July is usually the hottest month of the year, now is the time to sit back and enjoy the results from all that hard work.  Plants will look their best for longer if regularly dead headed.  Keep new plants, bushes and trees well watered, using dish water where possible, and keep hoeing those weeds.

Jobs For July

• Clematis: check for clematis wilt
• Watering: tubs and new plants will need watering throughout July if they are dry
• Aucuba Japonica: Take semi-ripe cuttings in summer, selecting healthy shoots from the current year's growth that is just starting to become woody.
• Baliota Pseudodictanus: Take cuttings of short, non-flowering side shoots and root in a propagator.
• Buddeia's should be flowering, just in time for the butterflies and hawk moths arriving from abroad.  Deadhead them to encourage more flowers.  It's best not to let them seed as buddleia's spread very easily by seed
• Euonymus: prune to keep in shape
• Evergreens: Take semi-ripe cuttings
• Field Poppy: sow direct to soil - buy field poppy
• Foxgloves: Sow direct to soil and in seed trays outside.  I grow foxgloves in seed trays to give me a few extra that I can pop into any empty spaces.  buy foxgloves
• Fuchsia: Take soft wood cuttings from fast growing stems about 6-8cm long.  You can start roots in water on a kitchen window, then pot them up and keep in the house until next spring
• Fuchsia: Pinch out fushcias that are growing well to encourage a bushier plant
• Garlic: Harvest when leaves turn yellow
• Gaura Lindheimeri: take cuttings
• Iris 'Strathmore': Divide
• Laurels: Prune but check for nests firsts
• Penstemons: take cuttings
• Salvia: once flowers have finished prune back to new growth and you'll have new flowers in about 5 weeks time
• Salvia: take cuttings
• Wallflowers 'Erysimum Walberton's Fragrant Sunshine' & 'Bowles Mauve': take cuttings
• Yellow rattle: sow direct to soil