Don’t delay, prune today! Gardening tips for June

Summer’s here in earnest now for most of us 😊.  Even Caroline in the Scottish Highlands has packed away MOST of her thermal tights and started to plant out tender bedding. 

June flowers may be brightening our days but there are still jobs to get on with, such as pruning early shrubs, saving money on fertilisers and sprays and deadheading roses among other things…..

Late spring shrubs

My beloved Philadelphus bushes did their thing beautifully at recent garden openings, carefully positioned to be sniffed as folk first arrived at the garden, and then just as they were heading towards the tea ladies to order cuppas and cake! 

These early-blooming shrubs (also Weigela, Deutzia, Kolkwitzia etc.) are such a delight in Late May and June, but it’s important to remember that they flower on wood that they made LAST year, not this year.

For that reason, they should all be pruned back straight after they have finished flowering.  This will give them time to make the wood that will carry the flowers for you next year.  If you leave this cutting back until the autumn, you’ll get many fewer blooms – not the end of the world, but an unnecessary pity, I reckon.

This is how I deal with my Philadelphus:

1. If there are any branches crossing right through the middle of the bush and rubbing on other branches, then those get taken out entirely, at ground level. 

2. Next, I will cut the main branches back to a newer stem lower down.

3. Finally, I will take out entirely one or maybe two of the oldest branches right down to the ground, to encourage the shrub to create some new ones and steadily rejuvenate the whole shrub.  

Some of my bushes have been happily (and fragrantly) in situ for nigh on 30 years, so I must be doing something right!

Neat ideas to save money

Gardeners tend to be a very resourceful bunch when it comes to saving money on their favourite pastime: plant supports out of builder’s bars, containers and raised beds out of wooden pallets or tyres, mini-propagators out of plastic bottles, wine-corks as cane-toppers, live yoghurt smeared onto new stone ornaments to ‘age’ them a bit, cocktail sticks or holly twigs in the seedpatch to deter cats etc, etc. All brilliant ideas.

I still buy tomato fertiliser and liquid seaweed these days, but we also have plenty of nettles and wild comfrey round here and make a super-nutritious fertiliser out of them.  You just fill a bucket with chopped leaves, then fill it with water (preferably rainwater) then cover the bucket and leave it in a warm spot for a week or two, giving it a little stir each day. It may start to foam (and the smell is ghastly!). When the mixture has stopped bubbling, filter it into bottles and use it within 6 months in a 1-10 mix with water. Yum!!

Wild birds take care of most of our greenfly problems round here, but lots of folk swear by garlic spray  as a much more eco-friendly alternative to indiscriminate pesticides. It’s simple to make: you just peel the cloves from a garlic bulb and whizz it up in a food processor for about a minute with about 230 ml of water. Add another 700 ml of water and 30 ml of washing-up liquid. And leave the whole lot to steep for at least 12 hours. Strain it and keep it in reuseable spray bottles in the fridge between uses. There’s just one caveat here – the strength can vary between batches, so it’s wise to test on just a couple of leaves of a plant first and wait for 24 hours to see what happens.  It would be a tiresome way to kill a whole plant, wouldn’t it!

Euphorbia aftercare

I love the zingy lime-green heads of Euphorbia characias through the springtime – almost every colour of flower can be livened up with a shot of lime, I reckon – much like a Mojito cocktail!

But they are going over now, turning yellow then brown, and I know that they will start seeding all over the garden if I leave them.  Not only that, the fresh blue-green leaves are coming up from the bottom and the fading flowerheads are spoiling their appeal.

So it’s time to don gloves (ALWAYS wear gloves when you are doing anything with Euphorbia – the white sticky sap is a wretched irritant on skin), and cut the flower stems out.  

Try to cut as close to the base of the plant as you can.  When you’ve finished, remember to clean your secateurs with warm soapy water to clean away the sap – a rub with some vegetable oil keeps the rust away.

Gardening shorts

• My first job every morning now is to go out and dead head the roses.  It makes SUCH a difference both to the appearance of the plants themselves and to their ability to flower again (and again, and again, in some cases…).  I made a short video a while back on the best way of dealing with various types of rose – just click on the link at the bottom.

• Caroline sent me a photo of a glorious Choisya the other day.  These shrubs, known as Mexican orange, are among my favourites, not least because of that sharp and tangy orange scent when the leaves are crushed.  It reminded me to cut the flowered shoots of mine back now, in the hope of a second flush of blooms later on.

• Not only have only have our garden plants been going crazy in the last month, so have the weeds.  And some of them are full of stings or thorns!  I’m sure I’m not the first person to have thought of this, but I have had the rather nifty idea of using two different gardening gloves at the same time – a thin one for the gentler, more delicate tasks and a thick one for the rougher work.  Does the job a treat!

• Did you start off tender veg crops indoors like I did, such as aubergines, courgettes, sweet corn, squashes or tomatoes? After hardening them off for a few days to get them accustomed to outdoor conditions, you can plant them outside where they are to grow for all the rest of the summer and be harvested.

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Click on this link for the video on deadheading roses:

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Truly in a class of its own this rose will delight every one who has one. Here Louise explains why, but you might want to find out by getting one for yourself!

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Doing some pruning? These deliciously comfortable gauntlets have a long cuff that protects your wrists and lower arms from the inevitable scratches and stings that come with pruning and weeding jobs. Just the job at this time of year! Take a look in our shop here

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Both Caroline and I have had our (pleasingly very successful!) Open Garden events and now it’s Laura and Louise’s turn to take part in their village-wide event in Slinfold, West Sussex. Do go along to support it if you can!

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