JULY GARDENING TIPS

As the heat ramps up there are many ways to keep your garden looking beautiful.

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• Season Extenders: Plant late bloomers and season extenders in your garden now. They will grow in nicely and then extend the color in your garden late into the season. Try adding tender salvias like Salvia guaranitica Black and Blue, Pineapple sage, or the new Dalvia uliginosa with a baby blue flower color. Also plant asters and mums or the more unusual chrysanthemum pacificum.

• Spent bulb foliage: Now is the time to cut back any yellowing daffodil foliage. It should be left intact as long as possible as the plant photosynthesizes and stores energy for the next season in the bulb underground.

• Shaping perennials: The last pinch to shape and encourage branching on asters, chrysanthemums and some late summer perennials should occur in early July. It’s still ok to thin stems on congested perennials to improve air circulation. Don’t be afraid to give a hard cut to catmint (Nepeta), lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) and perennial geraniums (Geranium sp.) after the spring flowering.

• Container plants: Consider compost tea, organic liquid feed like fish emulsion or seaweed extract for container plants. Feed every 7-10 days. As the summer heats up, they may need to be watered every day if it is sunny. We recommend once per day deep watering and make them hold because it makes for a tougher plant. If plants are not wilting and look happy they do not need water. They will let you know if they need water by starting to wilt or lose their turgidity, then no question it’s time to water. It’s better to have tough plants than spoiled ones!

• Weeds: Catch weeds before they go to seed and continue to add organic mulch to spots left bare or plant another plant, like a season extender. Shredded leaves held over from fall cleanup make a wonderful mulch for annual and perennial borders as well as vegetable gardens. It’s natural, free, local and breaks down over the course of the growing season to add organic material to the soil.

• Peonies: Remove spent flowers from peonies once flowering is finished. If plants were staked or tied up to prevent flopping during bloom, the stakes and strings can now be removed which will make the stems stronger to stand on their own.

• Vegetable garden: Direct sow succession crops in your vegetable garden for the next round of harvest, such as radish, lettuce, carrots, chard, and beets. Side dress heavy feeders and long season crops like corn, tomatoes, squash, peppers, potatoes, onions and eggplant with a balanced fertilizer now.

• Biennials: Sow seeds of biennials like foxgloves, Angelica, Salvia sclarea, Lunaria and Dianthus now for planting in the garden in late summer. These will produce leaves this year, overwinter and flower next year, ending their life cycle when they set seed in their second season.

• Irrigation: Irrigate borders and lawns infrequently and deeply. Generally, lawns and gardens need 1” of water each week, or a deep irrigation that penetrates to 6”. Keep track of rainfall using a rain gauge and supplement only as needed. Consider converting parts of your lawn to lower maintenance groundcovers, shrub or perennial borders, or meadow plantings.

• Japanese beetles: Depending on your location, Japanese beetles begin to emerge from the soil around July 4th. Keep a close eye out for them, scouting in the morning when they are sluggish and knocking them into a pail of soapy water. The solitary fly, Istocheta aldrichi, is an internal parastite of adult Japanese beetle. Female flies lay eggs on the thorax of female beetles. Upon hatching, the maggot bores into the beetle, killing it. Japanese beetles observed with these eggs on them should be saved to encourage this natrual control method.

  -Joann Vieira, Director of Horticulture, Trustees (UMass Extension Landscape, Nursery and Urban Forestry Program)

  
  

  Always think ahead when gardening. Timing is everything!