July in the Garden Checklist

July is all about colourful comforts in the garden and enjoying the hearty harvest winter has to offer. Keep your beds looking lush and your veggie garden stocked with these flowers and edibles to plant now. Don’t forget your July maintenance to help your garden stay in top shape and ready for the last cold stretch. Enjoy the journey with your landscape and take some time to appreciate the remarkable changes of Mother Nature.

What to plant

• Hardy, fancy flowers: Plant these lovelies now for colour and cosiness – Calendulas, asiatic lilies, flowering perennials such as osteospermum daisies, pelargoniums, wallflowers, diascias, and aquilegias for a gorgeous spring show.
• Robust succulents: Aloe Hedgehog, aloe Ferrox, and aloe Speciosa
• Indigenous gems: Krantz aloe, Basuto kraal aloe and holly.
• Colourful fun shrubs: Pink – plectranthus (Plectranthus fruticosus), Blue – Zulu spur flower (Plectranthus zuluensis), Green/purple – Mona lavender.
• Balmy bloomers: Grab these flowering delights now –  pelargoniums (geranium), Cancer Bush (Sutherlandia frutescens), sweet peas, poinsettias, and calliandra.

A flying reminder: Help the birds out and ensure your birdbath and bird feeder is well-stocked. Food is scarce for the flyers during the winter months.

Everything edible

• Garden centre treasures: Fig, olive, grape, cherry, peach, plum and apple trees are available at GCA Garden Centres from July.
• Harvest now: Horseradish, asparagus, celeriac, parsnips, sweet potatoes, and waterblommetjies.
• Sow now: Hardy vegetables and herbs such as radishes, beetroot, spinach, lettuce, parsley, leeks, turnips, carrots, eggplant, broccoli, Asian greens, and garlic chives in seed trays. In frost-free areas plant peas, cauliflower, cabbage and root vegetables.
• Split & divide: Divide your asparagus and rhubarb now for a larger yield and remember to mulch well after transplanting.
• Support: Stake broad beans and Brussels sprouts to give them more support and increase growth.
• Feed: Remember to feed your winter veg seedlings with nutritious fertilisers and compost.

Top tip: Use bird netting or frost cover sheets to deter birds while also allowing light and air into in the veggie garden.

Perfect pruning & maintenance

A little off the top: Fruit trees, roses, deciduous shrubs, golden shower, barleria, ribbon bush, wild dagga, westringia, and hydrangeas. Also cut back bougainvillaeas that have finished flowering.

Cut away: All dead wood, diseased branches and leaves, large trees casting unwanted shade. Remember to add all this organic matter to the compost heap.

Check your tools: Sharpen your garden blades, lawnmower blades, and replace any old pruning shears. Remember to get your lawnmower and edge cutters serviced too, spring is going to be busy!

Rose care: Start pruning roses at the end of the month and spray with Kumulus afterwards. Feed them with Bio Ocean and apply a new layer of mulch around the bushes. Also transplant roses that need to be moved now.

Top tip: Visit your GCA Garden Centre for advice on products to help seal pruning wounds as well as which sprays and fertilisers to use after fruit tree and rose pruning. We recommend Bio Ocean!

There’s much to be planted and harvested this month and certainly no absence of life in the garden. A little pruning maintenance and mulch goes a long way in helping your bushes and trees through harsh winter climate changes. Head over to your GCA Garden Centre and see what other inspirations await you.

Source: Life is a Garden