Summer Gardening tips
Use grass cuttings to mulch around plants – retains moisture and stops the weeds growing. Use on runner beans, peas, broad beans
French beans – and I use straw once the beans start to grow to keep the pods off the soil.
And fruit bushes
Don’t mulch potatoes – I found out (to my cost) that it encourages blight – earth up instead to encourage more potatoes – and suppress weeds at the same time.
Use straw around strawberry plants to keep the fruits off the soil – the straw helps to deter slugs as well.
In late spring when you repot and split houseplants you can plant the extra plants outside – they won’t be frost proof but they will last all summer
This is Kalanchoe – this year I planted out pink Streptocarpus too.
Once the first broad beans are ripe, cut off the tops of the plants – it stops them growing too tall – and getting blown over – and it also helps prevent blackfly.
And cut off the tops of runner beans when they reach the top of the poles – stops them becoming top heavy and susceptible to windy days – and if you can’t reach them you can’t pick the beans anyway!
Grow nasturtiums alongside runner beans – helps deter blackfly – not sure whether it’s the smell of nasturtiums that overpowers the bean scent – or whether the blackfly just prefer nasturtiums – but it certainly seems to work – and they look pretty too.
Grow purple flowers to attract bees and butterflies – and put out a shallow dish of water filled with pebbles for the bees to drink from.