Despite the hosepipe ban, it pays to make the effort to water your pots and hanging baskets with your watering cans. Give them a weak feed every couple of weeks . Remove all the dead and dying flowers regularly and you will be rewarded with an attractive display well into September. If you can manage regular dead heading and an occasional water for your other garden plants, they too will revive once the extreme heat is over.
In August you can cut back and tidy your hedges and they will have time to recover before the winter frosts appear. Lavender too can be cut back once it has flowered. This will stimulate fresh growth and flowers next year. If you do not want the plants to look too skeletal, do a light prune of 2 to 3 centimetres and cut back again in early spring. Any new growth on Rambling Roses should be tied in or trained now to the shape you want.
Autumn crocus can be planted to provide some autumn colour when everything else in your garden is shutting up shop for winter. Now is also the time to plan for next spring. Bulbs will be appearing in your local garden centres this month and can be planted now and in September. You can plan your favourites or try some new colour schemes.
Those of you who are growing vegetables will be wondering if your runner beans will ever produce their normal bountiful crop. In the very hot weather the beans often don’t set. You can gently spray the flowers to help them set and lots of water at the roots will keep them going. Here in London we can usually carry on harvesting right through September so don’t give up hope.
Keep an eye on your tomatoes as there has been a lot of blossom end rot this year. This is a brown scabby discoloured spot on the base of your tomato. It may well not have damaged the whole fruit so you can pick and ripen on a windowsill. You can then cut off the end ans use the remainder for cooking. Tomato blight is different. Brown marks appear on the skin. These fruits should be removed and burned to avoid the blight spreading.
If your herb beds are looking thick and woody, give them a good trim back to encourage fresh growth. No need to waste the herbs as they can be chopped and frozen in ice cube moulds for use later on.
You can still sow lettuce, beetroot and spinach, for late summer crops. Now is also time to plant your Christmas potatoes. Maris Piper and other main crop varieties can be found in garden centres or online. What better than your own spuds with Christmas Dinner. If you don’t want a whole row of potatoes, how about splitting a bag of seed potatoes with a friend or a neighbour.