Garden works: Jobs to do this month

Published on Thursday 2 July 2009 12:28

Before I had a garden of my own I'd always assumed that July, being the height of summer, would be the month when the demands of the plot would be hardest to cope with.

Thankfully I was mistaken. Naturally there's still loads to do, but all of the hard work was done in spring, leaving mostly routine jobs, like mowing the lawn, deadheading tired perennials and bedding plants, and watering pots and greenhouse plants, which – for me at least – become a welcome chance to get out in the sunshine and admire what I've grown.

I love pottering around the veg plot, ostensibly hoeing the weeds, but actually on the hunt for sweet baby peas and beans to crunch. Harvesting produce when it's this small might seem wasteful, but if you're growing any quantity of vegetables it's easy to end up with gluts of stringy beans, starchy peas, or courgettes that have ballooned into marrows, so I'd advise getting in there early and picking regularly to keep plants producing tasty crops for longer. Sowing a small row of seeds every couple of weeks helps avoid gluts and is great for salad crops and herbs such as basil and coriander, which can run to seed all too quickly.

It's also a good idea to "stop" or pinch out the tops of tomatoes and squashes to allow the fruit that's already set to ripen fully. Tomato plants are often pinched out after four trusses of fruit have set, but if you're growing a bush variety just leave it to grow as it pleases. If the weather is dry, runner beans may need watering to help the tiny new pods to set and, unlike other beans, runners are insect-pollinated, so grow them with flowers, such as sweet peas, to help attract bees and other pollinators.

One plant that's guaranteed to bring in the bees and butterflies this month is Verbena bonariensis. Its flat heads of tiny flowers, on the tips of wiry stems up to two metres tall, create a haze of luminous purple that brings insects flocking and looks fabulous among tall grasses and perennials in a border. This rangy plant self- seeds in well-drained soils, but its more compact cousin, v rigida, sends out spreading shoots through the soil, creating a pleasing clump in a more sensible shade of purple, which makes it easy to combine with other plants, but seemingly just as appealing to the insects.