Essential Gardening Jobs for Mid Summer
Image: Pexels / Willian Matiola
Mid-summer is a pivotal time in the gardening calendar, when consistent care and timely interventions can make all the difference between a thriving garden and a struggling one. Whether you're nurturing ornamental plants, managing a productive vegetable plot, tending fruit bushes, or maintaining greenhouse crops, this season demands attention and precision. From taking softwood cuttings and dividing irises to harvesting beans and onions, each task plays a vital role in sustaining plant health and boosting yields. This guide outlines essential gardening jobs to keep your garden flourishing through the heat of summer and well-prepared for the months ahead.
Ornamental Garden
Take soft-wood cuttings using the current season's growth of shrubs and some alpines now. Inserting them into cell trays will help to reduce root disturbance when they are potted on. Use a clear plastic cover or clear polythene sheeting to reduce stress and moisture loss while the cuttings are rooting.
Clumps of Iris germanica varieties can be lifted and divided now. Reduce their size by dividing them, discarding the old flower-bearing shoots. Cut the rhizomes, trim the leaves to 12-15cm (5-6in) long, and replant so that the rhizomes rest on the soil.
Regularly liquid feed plants in window boxes, tubs and hanging baskets and remove all dead flower heads to prevent these plants from setting seed and encourage continued flowering.
Vegetable Garden
Shallots and autumn-sown (Japanese) onions can eased to break the roots a few days before they are lifted. Lay them on the surface of the soil (if dry) or place in open trays for a few days to dry before storing them. Let the roots get plenty of light and air.
Harvest broad beans as they are ready. If you are pulling up the plants, chop up the stems (haulms) and compost them.
Continue picking peas and, as soon as they are finished, clear and chop up the stems (haulms) and compost them. Leave the roots where possible to provide nitrogen for future crops. In a good summer sowings of peas can be made for a late crop.
Start lifting mid-season potato varieties.
The last sowings of summer lettuce should be made any time now. In colder parts of the country, winter turnips should be sown by the middle of the month. Give plenty of water to cucumbers in frames and marrows out-of-doors. The yield from beans will be improved if the plants are watered well with weak liquid feed. Remove side shoots from tomato plants and stake well.
Spray outdoor tomato plants and potatoes with a suitable fungicide to help prevent blight (unless blight tolerant cultivars have been used).
Fruit Garden
To reduce damage to plums and other stone fruit, use wasp traps to draw the wasps away from the fruit.
If silver leaf disease appears on plums and other stone fruits, remove and burn infected parts. Paint over the scars with a wound sealant paint to reduce the re-entry of the fungal spores.
Prune cherries and apricots grown as wall plants; summer prune apples and pears grown as cordons.
Remove any straw mulch from strawberry beds. If black plastic is used, it can remain in place but be prepared to use biological controls for both slugs and vine weevil.
Begin to propagate new strawberry plants from good runners. Pegging them into cell trays will help to reduce root disturbance when they are transplanted . Use a clear plastic cover or clear polythene sheeting to reduce stress and moisture loss while the runners are rooting.
Harvest currants, summer-fruiting raspberries and gooseberries as they are ready, and use them fresh or preserve them.
Greenhouse / Polytunnel / Conservatory
Inspect plants regularly for both red spider mite and whitefly and introduce predators and parasites to control these pests. If either of these pests have been present in previous years, introduce controls anyway, as a precaution.
Chrysanthemums and tomatoes in pots and in borders will need stopping, side shooting and feeding regularly. It may be necessary to provide them with additional shade during the day.
Cuttings of pelargoniums can be taken now, inserting them into cell trays to help to reduce root disturbance when they are potted on. Use a clear plastic cover or clear polythene sheeting to reduce stress and moisture loss while the cuttings are rooting. Pot on primulas sown earlier and sow cinerarias for display next spring, pricking them off as soon as they have germinated.