July gardening jobs

Tips and advice on garden care in July

July is peak flowering time for most gardens, full of vibrant summer flowers and climbing plants. Containers and hanging baskets are blooming and in full swing, and some of your home-grown fruits and vegetables are ready for the table.

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• July focus: Deadheading
• General garden tasks
• Add instant colour with summer bedding
• Lawns
• Under cover: greenhouses and growhouses
• Hedging and climbing plants
• Patios and containers
• Vegetables and herbs
• Fruit
• Nature and wildlife

July focus: Deadheading

Deadheading spent flowers encourages further blooms. Not only will the plant look fresh and tidier, but it will also trick the plant into channelling its energy away from seed production and into forming additional flowers instead. Depending on the type of plant you are deadheading, either use a sharp pair of secateurs or use your finger to pinch out the spent flower heads. Cut just above the first set of healthy leaves, below the spent flower.

If there are a lot of tiny flowers, wait for the majority of flowers to fade and then shear the entire plant back by about one-third. You’ll lose a few flowers this way, but they’ll soon reward you with another set of blooms to enjoy and possibly trim back again later in the summer.

Gardening jobs for July

General garden tasks

• Continue to feed your plants. Particularly your fruit and vegetable garden
• Keep an eye on the weather, and water your garden in the evening. Smaller pots, baskets and planter may need watering twice daily. Water the soil, not the plants
• Tidy beds and borders. Deadheading flowering plants including roses and bedding plants will encourage and prolong flowering
• Cut back hanging baskets and planters. This will keep them looking fresh with new flowers and foliage
• Train and secure your climbers with plant ties as they will be fast growing and need support
• Keep your lawn looking good, feed to encourage new growth if you did not give your lawn a spring feed. Control weeds using appropriate weed killer

Add instant colour with summer bedding

Give your garden a pop of instant colour and plant some gorgeous summer bedding plants in your beds, borders, and containers. Learn more about our favourite bedding plants at B&Q, check out our online range, or come into your local store and browse the huge selection of colourful bedding plants on offer.

Lawns

• Raise the cutting height of the lawn mower blades during hot, dry spells when the grass is under stress to keep it green without watering
• If you have a new lawn (less than a year old), you should water it regularly during spells of hot, dry weather - this is because the young roots won't be big enough to reach water stored deep in the ground. However, if you have an established lawn there is no need to water it, it will survive just fine. Don’t be alarmed if your lawn turns slightly brown, after the next rainfall it will green up again.
• Every time you mow, finish the job by trimming the edges of the lawn with a grass trimmer or edging shears

Under cover: greenhouses and growhouses

• Keep on top of ventilating, watering, and feeding
• Water and feed greenhouse plants more often now the weather is hotter and the container is filling with roots
• Pick summer greenhouse crops regularly

Hedging and climbing plants

• Clip privet and other fast-growing hedges
• If your hedges are yew or laurel, this may be the first and only time you trim them this year, whereas if you have Leyland cypress hedging (also known as leylandii), it could well be the third time you’ve reached for the hedge trimmer
• Prune wisteria with secateurs. Cut back side shoots to shape for the following year

Patios and containers

• Feed and deadhead container plants regularly
• Water daily and, for some smaller containers, consider watering twice a day

Vegetables and herbs

Now is the perfect time to get vegetable planting. Wondering which seeds to sow in July? Sow main-crop carrots, beetroot, leek, dwarf French beans, early peas, turnips, lettuce, radishes, spinach, and spring cabbages

• Keep vegetables well-watered in dry spells
• Harvest vegetables as soon as they are ready, although root crops can stay in the ground until you are ready to use them
• Cut and dry or freeze herbs
• Regularly pick courgettes before they become marrows
• If you’ve got tomatoes use your finger and thumb to nip out the very tip of the plant. This stops the stems growing any longer and diverts the plants energy to swelling and ripening the fruit, so you don’t end up with lots of green tomatoes at the end of the season. If it has been colder with a lot of rain, do this at the of July but if it has been warm and dry, you can leave it as late as mid-August.

Fruit

• Tidy strawberry beds and grow on new strawberry plants by pegging down the strawberry runners into pots to root and create new plants
• Harvest raspberries, blackcurrants, and gooseberries
• Thin out fruit

Nature and wildlife

• Top up bird baths regularly with fresh water, and don’t forget to give them a clean too
• Keep bird feeders topped up as competition for bird food increases with so many fledglings on the scene
• Froglets and toadlets (young frogs and toads) will start to make an appearance this month. Plant foliage around your pond to provide shelter from predators
• Ensure your fences have some gaps at the bottom to allow frogs and hedgehogs move from garden to garden