to withstand such attacks better. You can use them for years too.

Those little shower caps they give away free at hotels popped over a pot on a windowsill and held up with lolly sticks, will make a nice little propagator for pots of cuttings

This is a trick I’ve used for donkey’s years – old tights make great tree- and shrub-ties: they have the softness and flexibility not to harm the trunk of a young tree but are nevertheless strong enough not to snap in high winds.

Gardening shorts

• My hollyhocks (like lots of other people’s hollyhocks, I suspect!) get rust (unpleasant little rusty-red pustules underneath the leaves) but if I am vigilant about picking off the affected foliage, the appearance of the plant seems to stay pretty unspoilt, the spread of the rust is slowed down, and the flowers seem to be just as lovely. 

• If you’ve got fruit coming on a vine, pinch out the growing tip of the shoot two leaves after the fruit-truss, so the plant puts its energy into the berries, not the leaves. Also, keep snipping back the sideshoots that haven’t got fruit on, to five leaves.  

• We, like many others, had such a bumper crop of fruit last year! This year seems so far to be more within the usual bounds, but it’s still important to go over your fruit trees now, and thin the fruit so that the remaining apples, plums etc. can reach a good size and weight. If you leave them all on, you risk a large harvest of disappointingly small fruits. So remove some from each cluster, and let the rest develop naturally and unencumbered.  

I’d like to quote a very skilled gardening expert and great friend of the 3Growbags, Bill Tait, on this subject:

“Thinning apples. Once the June drop has removed the small fruit, you may be left with three or four larger fruit. The central one is usually larger than the rest but it is the first one that I thin out. This has a much thicker stem and if it is a late maturing variety, does not keep so well as those with thinner stalks.”

Thank you, Bill – very helpful!

• My tomatoes are coming on nicely – they are going to need basil though! Don’t just buy a pot of basil for your summer dishes and clip the leaves off then chuck it away. Buy a large pot of supermarket basil now, divide it into 3 or 4 groups of shoots, and pot them up, water the pots and keep them in the greenhouse or outside and they will keep you in basil right through to autumn – delicious! One of our readers also reminded me that you can very easily root basil stems in a glass of water – refresh the water every 2 days, and they should root within 2 weeks, ready to move very gently into soil – absolute piece of cake.

Elaine made a short video last week showcasing some of the roses in her garden. You can see it here

June is the month for roses, and our columnist Louise Sims has found a truly beautiful one with creamy white single flowers from pointed apricot petals. Its enchanting trusses of blooms will repeat all summer long. Find out more about why its one of her Great Plants this Month:

If you’re tempted by our lovely toolbags, click here for more details about them.

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