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Each week on Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio Humberside our resident gardening expert, Doug Stewart, gives you seven jobs for seven days to help keep your garden in tip top condition.
What a week! Picking raspberries, cutting courgettes, watching the tomatoes developing and being kept company by our Robin Redbreast who seems to find us wherever we are in the garden.
This week we are planning to…
1. Wash out all of the bird baths in the garden, to help to reduce the chance of our feathered friends picking up bird pox.
2. We will be watering our summer baskets and containers every day in the warmer weather. Early morning or late evening is better as the plants will be able to have a good drink before the sun starts to evaporate the water.
3. We are taking all of the dead flower heads off basket plants, container plants and flowers planted into the garden such as roses.
4. We are giving a light summer prune to our trained fruit trees.
5. We are also hoeing borders and then applying a thick mulch to keep the weeds out and the moisture in…
6. We are pruning shrubs such as Philadelphus (Mock Orange) as they finish flowering, and then rewarding them with a sprinkling of plant food.
7. We are also thinking ahead to the winter, midsummers day is the traditional time to plant swedes & turnips, this is also the time to plant winter brassicas and leeks.
and a bonus job this week...
8. Our favourite job however is picking our soft fruit, making gooseberry crumble (with lashings of hot custard) and picking courgettes, pulling young carrots and even digging the odd root of new potatoes, (which are perfect tossed in butter with a little fresh mint…)