Top 10 Summer Gardening Tips

While the garden demands your attention this month, it is a pleasure to work amongst the wealth of greenery and blooms your efforts have cultivated.

10 top tips for gardeners on the Coromandel Peninsula

1. To help plants with water retention and distribution, add a wetting agent to the soil. Finish with a layer of mulch for best results. Water deeply in the morning or early evening every few days. Container plants will need daily watering.

2. Slugs, snails, caterpillars, whitefly and aphids are likely to become a problem throughout the garden. Lay bait to control slugs and snails. Caterpillars and whitefly are best controlled with pyrethrum, success or neem oil. Spray with copper to control aphids.

3. Continue successive plantings of summer veges and herbs including basil, beans, beetroot, capsicum, carrot, celery, chilli, coriander, courgette, cucumber, eggplant, lettuce, parsley, pumpkin, radish, silverbeet, spinach, spring onions, sweetcorn and tomatoes.

4. Tomatoes are heavy feeders. Generously apply tomato food monthly.

5. Plant summer fruit crops such as blueberries, strawberries, passionfruit, grapes, kiwifruit and tamarillos.

6. Spray pip and stonefruit with copper to prevent fungus diseases including black spot and brown rot. Copper will also control powdery mildew on tamarillos.

7. Prune citrus and immediately spray with copper to help prevent diseases entering cuts before they seal.

8. Plant summer flowers including petunia, dahlia, alyssum, cosmos, gaillardia, arctosis, marigold, saliva, penstemon, hollyhock, delphinium, dianthus, fuchsia and lavender.

9. For a longer flowering season, liquid feed with a seaweed tonic fortnightly and remove faded blooms.

10. Prune roses and hydrangeas after flowering. Cut back roses before Christmas to re-bloom for Valentine's Day.