Wisteria has that  quintessentially English country look adorning houses in the spring with its familiar plumes of blue which are highly scented. It's a beautiful climbing plant, but definitely red wheel barrow, because of the time and effort required to grow  it sucessfully and to make it bloom reliably each year.  There are two reasons why pruning in July/August is essential. Firstly, Wisteria is a very vigorous climbing plant and needs to be kept well in check. Secondly, to make it flower, Wisteria must be pruned twice a year; winter prune February and summer prune July/August. Wisteria is hard work but rewards well and will even produce a second flush of flowers in July and August. Follow this link for a video guide to summer pruning wisteria.

If your wisteria has been neglected and is out of hand, be careful about treating it too severely. Although very tenacious Wisteria can be killed and avoid cutting too severely into the hard wood or pruning to harshly. If it is too large renovate by pruning back over several seasons so you can see the results before cutting back too much. 

July and August is a good time of year to take Pelargonium (Geranium)  cuttings to raise new plants for free.  Taking cuttings from Pelargoniums/Geraniums is simple and easy.  Geraniums are not frost hardy and so plants and cuttings need to be overwintered indoors. Geraniums make really good  conservatory plants and are one of the few plants which can survive the high temperatures in a conservatory over the summer months. If you are looking for something to brighten up the conservatory flowering almost all of the year, Pelargoniums (Geraniums) are a good choice.

If you have favourite Pelargoniums at the end of the season when clearing out bedding plants, you don’t  have to throw them away,  Pelargoniums will over winter in the conservatory and you can take cuttings to multiply your stock.  Before the first frosts arrive, pot them up and bring indoors.  If you don't have a conservatory you can overwinter in a greenhouse or under glass in which case Pelargoniums are best cut back later in the season, October/November and during the coldest months reduce watering.

Cuttings taken now can be overwintered in the same way and will produce great plants for the spring. Unlike  most type of cuttings which are usually covered with a polythene bag or put in propagator, Pelargoniums are different and  are not covered the plants being open. Pick your favourite plant, cut a piece about 4-6cms long and trim off most of leaves, leaving just one or two at very tip of cutting, and remove all flowers. Trim the bottom of cutting to just below a joint (slightly knobbly bit) which end goes into the soil and the joint is in the soil. If this too confusing, just take a series of cuttings maybe 5-6 and trim leaves and flowers, and the chances are the cuttings will include some joints. In the image on the left below all 4 leaves will be removed leaving just the very small leaves at the top of the cutting.

A 13cm or 5" pot will take about 5 cuttings. Fill the pot with gritty compost and stand in water until compost is moist. Drain, make a hole with dibber or pencil, put in cuttings and firm in carefully so there are no air pockets and do not water at this stage, the pot has moisture. Place in warm sunny spot but away from direct sunlight. One week later water as before by placing pot in water and draining, and then again another week or so, and by this stage the cuttings should have started to root. By the time the first frosts arrive the pot should be placed somewhere sheltered for the winter and watering reduced during the winter months, Dec-Feb. In the spring you can grow on and you will have free Geraniums to bed out in the summer.

Last weekend I planted up a new raised bed in the garden deciding to try that well tested traditional combination of Roses and Clematis, which look so good together.  Both plants  like  rich soil with organic material as they are greedy feeders. A sunny position, not too crowded together, and a raised bed gives an opportunity to fill it with really good quality soil if your borders are not ideal. In a raised bed you can create your own growing medium; our garden is very wet, lying almost on the water table so this is a way of giving the roses and clematis a better chance of thriving. 

I managed to find five minutes to pick the side shoots off from the tomato plants. This time of year is so busy with the veg plot getting into full swing, so many veg to plant now all types of beans, courgettes, herbs, tomatoes the list is endless. Tomato plants naturally grow side shoots illustrated in the image left. We pick them off because tomatoes are vigorous plants. In the space of a few weeks they grow the best part of a metre and half;  produce lots of flowers and  fruit; they are very fast growing and the side shoots will make more and more branches if not nipped out and the plant will become huge.  Stop the side shoots and you limit the branches and contain the plant so it puts energy into flowers and fruits later in the season. It's a five minute job but well worth doing to keep the tomatoes growing well for the season. Hopefully the  images make it clear what to do and how the tomato plant will look afterwards, image right.

Fruits are also forming on the strawberries and the birds will be eyeing them up as soon as the fruits start to ripen. The only way is to protect is with netting and for hints on an easy way to protect strawberry fruit and make a simple fruit cage, check out how to grow strawberries.