The Summer garden is in full growth and it is important that you stay on top of everything. This means: trimming, cutting, spraying, deadheading and planting; and all of this before breakfast.
11th June: Things I have been doing lately:
🤷♂️ Harvesting garlic. You will remember that every October I just stick a few cloves of garlic into the ground under my Citrus trees. These happily sit there benefiting from the tree watering and fertilising and then up they pop in January and happily grow away till harvest time. You know when the garlic is ready to harvest by the fact that the outer leaves begin to yellow and then wilt. This is now the time to harvest. Using a trowel ease around the plant being careful not to damage the bulb as you ease the plant out of the ground. Once harvested place on a wire mesh or baking tray and leave in a cool well aired place for about 2/3 weeks. Do not attempt to wash the dirt off the garlic as this will cause the plant to rot. Instead wait until the plant is fully dried out and the leaves completely dry, then chop off the leaves and clean up the garlic. I will come Back to this at a later date. In the meantime, the first photo below shows the garlic being eased out of the ground, whilst the second shows it drying on the rack.
💨 Spraying Roses and Grape Vine. By now everything should be in full bloom and leaf, and this means you have to watch out for all the usual pests and diseases. If like me you have Roses, then you will know that certain plants get “rust” at this time of the year. Rust is a red/brown coating that some Roses are prone to get, which whilst normally it will not kill the plant, can be very disfiguring and blight your Rose blooms. The first photo below shows one of my Roses infested with Rust.
The only solution for rust is to spray. There are lots of proprietary brands of spray so the choice is yours. The second photo below shows the spray I use. It is important that you only spray in the evening as bright sunshine can act with the spray to create more damage.
I have a number of grapevines and most of them happily avoid getting mildew; that is apart from the main vine which grows against a wall along the front of my house. The problem with this is that as it is against a wall and therefore does not have enough air circulating, hence the mildew. The photo below shows my mildewed grapevine waiting for its annual spray.
Again, you should only spray in the evening as in full sun you can end up scorching the leaves. The photo below shows the type of spray I use, there are others.
Spanish Garden 
NASTY! I just wrote about how I have never sprayed for rust, just because I prune so aggressively in winter that the roses grow faster than the rust does in summer. I would not expect rust to be a problem where you prune your roses as aggressively as I do.
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I will try a really heavy prune next year. But one of my Roses “Munstead Wood” is an instant magnet for rust as soon as it starts to grow after pruning.
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Do you rake up all the fallen leaves when you prune? (I know that you probably do, but just thought I would ask, just in case.) rust overwinters in fallen leaves, even if you mulch over them.
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