Gardens: Take it easy-ish

No matter how carefully you've planned out your planting scheme, it's inevitable that some plants will finish flowering before others start, leaving you with gaps. Should you grin and bear it, stick in some bedding or opt for something more permanent?

Steve Taylor, plant manager at Dobbies Lasswade (www.dobbies.com) says you have several options. "If you want something temporarily to give you some colour through to the end of the season, you could put in some big-sized busy lizzies or some petunias," he says. There may be less choice of bedding available, but what is on sale should be larger. The other option is to think about a display that will take you into autumn. Planting perennials which may not be ready to flower for a few weeks won't satisfy impatient souls, but these plants will extend the season.

The Royal Horticultural Society (www.rhs.org.uk) points out that July is one of the hottest months of the year, advising: "Make sure you keep new plants well watered and hoe off weeds, which thrive in the sunshine." However, if recent years are anything to go by, gardeners won't know whether to prepare themselves for hot sunshine or relentless downpours. So what impact does extreme summer weather have on our gardens?

"We've had some horrendously wet summers and they bring particular problems," says Steve Taylor. "That can mean waterlogging, and it can also encourage pests and diseases. Fungal diseases will spread in moist conditions and if plants are growing quite close together it encourages things like botrytis to come in, especially if you're not deadheading."

At the opposite end of the spectrum, dry, hot summers also encourage diseases such as powdery mildew. "Then there's the old enemies – aphids and blackfly, says Taylor. "When the weather's warm they breed very quickly. Nipping out soft growth on plants can really help and can keep control of outbreaks." It's common sense that in dry weather, plants will need extra help in the form of watering – ideally in early morning or evening to help prevent evaporation. You might want to prioritise containers and the veg patch over the lawn which can cope with the harsh weather and should return to good form later in the summer.

And when it comes to looking after your lawn, cutting it once, or even twice a week rather than scalping it once a month will reward you with a lusher lawn.

"Through the summer it's better to leave it slightly longer and have a higher cut," says Taylor. "If you cut back hard then the grass goes quite yellow after a few days, because you're showing the base of the blade of grass and you want to avoid doing that. Keeping the sward longer will make the grass look greener in drier periods." The Royal Horticultural Society suggests a quick-acting summer feed, especially if a spring feed wasn't done. If the weather's dry, it's important to water in the feed.

Keeping your borders looking good requires a bit of selective trimming, pruning and deadheading. Unless you want to have decorative seedheads in the autumn, deadheading will keep plants flowering for longer. Annual bedding in particular should be deadheaded because once it runs to seed, its life cycle will effectively be over. Steve Taylor says that it's also worth trimming back perennials. "You may not always get flowers again, but you often get a better-looking plant rather than something that looks straggly and old," he says. "Once they've had a flush of flower, whether it's perennial plants or shrubs, it's a good idea to trim them and give them a bit of fertiliser to give them a boost."

If you've got a vegetable patch, it's most likely supplying you with a plentiful harvest by now. However, this doesn't mean you have to stop sowing. Salad leaves, rocket, radish, some varieties of pea and spring onions can all be successionally sowed to keep the crop coming, as can herbs like dill and coriander which tend to quickly run to seed. Be aware that some seeds, like lettuce, don't germinate in very hot weather so it's best not to sow in harsh conditions.

Summer is the time when container plants come into their own, adding extra colour, form and scent to the garden. If you've planned ahead you'll have added water-retaining crystals to your compost, but if not then daily watering is essential, along with regular feeding and deadheading. "Check on them every day," says Steve Taylor. "If you haven't added water-retaining crystals then it's about positioning things in a more shady position if you're going to be away. If a plant isn't looking good then don't be frightened to take it out and replace it with some fresh bedding."

Before you relax and enjoy your garden, there's one last job left to do – a spot of weeding. Warm, rainy weather will see your weeds flourish, whereas dry weather tends to leave them more stunted. Either way, regular hand weeding, or hoeing when the weather's dry, will help stop them from taking over. "If it's nice weather it's lovely to go out and potter in early morning or warm evening and do a bit of weeding and deadheading," says Steve Taylor. "It gives you the chance to have a look at what's happening with your plants so you can plan ahead." And once you're content that everything's been done, you can sit back and enjoy that lemonade.

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This article was first published in The Scotsman, Saturday July 3, 2010