Plan Your June Activities
RHS top tips for this month.
- Hoe borders regularly to keep down weeds.
- Be waterwise.
- Harvest salads and early potatoes.
- Position Summer hanging baskets and containers outside.
- Pinch out the side shoots on tomatoes.
- Mow the lawn every week.
- Plant out Summer bedding.
- Stake tall or floppy plants.
- Prune Spring flowering shrubs.
- Shade greenhouses to help with cooling and to avoid scorching.
New evidence says that we started cultivating some 23,000 years ago. The one thing that has not changed in all that time is the need for weeding. Hoeing regularly will stop the weeds getting the upper hand. Magnolias need be cutback now. Severe pruning of Rhododendrons should be left until Springtime. You can take softwood cuttings of Fuchsia and Hydrangea now. Rose enthusiasts take some of the buds off their plants to increase the size of the remaining blooms, but I wouldn’t have the heart to do that. If you want to grow your own Spring bedding for next year you need to start sowing now with favourites like Pansies and Wallflowers. With the warm weather and long days pests and diseases are abundant. Treat as soon as any become apparent. We must also take care of ourselves and wear hats along with sunblock. There has been a lot in the news of late about the effects of pesticides on the environment. The UK has strict laws on what we can use, so please read the label and only use recommended doses when justified.
Great to see so many of you at the WI table-top sale in May. Some of the questions put to me about growing veg would be best answered by the one and only Mr Gordon Jones. Just form an orderly queue outside the library when Mr Jones is in residence. It has been brought to my attention that another library volunteer, Clare Ellis, is an expert on Clematis.
Many of us will have an unkempt part of the garden. You are helping nature by letting it take care of itself. The Wenvoe Wildlife Group will love you for it. This group does brilliant work in and around Wenvoe and if you could lend a hand a warm welcome awaits you.
July sees some of Wenvoe’s gardens open to the public and this venture is being led by Brian and Sandra Jones. We have at last managed to get the one and only Gerry Crump on board. If you want to see how to prolong an active life please go along to see Phylis and Gerry’s garden.
Take care and happy gardening