You may think that secateurs are something you use only in winter but you should really be using them all year round. Apart from using them for cutting flowers, you should be pruning different things all year round. Summer is the time for pruning plums, gages and damsons and peaches.
These must never be pruned in winter because it opens up the wounds to spores of silverleaf disease that are floating in the air (but not in summer). Silverleaf disease weakens the trees and causes the leaves to have a silvery cast. ‘Victoria’ is especially prone to the disease.
In general, plums do not need a lot of pruning but they are usually vigorous. If you prune off old branches now you will cut away some fruit, which is not desirable. But many plums will have curled leaves on the shoot tips, caused by aphids. If you prune these off, you get rid of the pests and you encourage a bushier plant.
Look out for dead twigs and prune these off too.
Plums can potentially carry large crops but the number of fruits you get depends on spring weather. If the weather is pleasant when the flowers are open you may get a heavy crop but if it is cold, crops can be light. If you are fortunate and have a good number of plums on your tree, it is worth thinning these out now. If you let all the plums grow on, it can cause problems. When a plum tree, or any other fruit tree, carries a heavy crop it can exhaust the tree and it will make little new growth. This means few flower buds next year and a light crop, whatever the weather. If the fruits are crowded, they will not be full sized and if brown rot sets in it will spread from fruit to fruit and the crop will be reduced.
If you grow peaches, these can have excess growth thinned to allow air and light to reach the fruits. Long, new growths should be retained to replace the older stems that can be cut out after the fruits are picked. If you have wondered about growing peaches, they are well worth a try. Nothing, (apart from fresh, homegrown apricots) is quite such a flavour revelation! You simply can’t buy ripe peaches because they are so soft and easily bruised.
Peaches are hardy and you only need one tree because they are self-fertile. But they flower early in spring so I hand-pollinate the flowers – it doesn’t take long to pretend to be a bee! The big problem with peaches is peach-leaf curl, a disease that causes the leaves to turn red and drop off. But you can prevent this if you keep the branches dry in spring. So I grow my peach in my polytunnel. It also means the fruits ripen earlier than outside and gives some protection from blackbirds. I train my plant as a rough fan and it carries 100 or more fruits each year. If you don’t have room you can grow a patio peach in a pot, though the crop will be lighter.
Grapes can be grown indoors or outside and are easy to grow. But you need to control growth if you want a good crop. By now there will be bunches of flowers or tiny grapes. To ensure the grapes swell and grow to maturity, prune the shoots after two leaves beyond the small bunches, pruning just after the second leaf.
As vegetables grow, make sure they are well watered. Most will benefit from watering in dry weather to help pots set. Peas and beans are especially sensitive to drought, especially if grown in pots. Make sure you feed them too, if they are in pots. Ideally, feed once a week to ensure a good crop. There is still time to sow some French beans for a tasty crop of pods.
The cool spring meant that many of my tulips were late blooming and I have now lifted the last of these. Ideally wait until the flower stem starts to wither and then carefully lift them, keeping the bulb and stem intact, and let them dry off before sorting through the bulbs and keeping the largest to replant this autumn.