Is it hot enough yet!  When temperatures rise above 85 degrees F, all but the most heat-loving plants can become stressed.  Tomatoes may stop setting fruit; annuals may stop flowering or may fizzle out entirely.  Although there is little you can do about the heat, you can plan ahead to replace heat-damaged flowers and vegetables with fresh young starts now or in September to make the most of the good growing weather that lies ahead.  Providing plenty of water and light shade can help plants get through this difficult month.   

Other than going to the pool, below are a few gardening tips to get you through the rest of the summer…

Indoor Gardening

Escape from the heat and enjoy gardening projects indoors.  Dry herbs to make into herbal wreaths or cut flowers to make into flower arrangements.

Combine foliage plants of different colors and textures with small flowering plant like African violets in handsome baskets.

Fertilize houseplants to encourage additional growth.

Woody Plants

Don’t let azaleas, camellias, or roses dry out, or they may not bloom as well next year.

Prune overgrown hedges and foundation plantings lightly.

Lawns

Allow the lawn to stay on the tall side this month.  Taller blades shade and cool the soil and encourage deeper root growth.

Call your Extension Office and request a “Green Grass” visit.

Flowers

Fertilize roses, annuals, and container plants.  Continue to deadhead and shape everblooming roses.

Pull and compost spent annuals, and replace with fresh new annual seedlings.

To encourage later bloom, continue to pinch fall-blooming asters and mums as long as they haven’t yet set flower buds.

Sow hardy spring-bloomers like Bluebonnets, sweet alyssum now so they can put on a show in fall or next spring.

Divide overcrowded daylilies and irises.  Replenish soil with organic material, replant and keep moist until growing strongly again.

Kitchen Garden

Prepare to plant cool-season vegetables and herbs for fall harvest as the weather grows milder.  Plant peas and beets in a shady spot.

Find a local food bank, seniors program, or soup kitchen to take extra vegetables you don’t want to save for later.

Take cuttings of new growth on herbs to root and transplant into the garden or keep in pots to use indoors during winter.

Around the Yard

Order bulbs, roses, perennials, ornamental grasses, shrubs, trees, berry bushes, fruit trees now for fall planting.

Remove weeds before they set seed and multiply.

Continue to add to and turn compost piles.  

Watch for aphids, fungus, Japanese beetles, lace bugs, mites and white fly.