Our Top Summer Gardening Tips For A Flourishing Season
As we enjoy the hottest season of the year, keeping a beautiful and thriving garden gains even more significance. The summer months are ideal for outdoor activities, and spending time in nature which is easier to do when you have a well-maintained, engaging garden.
Landscaping and garden maintenance is an unceasing obligation and one that you need to do all year round to keep up standards. While summer is the best time to relish all your hard work so far, this doesn’t mean your duties are over.
Along with savouring the perks of outdoor living and your past seasons of landscaping efforts this summer, you also need to continue working in your garden to safeguard the ongoing wellness and allure.
At M&M Driveways, we have over 20 years of experience in landscaping and have worked with clients across the region in all weather conditions. With this experience, we understand the crucial role summer has on our landscapes and can therefore provide recommendations for how to best make us of this time.
In this guide, we are sharing our top summer gardening tips so you can maintain a robust, thriving garden and optimise your summer outdoor pleasure all season long.
Why Summer Gardening Matters
Summer is a vital season for gardening enthusiasts as this is when most plants and flowers are at their peak growth stage. The elongated days and raised temperatures establish an excellent environment for plants to prosper, which is why you will see so much natural beauty during this time of year.
The considerable growth in our plant life means landscapers and homeowners have a greater responsibility to maintain the natural world. This is why summer gardening tips are mainly focused on maintaining, pruning, and feeding plant life to encourage them to thrive all season long.
With the correct landscape maintenance at this time, you can indulge in a brilliant and beautiful summer while also securing the health of your landscape for the coming season.
Our Top Summer Gardening Tips
During summer, the best place to be is outdoors so it makes sense for landscaping to be at the front of your thoughts right now. With the warmer temperatures and longer days, summer presents a great opportunity chance to keep your garden maintained.
Summer gardening can be incredibly gratifying by offering both immediate and long-term benefits to your landscape. M&M Driveways’ summer gardening tips are designed to enable you to make the most out of your garden this season, while also encouraging its long-term health and vibrancy.
Efficient Watering
One of the most indispensable summer gardening tips involves watering your plants, flowers and greenery. This is a crucial task all year round, but watering is exceptionally important during the summer as the prolonged sunlight hours and elevated temperatures can cause soil to become dry.
Water is essential for all living creatures, including your garden’s plants, and additional hydration is required during the summer to keep the plants healthy.
While it’s vital to keep the soil moist and avoid your plants from drying out during the summer, you need to maintain an efficient watering balance to prevent overwatering your plants too.
Overwatering can be equally harmful to your garden as not watering enough, which is why establishing a consistent watering routine is part of our essential summer gardening tips. With a regular watering routine, you will effectively nurture your plants and foster their growth without being excessive or insufficient.
A good way to get started is to water early in the morning or late in the evening during the summer. This minimises evaporation and ensures that moisture reaches the roots to support the plant’s health. As the temperatures continue to elevate during the season, you may want to increase how often you water certain plants based on their position and sunlight exposure.
While it’s crucial to avoid overwatering your garden, there are some plants that will appreciate a deep periodic soak as opposed to regular daily watering. Our summer gardening tips do include a deep soak for plants with the most sunlight exposure, but this needs to be done only once or twice a week.
Deep soaking plants is a good idea if you are going on vacation or leaving your garden unattended for a few days during the season. Deep soaks are valuable because they promote deeper root growth, making your plants more resistant to dry conditions as long as it’s performed sparingly.
All types of plant life require increased watering during the summer, including grass and vegetable plots. If you do have a lawn, consider installing a timed sprinkler system to maintain consistent moisture levels throughout the summer.
For flower beds and vegetable gardens, drip irrigation systems are an excellent choice as they deliver water directly to your plants’ bases, reducing wastage and keeping the leaves dry.
The easier it is to maintain your watering routine, the better results you can expect from your landscape during the summer and beyond.
Pruning and Deadheading
Mid-summer is the perfect time to tidy up your garden by deadheading spent blooms and pruning overgrown plants. Deadheading not only keeps your garden well-ordered but also inspires plants to produce more flowers, which is why it is one of the superior summer gardening tips.
For perennials like roses, geraniums, and dahlias, regularly removing faded blooms prolongs their flowering period to keep your garden vibrant as the season progresses.
Pruning is another one of our crucial summer gardening tips and needs to be performed regularly to help maintain your plants’ shape and health. Summer-flowering shrubs like hydrangeas and buddleias can benefit from a light prune in the summer, stimulating new growth and richer blooms next season.
To prune, cut back any dead or diseased branches and thin out dense foliage to give your plants a neater appearance and enhance air circulation to reduce the risk of fungal diseases.
Feeding Your Plants
To keep your garden looking vibrant all summer long, you need to provide your plants with the nutrients they need.
Although fertilising and feeding your plants should be done throughout the year, it is one of the most vital summer gardening tips due to the fact plants are in full bloom during the summer.
During their full bloom, plants and flowers need additional feeding to foster their growth and support their ongoing health, especially as the season advances.
Our summer gardening tips include using a balanced, slow-release fertiliser for most of your plants. These fertilisers will provide a steady nutrient supply over several weeks to sustain your plants’ growth as the season goes on. You can use synthetic fertilisers or organic alternatives like compost and well-rotted manure for this, as both work to enrich the soil and aid growth.
How and when you feed your plants will vary depending on their type and location. For instance, container plants and hanging baskets may require more frequent feeding, as nutrients can easily be drained from the soil.
For these kinds of plants, apply a liquid fertiliser every fortnight to keep them healthy and vibrant, allowing you to enjoy a colourful garden throughout the summer.
Managing Pests and Diseases
Summer gardening tips would not be complete without pest and disease management, as these pose a high risk during this season and can jeopardise your plants’ health in the future.
Summer significantly enhances plant growth, and consequently, the pests and diseases that are attracted to them. During this season, keep an eye out for common pests like aphids, slugs, and caterpillars and act swiftly if you do observe any signs of damage.
To battle pests and diseases, you can select from several options, depending on your preferences and your garden’s needs. Natural remedies like neem oil or soapy water can effectively control pests without harming beneficial insects, which you might want to keep in your landscape.
During summer, you also need to keep watch of any fungal diseases that may affect your plants. Symptoms like powdery mildew and black spots are common during the summer months and can be deadly to your plants.
To prevent these diseases from spreading, ensure your plants have good air circulation and avoid overhead watering with a wise watering routine. If necessary, you can use a fungicide to treat affected plants and prevent the disease from spreading. Alternatively, you can hire landscape gardeners to assist with removing infections from your garden.
Weeding
Summer promotes growth in all plants which is why weeding is one of our indispensable summer gardening tips.
Weeds can quickly overrun your garden if left unmanaged, as they too flourish under extended sunlight hours and warm temperatures.
Not only will weeds ruin your garden design, but they can also hinder the health of your landscape as they compete with any other plants for water and nutrients. This puts your plants at a higher risk of disease and even fatality, which is why weeding needs to be performed consistently throughout the summer.
You can hand-pull or hoe weeds, depending on their type and location. When pulling weeds, be careful not to disturb the soil too much as this can impede the growth of the plants you want to prosper.
Once you’ve eliminated weeds from the garden, you can prolong the health of your garden with a layer of mulch. Mulch is a natural tool to suppress weed growth and retain soil moisture, helping the plant life you do want in your landscape thrive as the season progresses.
Lawn Maintenance
A lush, green lawn is the heart of many gardens, and summer is the ideal time to pay it some dedicated attention. This is why our summer gardening tips include regular mowing and watering lawns to experience a healthy, vibrant season.
Regular lawn mowing is recommended during the summer as the grass can grow quickly and look unkempt. However, avoid cutting the grass too short while mowing as this can stress the grass and make it more susceptible to drought. It’s recommended to maintain your lawn height around 2.5 to 3.5 cm.
Additional summer gardening tips for your lawn include aeration for improved water absorption. Aeration can also decrease soil compactness to promote healthy grassroot growth.
As well as watering and mowing, you may want to consider overseeding the lawn with a mix of grass seed. This can be done to fill in any bare patches if your lawn shows signs of wear, helping to keep it full and lush during the summer.
For the best results, apply a summer-specific lawn fertiliser to keep your grass green and healthy throughout the season.
Supporting Plants
Tall or top-heavy plants may need additional support during the summer months to prevent them from collapsing under their own weight. As they grow taller and wider, it can be challenging for them to support their weight and can snap.
Plants like tomatoes, beans and sunflowers can benefit from these summer gardening tips as they may need extra support as the season progresses.
Our summer gardening tips suggest using stakes, cages or trellises to offer these plants the support they need during the summer. Tying the plants to their supports with soft twine or plant ties can help them stay upright and reduce the risk of damage.
Harvesting
If your garden includes fruit and vegetable plants, summer will be a time of abundance and is a fantastic opportunity for a healthy harvest.
Our summer gardening tips include a regular crop harvest to stimulate ongoing production during this season. With a summer harvest, you can enjoy the freshest produce and maintain a healthy garden.
Plants such as beans, peas, tomatoes and cucumbers benefit from regular picking during summer.
In addition to vegetables, summer is also the time to enjoy fruits like strawberries, raspberries and cherries if you have them in the garden. Harvesting these fruits at their peak summer ripeness ensures the best flavour and minimises the risk of pests and diseases, which will also be attracted to their full bloom.
M&M Driveways For Year-Round Landscaping
At M&M, we understand the work that is required to maintain a beautiful garden all year round and provide landscaping services to help you. Our team of experts are here to help you with all your summer gardening needs, from watering and pruning to pest control and lawn care.
We also offer the construction of new driveways and paving to help improve your outdoor spaces when you need it most.
With our passion for quality workmanship and customer satisfaction, we can help you create and maintain a garden that you can be proud of all year round.
Contact Us
Are you ready to take your summer gardening to the next level? Contact us today, and allow our expert team to help you.
