GARDENING Late July in the flower garden

KEEP IT SWEET Cut sweet pea flowers every ten days or so, to ensure a continuous show of blooms.?Pic: Flickr.com/ecstaticist

Wine and dine the garden


Keep your blooms blooming and the blooming slugs away

Mags Sheehan

This time of year should see our gardens at their best. June having ‘busted out all over’, the July garden should be ablaze with colour. This year is different though, as the weather has been so changeable. My own cottage garden is newly planted, and this could explain why everything is late. But I suspect that inclement weather has had that effect for many.

Slug season
The rain is, however, beneficial for two things: the weeds and the slugs. The good news is that the wet ground makes the annual weeds easy to pull up, roots and all. The bad news is that there is no known cure for slugs.
Most of us have used slug pellets at times, but we worry that the birds, or even hedgehogs, will ingest the poisons from them. An organic alternative is now available in the form of Ferramol, its active ingredient being iron oxide, which has no harmful effects on other species. However, I find it does tend to dissolve in the wet, so the answer is to place the tiny green pellets under a piece of old wood, or plastic.
Of course there is another alternative: The beer trap. One can buy these in garden centres, but a margarine tub, buried in the ground and covered over with an old slate will do just as well. Pour a few inches of beer, which can be diluted a little, into the tub. The idea is that the slugs, attracted by the beer, fall in and drown. I always wonder if it is a waste of good beer, but I’m comforted by the thought that the slugs die happy.

Weed, feed and dead-head
On the occasions that the sun comes out, there are plenty of jobs to do in the garden about now. Dead-heading flowers usually pays huge dividends. Annual bedding plants like marigolds, petunias, pansies and so on will keep flowering for longer if the dying flowers are removed.
Even perennials can come again if we are lucky, especially if Autumn is mild. Last year, I had lupins and marguerites in flower right up to December. If you are growing sweet peas, it is recommended that the flowers are cut around every ten days, to ensure a continuous show of blooms. That means a supply of fresh, fragrant flowers for the kitchen table.
Remember also, that most flowers need feeding regularly now, especially sweet peas, which are very hungry. A tell tale sign of a hungry plant is the leaves turning yellow.
I find chicken manure pellets very good, and they are now available with added seaweed. However, my family complains about the smell when I use it. My solution is to put the pellets onto containers, window boxes and hanging baskets, just before we go away for a weekend. The smell wears off in a day or two, so it’s gone when we return. Alternatively, the pellets can be soaked in water, and used as a liquid feed.
So there are our jobs for July: weeding, feeding and dead-heading flowers, and while you’re at it, you may be forced to wine and dine a few of our slimy friends too.