6 Summer gardening problems and how to fix them instantly

The sun is finally shining, and it’s the ideal weather for sitting in the garden and admiring your plants with a nice cold drink and a book. However, not everything blossoms over summer. From mysterious plant deaths to irritating insects, gardening has its fair share of challenges to potentially put a dampener on your day. But fear not, we’ve listed some of the most common problems, with info on exactly how to fix them!

Although they’re harmless to us, slugs can cause a great deal of damage to your garden during the summer. With the warmer and sometimes damp weather, thick vegetation forms – creating the perfect habitat for slugs.

However, you can make it harder for them to access your plants by adding wood pellets and pine bark to your mulch. This simple step is a quick and effective way to create texture within the soil, making it harder for slugs to slither across and salvage your plants and flowers.

Quite often diseases such as rust and red thread can ruin your lawn. This tends to be common after wet weather – especially during late July and August. Drainage is the first solution to prevent any clogging. Aerate your lawn simply by spiking it with a garden fork. Another way to prevent disease would be avoid strong fertilisers and high concentrated weed control products. Organic mulch can be used as an environmentally-friendly alternative!

Struggling to keep up with the increased amount of watering your plants need this summer? We have just the solution. Whether you’re going on a vacation or staying closer to home this year, you don’t have to worry about your plants missing the nurture they need once you’re gone! By installing a weather responsive Irrigatia kit, the system uses solar power to detect conditions, altering the amount of water needed each day.

The systems are easy to install. Once set up, they water automatically with minimal supervision – meaning you can relax this summer knowing your plants are being taken care of! Find out more about our clever watering systems.

These fungal diseases often occur when roses are under stress from a lack of food and water. However, you can combat this by ensuring you correctly feed and water your plants on a regular basis. By mulching the surrounding area of your roses with either manure or compost, this will retain moisture. If you’re still struggling with mildew and blackspots, your rose variety may be prone to such disease – you may want to find a leathery-leaved variety to avoid this in the future.

Whilst birds are a beautiful addition to the garden, they can sometimes pose a problem to fresh fruits. A quick and easy fix for this is to add netting over strawberries, raspberries and other berries you may be growing. Remember to make sure the netting is tight enough to prevent birds getting tangled or caught.

During the summer season your crystal-clear pond may become somewhat murky as the weather gets warmer. In most cases for small ponds, they heat up very quickly - making blanket weed a problem. You can fix this simply by having a water depth between 60cm and 1m! This level is ideal to keep temperatures consistent! To quickly remove excess weed, a garden cane can be twisted along the pond’s surface, removing the majority.

If you’d like to hear more of our easy gardening fixes, keep up with our top tips by heading over to the Irrigatia social media channels - where you can also follow our gardening journey!