Essential Summer Gardening Tips: Pruning, Seed Saving, and Harvesting
Thinking back through all the years I have been growing and gardening there is no doubt that the climate is proving more challenging with extremes from very wet winters to baking hot summers. There are many predictions about what the future holds and what we should do to continue enjoying the success of growing plants. Much of this centres around changing habits, growing in different composts, managing water use and choosing plants that can cope with the changing weather patterns.
Two of the key issues for plants is the soil they grow in and the amount of water they need. Soil has to be capable of holding moisture and watering especially in the early stages after planting whilst the plant extends its root system into the surrounding soil is absolutely essential. Creating a soil with good quantities of organic matter and saving water in containers is a good start to managing our gardens in these changing times. Brown scorched lawns are a common sight in prolonged dry spells but in my experience they always bounce back when the rain arrives and it will eventually. 
Summer pruning is a task that is often seen as complicated but there are several reasons why we do it. Trained fruit such as apples and pears that are grown as cordon, espalier, step-over or some other shape to fit a particular space in the garden, are summer pruned. This involves cutting back most of the new growth to encourage the plant to concentrate on fruit production. Stone fruit such as cherries, plums, damsons and indeed flowering cherries can suffer from a disease called ‘silver leaf’ which more commonly attacks this group of plants if they are pruned in autumn, winter or early spring, the pruning cuts heal quicker if pruned in summer and the disease is less active during this period too.
Some vigorous climbing shrubs are also summer pruned, wistaria is a case in point as they produce large amounts of spring and summer growth that if left would not only become very congested but also reduces their flowering. 
Photo: colin-maynard-HsG4OEPqGYc-unsplash
Rambling roses should be pruned after flowering reducing flowering stems by two thirds and tying in new fresh stems to avoid damage.
Whilst summer pruning is generally focused on maintaining shape and encouraging better flowering you should also remove any dead, diseased or damaged stems, and any branches that are venturing outside their allotted space or compromising the shape of another shrub.
Why would you want to save seeds from your garden plants, when you can nip along to your local garden centre or nursery and pick up a packet, well the answer is, its fun and you just might find something slightly different. The very keen gardener will often collect seed from particular plants, maybe to increase how many they grow or to give away to friends or in the case of annuals, to grow the same plant again next year. Whatever your reason, the process is fairly easy and a great way of involving children and hopefully sparking their interest in gardening. When to collect seed depends really on when the plant flowers as it is normally a few weeks after flowering the seed capsule starts to dry out which is an indication that the seed is almost ready to collect. Saving seed from vegetables such as peas and beans is perhaps the easiest as they are both quite large and in an easy to collect pod. Other plants on the other hand can be quite frustrating. Hardy geraniums for example, if left to seed produce a long pointed structure resembling a ‘crane’s bill’ (hence the reason for its common name), the pointed bit of the capsule is a trigger, when the seed is ripe this pointy bit suddenly bends like a spring, throwing the seed some distance across the garden. As most seed is both small and brown in colour the chances of finding it are quite remote, so we need to adopt a different tactic. We grow a number of plants that have unpredictable methods of dispersing seed so, after the flowers fade and the petals have dropped of we keep an eye on the developing seed capsule, they usually stay green and swell as the seed develops, eventually losing colour and turning lighter green to brown. It is at this stage that we put a small bag over the seed capsule, we use ‘organza’ net bags, the sort you sometimes get with favours in at a wedding, or jewellery in. They have a small drawstring that allows you to tighten the bag around the capsules the seed stays in the bag. When the seed is ripe it will remain in the bag and you can snip the stem and then transfer the seed into a small envelope which you have previously labeled with the name of the plant. Ideally, keep the seed cool, we use a glass storage jar with a silica sachet in it and a screw top, it is kept in a domestic refrigerator until required for sowing later.
Photo: lucinda-hershberger-Sy7PpSzWy8Y-unsplash
We are in full swing with the vegetable and fruit garden, we finished the strawberries, they were amazing, and we now move onto the summer maturing cultivars of fruit and vegetables, apples, pears, raspberries, hybrid berries and lots of leafy and root vegetables, oh and the cucumbers and tomatoes. It is an old cliche but there really is nothing like tasting produce you have grown yourself. I am often asked about storing vegetables but to be honest they are at their best fresh from the garden, and we try to time our growing to give small batches to maintain a continuous supply. This does however mean that you are restricted to seasonally available crops but that's not a bad thing. We have become so used to having ‘out of season’ produce that I think they somehow don’t deliver the same satisfaction as freshly harvested. Some crops such as apples and potatoes will store well through the winter but need to be fully ripe, without any pest or physical damage, then stored in a dark cool place. We have a closed garage which is fairly cold even throughout the summer. I made some racks that hold wooden slatted potato hitting trays that allow the apples and potatoes to be spaced out avoiding damage and disease. We are often still eating apples from the previous year well into May the following year. Any that go soft or start to rot we put out on the bird table and the birds go mad for them.
Happy gardening
Martin
Next month, (tidy up perennials, give houseplants a little attention and keep on top of your herbs).
