June Gardening Tips
As summer officially arrives this month summertime heat will soon follow. This can be a time of abundance and challenge in the garden. Annuals, summer-blooming perennials, vegetables, and herbs can be reaching their prime. But weather that is often hot and humid may encourage disease, Japanese beetles are at their most active, eating grape leaves, roses, and dozens of other plants.
Below are some helpful tips for keeping those luxurious gardens growing:
Indoor Gardening:
As summer days grow warmer, water houseplants more frequently. If moved outdoors to a shady location, don’t forget to monitor their watering needs.
Woody Plants:
Prune deciduous and evergreen hedges.
Water newly planted trees and shrubs frequently and deeply. Once they are well established, many will need little additional watering.
Lawns:
In hot dry weather, continue to mow grass 0.5” higher than in spring to help protect from heat stress. Water thoroughly about once a week (more often in sandy soils), applying about an inch of water if adequate rain is lacking.
If lawn is sparse under shade trees, hire an arborist to prune and thin the trees, allowing more sunlight to reach the lawn. You may also consider reseeding with a shade-tolerant variety in late summer or fall.
Flowers:
Continue to make new planters keeping them well watered. Try using self-watering containers with reservoirs in the bottom.
During hot humid weather, perennials prone to foliage diseases may melt away. Replace with heat-loving, disease resistant perennials and native plants.
Cut lilies when first flower is opening and fully colored. Support tall flower stems with a single bamboo stake.
Deadhead annuals and perennials; cut back rampant ones. Remove fallen leaves and stems that may harbor pests. You can remove the foliage of spring-flowering bulbs after it fades; lift bulbs for transplanting or propagation.
Kitchen Garden:
Replant areas vacated by spent crops with warm-season vegetables such as beans, sweet corn, cucumbers, cantaloupe, eggplant, peas, peppers, sweet potatoes, and watermelon.
Keep soil around tomatoes evenly moist to prevent blossom-end rot. Consider growing heat-tolerant cultivars. Fertilize vegetables including asparagus and rhubarb with manure tea or slow-release organic fertilizer.
Harvest summer squash while small and tender. Pick tomatoes, peppers, beans and cucumbers frequently to promote further production. Donate extras to the food bank or hunger programs.
Cover potato tubers, carrot shoulders and onion bulbs with soil to prevent development of green color and off flavors.
Around The Yard:
Watch for insects, mites, tomato hornworms, vine borers, and worms. Keep fresh water in the garden to attract pest-eating toads and predatory and parasitic insects.
Lightly cultivate soil in beds to reduce compaction and weeds. Re-mulch beds as necessary; mulch deteriorates in hot weather.
Japanese beetle traps may attract hundreds of beetles, making matters worse. Try spraying damage-prone plants with a feeding deterrent made of neem.
Install automatic drip irrigation system to minimize water use and foliage diseases by keeping moisture off foliage.