I have to say I already feel my garden is running out of steam a bit by the time we get to July. It’s really at its best in June. So my July gardening jobs listed below centre around freshening things up and trying to reinject some life and colour.
July Gardening Jobs
- Feed and deadheading roses
- Sort out sweet peas
- Cit back early perennials
- Plan and plant Autumn flowering bulbs
- Support and feed dahlias
- Weed
- Water
- Top up bird baths and ponds
- Sowing some seeds
1. Feed and Deadhead Roses
Little and often is probably my approach to most gardening, and many of my July gardening jobs fall into this camp. For instance, I try to deadhead my roses every day. No, I’m not a deadheading nut! It’s just doing it this frequently means it never becomes a mammoth nightmare of a task. Giving yourself a whole afternoon of deadheading or weeding is the surest way to turn gardening into a chore. And it just doesn’t need to be.
When it comes to deadheading roses, I also have to do it this often as one of my roses is the highly floriferous rose Little White Pet. With her hundreds of small rosette style blooms, she would be awful to deadhead if I left her for more than a few days. And she’s just at below waist height. Designed to be an absolute back-breaker if you have to deadhead her for long.
Deadheading regularly not only keeps things looking tidy but it also encourages the roses to keep blooming.
In addition to deadheading, I feed my roses during July every two weeks. Back in May I bought some Uncle Tom’s Rose Tonic which my lovely neighbour Desi who has fantastic roses, swears by. I spray my roses with it every two weeks during the growing season.
2. Sort Out Sweet Peas
Like roses, feeding my sweet peas is one of my July gardening jobs.
Every year I think shall I bother with sweet peas? They seem like a lot of faff and I’m not brilliant at growing them. But then the blooms come in, and those little posies of scented loveliness just gladden the heart so!
But to keep the flowers coming well into August you need to pick them regularly (not a problem) and remove any seed pods. And they’re hungry little blighters. I grow my sweetpeas in pots on my patio. So they’re completely dependent on me for food.
I feed my sweet peas with a general fertiliser every couple of weeks. I tend to use a potash-rich tomato feed like Tomorite. Potash is good for growing more flowers. The phrase “Flower = Pot” helps me remember this.
Sweet peas also must be kept well watered. A dry spell will really tire them out, and boy it will show. So if July is dry I’ll water them every day.
3. Cut Back Early Perennials
I’m a huge fan of perennial plants. Having them come back year after year makes gardening so easy. And you can easily divide many perennials or take cuttings to increase your stock of them. But certain early flowering perennials such as delphiniums (which I have growing in a recycling box – don’t ask!) and hardy geraniums, need cutting back now. By cutting them back after flowering I’m hoping to encourage a second flush of precious blooms.
4. Plan and Plant Autumn Flowering Bulbs
I may be doing all I can to keep the flowers going now, but come the Autumn I know there will be precious few blooms to worry about in my garden. In October the colour in my garden trails off badly.
However, to prevent a repeat of this floral disappointment, I’m going to plant some Autumn flowering bulbs. Indeed, it’s possibly top of my list of July gardening jobs.
There are lots of Autumn floweing bulbs to try – Sternbergia, Autumn Crocus, Crocosmia, Hesperantha to name a few. I’m going to have a good think about it, but in particular I fancy growing some Nerines.
Nerines are bulbs which have lovely lily-like flowers on very straight leafless stems. Their foliage is nothing to write home about; it’s sort of thin and strappy (a bit like an Agapanthus, which I also love).
It’s the Nerine’s flowers which I’m keen to have in my garden. They’re very exotic looking, with wonderful petals which curl back on themselves. Coming from South Africa, Nerines do understandably like their heat. So I’m going to go for the hardier type – Nerine bowdenii – as I belive the others are tender and have to be grown in a greenhouse.
I’ve got some empty containers. I think these, planted up with some pink or maybe red nerines will be just what my garden needs come October and November!
To ensure a real impact, I’ll plant up quite a few together. I’ll certainly have some at the front of our South-facing little cottage, where they can have a good blast of sun all day! But I’ll also position some containers on the sunniest spot on my patio, to keep some colour there too.
I know I’m a bit potty about pots. And you can of course plant Nerine bowdenii in a mixed border. But if you’re going to do that, I’d put them towards the front or middle as they only grow 45cm tall. and you’ll need to ensure they get lets of sun.
Wherever you plant them, I’ve heard that they don’t like being disturbed. So choose your sunny spot carefully and once you’ve selected it, leave them be!
5. Support & Feed Dahlias
Dahlias are another plant which provides some much needed later colour in a garden. To see what they’re capable of I’d heartily recommed a visit to Aston Pottery’s Dahlias.
I can only imagine the amount of work which goes into looking after the vast swathes of the beauties that they have. As they are hungry plants, keeping them well fed and watered in July is crucial. Added to that, if you have tall varieties, staking the young shoots is definitely one to add to your list of July gardening jobs. I don’t have oodles of dahlias, but those I do have will receive a bit of TLC this month.
6. Weed
If you pull weeds up as you see them, you will really keep on top of the problem and July is definitely a month to keep the effort up. That’s because I know that if I let weeds take hold now in July, I will give myself so much more future work; the pesky weeds will seed and multiply.
Also, it’s all too easy to forget that weeds are plants. They compete with the flowers and shrubs I do want, for the valuable moisture and nutrients in my soil. And both of these are under threat in July. So I’m going to keep weeding, weeding, weeding this month.
There are different kinds of weeds. The trickiest are those with a tap root, like thistles. I try to properly dig these out. I don’t simply snap them off as the bit that remains behind will soon get going again. So with my trusty trowel, I’ll get right down in there underneath each one, and tease them out fully. I certainly won’t want to hear a ‘snap.’
For the other tiny annual weeds, which have a flimsy bit of root, you can gently fork them up and leave them on the surface of your soil. I’ll often do this as if it’s baking hot they will dry out and die off fully.
7. Water
Most of us will have new plants we planted in the Spring. As who can resist a bit of garden retail therapy! I certainly can’t. I used a birthday gift of a gardening voucher to buy the lovely clematis above.
But I find it’s all too easy to put those new plants in, water them to begin with and then after a few months forget them – especially if they’ve gone into busy borders. But come July or a prolonged dry spell those new plants could really be suffering. If we’re talking about new trees or shrubs, that neglect could kill them off quiet easily. So I always make sure my July gardening jobs include keeping a vigilant eye on any new additions to the garden and redoubling any watering efforts where they’re concerned.
8. Top Up Bird Baths and Ponds
Talking of water, I’ve noticed the water in our bird bath drops by at least a couple of inches every day at this time of year. I know a lot of that is down to one particularly fat pigeon who seems to like nothing better than to stumble into it! But whatever the reason, I replenish the bird bath water every day and I top up my tiny pond every week.
9. Get Sowing
If you’re itching to plant something then July is the ideal time for sowing certain plants. Sown in Summer and planted out in Autumn, wallflowers bloom from early Spring. Simply plant your seeds in trays or small pots now and get set for oodles of lovely orange or yellow blooms early next year. I may well do this to inject some additional colour to my hot corner – which features oranges, reds and yellows.
On the cooler colour side of things, I’ve loved the white Foxgloves in my shaded border this year – and want more next year. So while I’m hoping they will self-seed like mad, I’m also going to back this up with some sowing of my own. Sowing foxgloves in July gives them plenty of time to mature and flower the following summer. I’ll just scatter the fine seed on the surface of moist, peat-free seed compost and cover with a fine layer of vermiculite. Seedlings grown like this in trays should be overwintered in a cold frame before planting out in Spring.
Sadly I don’t have a cold frame, but that’s not a problem. I’m going to have a go at building my own cold frame next! But that’s going to be a job to save for August. Happy gardening!