Garden Year
Our aim is to give you access to relevant and current information about our products and in the following pages you will find details of the entire Vitax portfolio.
Click on any of the catalogue links below for more detailed information on each of the Vitax ranges.
If your questions are not satisfactorily answered here, please contact Customer Services:
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Please select a month from the table below to see our hints & tips for that period.
August
In August, the garden usually looks after itself, and you can take time out for a holiday. If you arrange for a neighbour to pick crops that will spoil, such as runner beans, courgettes and lettuces, and organise watering for the house and container plants, there should be few problems on your return. In a wet year the grass may need an urgent trim if it hasn't been cut for a week or two, but in a dry summer, with a period of drought, there may be little or no growth.
Now is the time to relax and enjoy your garden. Although there is still work to be done, the jobs are generally light and undemanding and, with a few exceptions, they can wait until early September if necessary.
Jobs that won't wait
Organise basic care for your garden if you are going to be away on holiday. Watering and harvesting are the tasks that will most need attention if you are away for more than a few days.- Check watering requirements daily. In hot, dry weather plants in containers may need watering more than once a day. Even if it does rain many containers in sheltered positions, window boxes and hanging baskets in particular, may not receive sufficient water to keep them flourishing. If there is a drought, concentrate on providing water for trees and shrubs planted this year. They are usually expensive plants to buy and if they dry out before rooting into the surrounding soil they may die.
- Harvest fruit and vegetables when they are ripe. Don't forget to harvest culinary herbs as well as freeze or dry for winter use.
- Maintain a regular programme of weeding and checking for pests and diseases.
- Feed those plants that require it.
- Deadhead regularly to encourage more flowers unless you want seeds to form. If you are saving seed from your own plants, check regularly to make sure that you harvest when the seeds are ripe but before they begin to shed.
- Disbud according to the requirements of the plants you are growing. Chrysanthemums and dahlias may need attention this month.
- Pinch out the growing tips of wallflowers. The sooner you do this, the bushier the plants will be by the time they have to be moved to their flowering positions.
- Remove the growing tips from greenhouse tomatoes by the middle of the month, to encourage the fruit to develop more rapidly.
- Take the last crop of cuttings this year from pinks.
- Pinch out the growing tips of fuchsias to increase the number of shoots available for cuttings.
- Plant strawberries as soon as possible so the plants become well established before next year.
- Sow Japanese onions to over winter. Timing is critical for this crop.
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