Summer Gardening Tips For A Thriving Season
The summer is the time to spend time outdoors, enjoying the warmer temperatures and longer days. This will be easier to do when you have a healthy and attractive garden, which means ongoing maintenance is required.
Whether you are an avid gardener or a novice, you have likely been working on your landscape all year round so you can enjoy it now. But while you kick back and relax this summer, do not completely neglect your landscape.
There are specific summer gardening tips that you need to implement to ensure the health and aesthetic appeal of your landscape.
At Avery Gardens & Grounds Maintenance, we have over 20 years of grounds and garden maintenance helping to maintain landscapes all year long. We understand how important summer can be for the health and beauty of your landscape, which is how we’ve developed these summer gardening tips.
How Summer Impacts Gardening Jobs
Summer is a crucial time for gardeners. Not only is the season where more time is spent outdoors, enjoying the landscape around us, but it is also a season of new growth.
Most plants and flowers are at their most active growth stage during the summer. The longer days and warmer temperatures provide the perfect environment for them to flourish and the summer can be such a vibrant season with the right care.
This new growth means new tasks across your garden, and summer gardening tips are all based on maintaining and supporting plant life. By maintaining the health of plants and supporting their growth, you can experience a beautiful blooming summer as well as work towards a thriving future for your garden.
Essential Summer Gardening Tips For A Thriving Season
These summer gardening tips help you maintain a healthy and beautiful garden this season, as well as support a thriving future for your landscape.
Develop A Watering Routine
One of the most important summer gardening tips is watering your plants, flowers and foliage.
Water is essential for the health and growth of all living organisms, including the plants throughout your garden. As the summer brings warmer temperatures and more sunlight hours, watering becomes even more essential during the summer to prevent your plants from drying out.
While you may be tempted to increase the amount of watering you do across your landscape, it is important to remember that overwatering is just as damaging as underwatering. This is why establishing a regular watering routine is so important.
A good watering routine to get into during the summer is to water your garden early in the morning or late in the evening to minimise evaporation, ensuring moisture reaches the roots.
Although it is vital to avoid overwatering plants and flowers across your garden, deep watering can be one of the most useful summer gardening tips especially if you are planning on taking trips this season.
For some plants, an occasion deep watering can be more useful and is a good way to ensure moisture reaches the roots of the plants whether you are around to care for them or not.
All plant life across your garden needs regular watering during the summer, including your lawn, vegetable plots and flower beds. For your lawn, you can set a timer on sprinklers to ensure the grass gets regular moisture whereas deep irrigation systems are the best summer gardening tips for vegetable plots and flower beds.
Deadheading, Pruning and Trimming
Deadheading is one of the best summer gardening tips as it not only keeps your garden looking neat but also encourages plants to produce more flowers.
Some plants require more pruning than others during the summer. For example, perennials such as roses, geraniums, and dahlias should be regularly pruned during this season to prolong their blooming period and keep your garden vibrant all season.
For pruning and trimming, any dead or diseased branches should be removed from foliage and plants. You can also use this time to thin out dense foliage to offer a neater appearance.
Regular pruning like this can also aid in improving air circulation within the plant and will reduce the risk of fungal diseases.
Summer-flowering shrubs, such as hydrangeas and buddleias, will also benefit from a light prune during this season to encourage new growth as well as encourage more abundant blooms next season.
Fertilising Plants
Feeding and nourishing plants is an ongoing gardening job that you should do throughout the year but also ranks as one of the most important summer gardening tips.
This is such an important tip for summer gardening as most plants are in full bloom during this season and therefore need more nutrients for support.
A balanced, slow-release fertiliser is the best for these summer gardening tips. These provide a steady supply of nutrients over several weeks to maintain the growth of your plants as the season progresses and allow them to bloom.
To feed your plants during the summer, you can use synthetic fertilisers or organic options, such as compost or well-rotted manure, as both will enrich the soil and aid growth.
Not all plants require the same summer gardening tips, however. The location and type of plant can impact the kind of fertiliser that is required during the summer. For example, plants in containers and hanging baskets may require more frequent feeding during this season as nutrients can drain out of the soil quickly. For these plants, use a liquid fertiliser every fortnight to keep them healthy and vibrant as the season progresses.
Pest And Disease Control
Summer is the prime time for growth and you will see all kinds of life developing across your landscape. While this can be beautiful when it comes to flora and plants, other life can develop during the summer such as pests and diseases.
This is why a lot of summer gardening tips are based on managing pests and diseases that can threaten the health of your plants. During the summer, you need to remain vigilant and look out for common pests like aphids, slugs, and caterpillars which can appear across the landscape.
When you do notice these pests, you need to take action at the first sign of damage to prevent any spreading of disease or risk of fatality.
Based on your preferences and the needs of your garden, you can either rely on natural pest control or chemical pesticides. Natural remedies, such as neem oil or soapy water, can be effective in controlling pests without harming beneficial insects.
As well as keeping an eye out for pests, you also need to look out for diseases – particularly fungal diseases which can be fatal for plants. Symptoms of fungal diseases include powdery mildew and black spots which can be more prevalent during the summer months.
To prevent the spread of these diseases, ensure your plants have good air circulation and avoid overwatering by developing a wise routine.
If you are dealing with fungal diseases or other issues across your garden and do not know how to treat them, you can contact professional landscapers.
Weed Management
Weeds can completely take over your garden, impacting not only your garden design but also the health of the landscape.
As summer is the season of growth for all plant life, weeding is one of the most essential summer gardening tips we can offer and needs to be managed correctly. You can pull some weeds out by hand or use tools like a hoe to get them out by the roots.
Whatever method is best for you, ensure that you do not disturb the soil too much when removing weeds as this can limit the growth of the plants left.
Once you have removed weeds, adding a layer of mulch can prevent future growth while also maintaining the moisture levels in the soil to support the plant life you do want.
Lawn Maintenance
A lush, green lawn is the pride of many gardens, and summer is the time to give it some extra attention, which is why essential summer gardening tips include regular mowing and watering.
It is advised to mow your lawn frequently during the summer, as this period of growth means it can quickly become unruly and impact your garden design. When regularly mowing the lawn, ensure you are not cutting the grass too short as this can make them more susceptible to drought.
Grass should be between 2.5 to 3.5 cm high during the summer and this can be maintained with regular mowing.
Like other summer gardening tips, watering the lawn is vital to aid its growth during this season. You can set a sprinkler on a timer to ensure that the lawn is being watered regularly without much effort, keeping it lush and green as the season progresses.
Plant Support
Tall or top-heavy plants may need additional support during the summer months to prevent them from collapsing under their own weight as they continue to grow.
For such plants, our summer gardening tips recommend using stakes, cages, or trellises for extra support. Tie the plants to these supports using soft twine or plant ties will help keep them upright and reduce the risk of damage.
Plants like tomatoes, beans, and sunflowers can benefit from these summer gardening tips and may need additional support as the season goes on.
Summer Harvest
If you are growing fruits and vegetables in your garden, summer can offer a great opportunity for a healthy harvest.
Regular picking of plants like beans, peas, tomatoes, and cucumbers during the summer benefits both your landscape and you. Fruits such as strawberries, raspberries, and cherries are also at their best during the summer and should be harvested.
Harvesting these plants at their peak ripeness during the summer guarantees the best taste and reduces the risk of attracting pests to your landscape, which can cause damage elsewhere.
Expert Garden Maintenance By Avery Gardens & Grounds Maintenance
Avery Gardens & Gorunds Maintenance has over two decades of experience in professional grounds and garden maintenance. We have helped many clients across the region maintain high standards in their landscapes and support thriving environments.
With our expertise and professional skills, we can provide a range of garden maintenance services to aid your landscape no matter the weather. From summer gardening tips to tree surgery and site clearance, our team is ready to handle your requirements.
Contact Us Today
If you are ready to make the most out of your garden this summer, contact us today.
