Six quick and easy gardening jobs for late summer
This week Tom explains how to grow aubergines, take penstemon cuttings – and keep pests at bay
Easy gardening jobs for late summer
Chance it
Aubergines can be tricky to grow: pests love them and our summers can be too short for the fruits to ripen. To grow decent-sized fruits, thin them to about six per plant. Thinning concentrates the energy into fewer fruits and gives them the best chance to swell and ripen. Remove a few lower leaves too, to let in light and air and improve overall plant health. I also feed aubergines on my regular Friday feeding rounds and spray the growing tips with SB Plant Invigorator to keep aphid levels low.
Forbidden fruit
I had to chuckle this week – garden pests come in many different guises. While protecting my dwarf French beans from pigeons, I glanced up to see my early-fruiting raspberries being ravaged by a human visitor with an appetite for the juicy red berries. There’s only so much that I can do about people popping raspberries into their mouths, but it is possible to protect autumn-fruiting raspberries from birds so that we can enjoy them later in the year. Construct a simple frame and suspend the bird netting slightly away from the fruit, otherwise the birds will peck at the fruit through it.
Wisteria jungle
Wisteria is a rampant climber and, when covered in flowers, very little can rival it for dramatic effect. Young wisteria should be tied in and trained to create a framework for the future. But as summer goes on, even well trained wisteria tendrils can become a nuisance. If you have to re-enact a scene from Indiana Jones every time you walk through the garden, pushing your way through the undergrowth, then it’s time to trim those shoots back. Take whippy growths back to a couple of buds from the base of the tendril to allow light into the plant. This also helps to ripen the flowering wood.
Buy now
Bare root roses (field-grown plants that are lifted when dormant, without leaves), can be ordered now and will be delivered to you from November. This is by far the cheapest way to buy roses and a wider range of varieties is available. David Austin and Peter Beales take orders online. To beautifully frame a doorway, try ‘Veilchenblau’, a charming small rambling rose with violet flowers; ‘Queen of Sweden’, is a medium-sized shrub with exquisite cup-like apricot flowers.
Two projects to plan
Live heading dahlias
I am a huge fan of dahlias. They provide a riot of colour and bloom non-stop until the first frosts. Over the years I have evolved the way I tend to them. Often I’ve had to play catch-up with the deadheading; this can make plants look ugly. To avoid this, I have now adopted the system of live heading. This means cutting the flowers in their prime with a slightly longer stem and using them as cut flowers. This reduces the need for a deadheading frenzy – the flowers never get to the ugly stage and the plant looks fresh, not loaded with overblown flowers – and with the bonus of loads of cut flowers.
Take penstemon cuttings
Few plants work harder in summer than penstemons, which provide copious spires of flowers. All they ask for is regular deadheading. In sheltered gardens, these tender perennials can overwinter; simply cut them down at the end of March and they’ll leap into action again. Midsummer is an ideal time to take semi-ripe woody cuttings to increase their numbers or provide insurance against a wet, cold winter. Fill a pot with a mix of 50:50 peat-free compost and perlite. Snip a non-flowering shoot about 4in long. Remove the tip (the softest growth) and leaves from the bottom half of the cutting. Trim the base below a leaf joint and insert two-thirds into the compost. Keep moist and place on a bright windowsill, out of direct sun. Cuttings should root in a few weeks.
Tom Brown is head gardener at West Dean Gardens, West Sussex; Follow Tom Brown on Twitter @HeadGardenerTom
