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Echter’s Plant Doctors are available
during store hours seven days a week to answer your gardening questions. For
accurate diagnosis, it helps to bring in a sample.
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Flowers Gardens
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If your pansies were
too nice to take out in June but are looking sad now, replace them with
some heat-loving annuals like periwinkle, salvia, marigolds, celosia,
gazania, geraniums,
portulaca, and verbena for a
great color show in summer.
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Be sure to "dead-head" (pinch off the spent blooms) on perennials, annuals and
roses for longer flowering periods and more and larger blooms.
Continue fertilizing annuals, perennial and roses as instructed on your
favorite fertilizer. This will give you continued flowering all season long.
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Check
the water needs for hanging baskets and planters daily. The wind
and sun dry them quickly.
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Pull
the weeds out of your flower beds before they get large. They are
competing with your plants for water. Don't let them
produce seed or you will have even more next season.
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Perennials & Roses
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If your iris did not bloom well this year, they may need to be divided. July
is the time.
Divide overcrowded
irises after they have bloomed. Dig up the whole clump, sort out the
rhizomes which have leaves on them and discard those old rhizomes.
Replant the good ones after improving the soil with compost and working
in a
little super phosphate into the soil below the root zone.
Stake your tall-blooming flowers like gladiola, delphiniums, and cannas to keep
the flowers showing and upright.
Continue to fertilize
roses throughout the summer to produce nice big and beautiful flowers.
Roses are heavy feeders. Follow the instructions on the fertilizer of
your choice and water at the base of the plant. August is the last
time that roses should be fertilized, however. Roses should then start
to “harden off” for winter.
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Plant fall-blooming perennials like asters, mums, agastache and Autumn Joy sedum
for color August through October.
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Prevent rose and perennial diseases like powdery mildew from taking hold by
using a systemic fungicide before the problem appears. Once those diseases
appear it is very difficult to control. Bee balm, phlox, columbines and lilacs
are some of the plants prone to
powdery mildew.
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Remove
old, spent
rose blooms after they fade, cutting the stem just above the uppermost
5-leaflet node on the stem.
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Reapply mulch where it has been blown or pulled away.
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Vegetable Gardens
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Water gardens early
in the morning while it is still cool. There is much less evaporation
at this time than in the heat of the day.
Avoid overhead watering when tomatoes, peppers, squash, cucumbers, corn and
some other vegetables are in flower. They need pollination and the
pollen can be washed
away, resulting in fewer fruits.
Ross netting over your fruit trees, strawberries, and raspberries will help
keep birds and squirrels out of your fruit crops. In addition, Bird Scare tape
will be beneficial in protecting your fruit.
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Pinch off the flower buds of
onions to direct energy to the developing bulb.
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Fertilize your
vegetable gardens to maximize your harvest. Fertilize strawberry
beds with ammonium sulfate now for more berries next spring.
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Lawn Care
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Those
impossible weeds like bindweed, dandelions and thistle in your lawn can
be controlled with Ferti-lome's Weed Out or Weed Free Zone. These are
the most effective weed killers you can buy.
The best part of the day to water
your lawn is early morning (before dawn if you have an automatic
system), while it is still cool. There will be a lot less moisture loss
to evaporation.
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On hot summer days
remember Revive. It helps water to soak into the ground
before it runs off of slopes. It also helps water to penetrate
deeper into the soil.
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Don't expect cool
season bluegrass to look as green in summer as it does in spring and
fall. If a lawn goes somewhat dormant in summer, it will still
green back as soon as the weather cools and more moisture is available.
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It is best to avoid fast release, high nitrogen fertilizer on your
lawns in the heat of the summer. If your did not make the second
application of fertilizer in June, our recommendation is either
Jirdon’s Heat and Drought Stress fertilizer or Green Thumb Premium
Lawn Food for summertime feeding of your lawn.
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Trees & Shrubs
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Container grown trees, shrubs, roses, and perennials can be planted
anytime during the summer. Planting early in the morning or in the cool
of the evening reduces the stress on both the plant and the planter.
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Deep watering of
trees, shrubs, roses, vines and perennials is essential this time of year.
Water thoroughly, but only when the plants require water. Check soil
3-4 inches deep to determine when these plants need to be watered.
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Examine all trees, shrubs, roses, perennials and annuals for insects and
diseases. This is the time of year these problems begin.
There are controls for any of these situations.
Perennials & Roses