Summer lavender pruning, rose deadheading and fertilising

Hey guys, it's Marta. Today I have a plan to work in the garden. I have some plants to prune. I will be pruning my lavender. I will be deadheading my roses. I will be fertilizing them. I will be working on one of my borders and I thought I will take you along for the ride. You will see me doing those things. Let's go. So my plan for today is pruning my lavender. This is my lavender border. It is combined, they are combined with the roses, with verbena bonariensis, which I love. It is blooming right now. But the pruning of lavender after it's done blooming, it is really important. Last year I tried a new way of pruning lavender because in the previous years I've been pruning it lightly, only the flowering stems, not the leaves. But last year I tried a heavier prune and I also pruned some of the leaves, which made the lavenders become more bushy during the season. They will have a lot of months to the first frost, so they can be more bulky. Now is also the perfect time to deadhead your roses, to clean your roses. If you see any bad looking leaves, especially if they have black spot and especially if they have fallen down under the bush, then I do a deep clean below my roses, because the hygiene I think is the most important thing you can do for your roses, so they stay healthy. If we are collecting all the diseased leaves and we are throwing them away, never compost them, they will be better. They will be happier. They will not get infected more. Some of my roses get black spot, but I think that if I keep on the cleaning and keep the hygiene, they have it very mildly and I don't need to spray them. Okay, it's time to grab my tools. A kneeler, that is very good for my back, because this is the best way to work in the garden. I have some gloves and I have some scissors, scissors, secateurs. These are the Felco 310 and I have also my pruners. For smaller lavenders, I will use this one. I feel very comfortable working with that. For the bigger ones, I will use these. Okay, let's get to work. When I'm pruning my lavender, I will definitely not cut back right to the wood, because you will have part of the lavender as a woody stem and then you have the soft stems. We want to prune just the soft stems. This is this year's growth and I will be pruning that by a half. By pruning that, we will encourage the plant to push out and it will be much more compact. It will be bushy, it will look beautiful. Also, when I'm looking at the plant, after I pruned the soft wood, I am looking at the plant, if there are any dead stems, if there is anything that is brown, I will then just go with my scissors and I will try to cut out those parts and that is all. Then we are done. Oh my gosh, I have so many ants here. This is a huge problem in the past few years. We are getting more and more ants and they are everywhere and nothing is working. I will try to sprinkle something to distract them or to make them go away from my lavenders. I would be really unhappy because this is my oldest lavender. So, the pruning. I will be going with my scissors. I will just try to be maybe super exact, but I'm trying to stay with the shape of the half of the ball and I will be cutting just the soft wood by half. First of all, I just go with my scissors, not really looking too closely. Then I will go back again and try to be more precise. But now, half of the soft stems and the shape of a ball. I will be getting on with the rest of my lavenders in a second, but with this one, I've seen that I have a problem with ants and ants are really bad for your plants, especially if you have their nest below a plant because they are doing all of the tunnels and the roots of the plants are just hanging in space. They don't have contact with the soil. So, then there is a problem with taking up all the nutrients. So, I don't like when ants are getting really happy around my plants. They can really kill them. So, I will be putting some powder for the ants around the plant. I've also seen some fungal disease on my lavender. I will be taking care of that too. Maybe that is because of the ants. Maybe it was too wet. I have no idea, but I will be trying to fix that. Then I will be pruning my roses. You can prune them just going down to the leaf that has five single leaves or you can prune it harder. For me, this is Queen of Sweden. I like to prune her back harder because she is quite big. She's in the front of the border. So, I will be going even here and I will be cutting just above a leaf that has five single leaves. And sometimes, if I have just one flower that will be spent in a day, I will cut it back too. Also, all of the leaves that are yellow, that look ugly, I will also cut them back and I will throw everything down. And then this is my magic tool. I really love it. When I work with it, I can go under all of my plants and take all of the leaves and then I look for the weeds. They're always there. So, I'm trying to take all of them as much as I can and take them with all their roots. And then when all the surface is clean, I will be fertilizing my roses for the second time. If you're going on holiday for two weeks and you see a lot of buds on your roses and you're like, I will be missing them. I will be on holiday for so long. You can also prune them. I know it seems very daunting, but you can do it. You will cut just above a leaf with five single leaves. The rose will get a signal to bloom again because always when we are cutting off the flowers, we are not letting the plants to make the seeds. It is always an information for them to try again. So, I always, when I go for holidays, I always go with shears through my garden and I shear everything. And then when I come back, new flowers will await me. Okay, let's turn on the robot mode. I will be shearing everything and then I will show you how I fertilize my roses. Okay, I'm almost done with the front part of the border. I think I will take a break from the lavenders from the other side and I will show you how I clean below my roses and how I fertilize them. The bees are so unhappy. They still are like, Marta, we can still get some nectar, please let us. Sorry guys, there are still a lot of flowers to use in the garden. Okay, fertilizing your roses. Depending on what type of fertilizer you're using, I'm using a slow release fertilizer for roses, but always read the label. With fertilizers, you have to be very careful because sometimes it's tempting to give them more so you get more flowers, but it doesn't work that way. If you give your plants, any plants, too much fertilizer, it will be toxic to them. So you have to be very careful. It's always better to be light handed than heavy handed. So be careful with that. And with most fertilizers in my country, it's usually a handful of fertilizer for one plant, but please read your labels and be very careful with that. So when I'm fertilizing, I will be sprinkling the fertilizer, not only by the stems, but at the width of the plant. So the roots are always somewhere else. So you don't put it in one place, but just try to sprinkle it around. Gently mix it with the soil and then I will come with a hose and not putting the water on the leaves, but I will just put the water on the ground. So the fertilizer is released and our rose can bloom for us again. So in summer, I spend a lot of time on my knees because I want to see what's happening under my roses and under my plants. So I'm using this and I'm cleaning all of the debris, all of the fallen leaves, especially the leaves with black spot. And I'm trying to clean below the rose. And of course, if I'm searching, sometimes I will find something like this. This is, I don't know how it's called in English, but this is a part of the rose that is growing from the root. It's not the rose that you want. It is a wild rose and you want to take it out. The best way to take it out is dig a little bit under the ground and take all of it out. Pulling is the best way to do it. So when I'm done with that and I've taken all of the weeds from under my rose, I will take the amount of fertilizer I'm supposed to take and I will sprinkle it around my plant and I will gently mix it with soil with my fingers. And then I will water it and I will wait for the flowers. I am very relaxed after all the pruning. As you know, lavender has very calming effect on our body. So pruning lavender should give you a very less stress situation in your life. So hopefully you will get that. With lavender, I'm composting all of the flowers and the stems, but with rose leaves and rose stems, I'm not doing that. I'm throwing that away because of black spot and that I don't want the disease to be spreading throughout my garden. So that's what I'm doing. I'm putting some of the lavender in one bin and roses in another. This goes to the compost. I'm going to prune some more of my lavenders. Hopefully I will be even more relaxed than I am now. I'm wishing you all the most relaxed summer ever. Please let me know in the comments how was your lavender season? How were your lavenders growing? Let me know how are your roses? Was the blooming good? Are they healthy? And write me all of your experiences. I really love when we share those from different parts of the world. I'm getting on with my job. I think I will be very, very calm after that. If you like today's video, please give it a thumbs up, consider subscribing and we'll see you in the next one. Bye!