Gardening Calendar - July

With warmer days and lighter evenings, July is one of the best months for getting out and enjoying your garden. Keep plants looking good by regularly deadheading, and you'll enjoy a longer display of blooms. Make sure you keep new plants well-watered, using grey water where possible, and hoe off weeds, which thrive in the warm sunshine.

Feed summer bedding plants in pots, borders and hanging baskets once a week to keep them looking healthy and vibrant. Now is also the time to cut back early summer perennials, such as hardy geraniums and delphiniums, after they have finished flowering as this will encourage a second flush of blooms.

Feed and deadhead roses to keep them flowering strongly, and be vigilant for signs of black spot and other pest and diseases.

Sow biennials, such as foxgloves, honesty, forget-me-nots and wallflowers, for blooms next year.

Feed tomatoes, chillies and cucumbers with high-potash tomato fertiliser every week to encourage fruiting. Water tomatoes daily to prevent drying out, which can lead to split fruits and blossom end rot and continue pinching out any side shoots growing from the leaf joints of cordon tomatoes.

Sow small batches of fast-maturing salad leaves, rocket and radishes every few weeks for a continuous harvest. Peg down any strawberry runners into pots of compost to root new plants.

Take care when mowing lawns in July as this is the time baby frogs, toads and newts are leaving ponds in search of cool, damp areas to shelter in.

Leave out water in warm weather for birds and hedgehogs. Feed hedgehogs meat-based cat food as there young will be emerging now and this extra food will help them fatten up before going into hibernation in late autumn.