• Prune back the laterals (leafy growths) on grape vines to encourage fruit set. Trim to two leaves beyond the forming bunch. If you are troubled by mealie bugs, now is the time to spray them just as they are getting started. Ask advice at your garden centre for on suitable sprays options. We use Orthene but you can’t, unless you have a licence. In principle any spraying oil should work, perhaps with another insecticide added, provided you get good coverage. One timely spray now can virtually eliminate mealie bugs for the season.
• With most apple trees having finished flowering, you can do battle with codling moth. Again consult your garden centre as to the current options, or good old Carbaryl has a good hit rate if you still have it. Tipping new growths by hand will largely deal to the leaf curling midge which attacks the very ends. Unroll the leaves and you may find a small pink creature inside. You either nip them off or spray them. You can use pheromone traps for codling moth if you don’t wish to spray with pesticide.
• Keep the water up to container plants. If you are not very consistent, then at least move the containers into semi shaded spots or relocate them near taps. Container plants are by definition feature plants and if they get stressed and sad, it is a really bad look.
• Wasps are getting started. Mark deals to wasp nests with a spoon tied to the end of a long bamboo stick (he is nervous about getting too close). Carbaryl not only deals to codling moth but will do wasp nests too if you drop it just inside the entrance. Wasp nests can be recognised by the sight of several wasps entering and departing from a hole. Wasps are yellow. Bees are brown. It is better to deal to wasp nests as they are just getting started.
• Spring and early summer are the optimum times for feeding just about everything because plants are in full growth. Leave expensive, plastic coated synthetic fertiliser bubbles for container plants (which is what they were designed for) and use cheaper options such as Bioboost, good ol’ blood and bone, nitrophoska blue or high quality compost.
• The leafy tips of broad beans should be on the menu, if they have not been eaten already.
• Keep successional plantings of fennel, corn, peas, beans and most other vegetables though you are getting late for planting seeds of heat loving vegetables (capsicums, aubergine etc). You are better to use small plants of these.

The useful rains this week mean that you can divide perennials now if you wish. Most are in full growth so will repair the stress of your splitting them up.

• If you have a plant with a very dry rootball, watering it in after planting will not do the trick and it is more likely that the centre of the rootball will remain dry and the roots will start to die. There is no substitute for soaking the plant thoroughly in a bucket or trough before introducing it to its new home.
• Water holding crystals which turn to jelly are fine for container plants of annuals but do not be tempted to use them with woody plants, bulbs or perennials because they will make the plant too wet in winter. If you have very dry container plants, you can sprinkle the surface with surfactant to help the plant absorb water. Surfactants are cheap to buy but even a little dishwashing detergent will suffice.
• Deadheading annuals and perennials does extend the flowering season considerably, if you can be bothered. Roses also benefit from deadheading, as do rhododendrons.
• Keep sowing corn, scarlet runner beans, lettuces, green beans and all the summer and early autumn veg. It really and truly is your last chance to start melons from seed but it is the optimum time for planting kumaras.
• If you are really keen, you can start your brussel sprouts for winter though we are not the best climate for brussels which prefer colder conditions and frosty conditions. Inland gardeners may be better placed to impress their coastal cousins with their brussel sprouts.
• Keep a copper spray on potatoes (remember the Irish potato famines…) and on tomatoes. This is best done every couple of weeks after rain if you want to maximise your harvest though you can get away with less. If leaf miners and caterpillars are attacking your brassicas (the discovery of cooked caterpillars in your broccoli is most off putting, even if your mother insists that it is merely added protein) you may need to resort to an insecticide spray. Ask at your local garden centre for the current recommended option.

Now is the time to prune rhododendrons, including vireyas, which may have become leggy and woody. You can try the kill or cure approach of cutting back very hard to bare wood but only at this time of the year when the plant is in full growth. Feed and mulch the poor mutilated victim and hope it will reward you by springing into fresh growth. Do not expect flowers next year, however.

• Deadheading rhododendrons should be taking place as they finish flowering. You want the plant to set flower buds for next year, not seed.
• Apparently coffee grounds deter slugs and snails so you may like to try this around hostas although we have not tried it ourselves yet. Rimu leaves, sawdust, sand and crushed eggshells will certainly discourage newcomers. Do not forget cheap baker’s bran as an environmentally friendly option. It doesn’t kill them but they end up so stuffed that they are lying comatose in the morning for the birds to pick them up.
• Pot up colourful annuals to give a summer display around outdoor living areas.
• Get on to sowing melons right now if you want a harvest. They have a long growing season and we can be marginal in our climate.
• Plant kumara runners.
• Continue successional sowings of dwarf beans, corn and peas. All are much nicer fresh from the home garden than off supermarket shelves or out of the freezer.
• Get the push hoe out. The weeds are having a party and you want to interrupt it as quickly as possible to prevent ongoing problems. Push hoeing on a sunny day means you can leave the weeds on the surface to shrivel, as long as they have not already set seed.

While we have had next to no time in our own garden this week, it is alarming how fast we can start drying out after a week of warm, sunny weather. Get mulch onto garden beds, preferably after a good dousing of rain. Keep an eye on container plants too. Daily watering is now required.

• If you calculate that your early flowering narcissus have had 65 days of growth (in other words they were coming through the ground by the end of August), they can be trimmed or mown now. Cutting off the leaves and laying mulch deters the dreaded narcissi fly which is starting to hatch. These nasties lay their eggs in the crown and the larvae hatch and eat out the bulbs. Mark has seen his first of the season.
• If you have been tempted into buying plants this week, make sure you soak them well in a bucket of water until air bubbles stop rising before you plant them. It is late in the season for planting trees and shrubs so if your conditions are harsher (ground which is not well cultivated or friable, very exposed or coastal), you may be better heeling the plants in to well cultivated conditions such as a vegetable garden for planting out next autumn.
• Aphids have found many of the hellebores. Deadheading will reduce the aphid infestation in your garden.
• Continue the Labour Weekend plantings in the vegetable garden. If you have early strawberries, it is time to look at laying netting over them. As soon as there is a hint of red, the birds will spot them and they are not likely to wait until they are ripe enough for you to eat.
• It is now full steam ahead on main crop potatoes, zucchini, pumpkin, squash, corn and even kumara in warmer areas. Plant everything now. It has been a cold spring so we are running a little later than usual but it would be really bad luck to get a frost now.