Prune back your rose bushes after the first bloom. You can either dead head the spent blooms or do a major cutting back to keep them tame and under control. I tend to do the latter. Cut back all weak and dead wood as well. Lastly, clean up all spent leaves—especially if they suffered from black spot. Plus, if black spot is a problem, use this homemade formula: Mix one tablespoon of baking soda and a 1/4 teaspoon of dishwashing detergent in one gallon of water.

Continue to pinch back all late summer and fall perennials to keep them bushy and healthy and to stagger blooming times.

Finish pruning all spring blooming bushes such as azaleas, rhododendrons, lilacs by mid-summer so that they can begin their new growth for next spring.

It is still not too late to plant summer blooming bulbs like dahlias or cannas. It's also not too late to plant quick-blooming summer seeds such as sunflowers, nasturtiums and cosmos.

WATERING

Watering is a chore that needs to be carried out throughout the summer season, but remember to use water wisely and, rather than drenching your entire garden regularly, concentrate your efforts on the following:

• Plants growing in pots, containers and hanging baskets as these can dry out very quickly, often in the course of a few hours.

• Newly planted trees and shrubs as these are very vulnerable to drought stress. As a guideline any specimen planted within the last four to five years falls into this category.

• Any freshly sown or newly planted parts of your garden.

• Herbaceous perennials which can suffer during sustained dry spells.

• In the kitchen garden leafy vegetables such as lettuce and spinach should never be allowed to dry out. Other crops should be kept watered on sowing and transplanting and then later as the part that you eat, whether fruit, root or tuber, is developing.

• Lawns can swallow up prodigious amounts of water which can be extremely wasteful, so, unless you have a high quality lawn, resolve to reduce or stop watering altogether. Instead, make sure that your lawn has been fed, and mow less often with the blades on a higher setting during dry periods. You will find that dry brownish patches will develop but these should disappear with the damper conditions of autumn.

WEEDING

If you got on top of the weeding in spring and then managed to apply a weed suppressing mulch, you should have much less weeding to do now but do take the trouble to remove any weeds that are now ready to seed - remember the saying 'a stitch in time saves nine'...? Whisking out the weeds before the seedheads develop will save you any amount of work in the future. The best time to do it is just after light rainfall when the weeds can be pulled out very easily.Weeding is particularly important in the kitchen garden as any weeds will compete with your crops for essential moisture and nutrients.

FEEDING

There is always a temptation to overfeed our gardens but this just results in lush sappy growth that is vulnerable to pests and diseases. So why waste money on unneccessary fertilizers? Instead, follow these guidelines to get the best results:

• Plants in pots, containers and hanging baskets will suffer if you don't supplement the nutrients in the compost throughout the growing season. Either incorporate a slow release fertilizer at planting time or use a water soluble feed every week to ten days through the summer. Use a high nitrogen feed, such as Miracle Gro, until midsummer, then switch to a high potassium feed, such as one of the liquid tomato feeds.

• If you prepared the ground well before planting, most vegetables won't need any additional feeding. The main exceptions are fruiting vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers and aubergines, which definitely need extra feeding, following the instructions on the product, in order to crop well.

Enjoy and have patience during the ensuing hot summer months!