Summer Garden Maintenance to Ensure Thriving Plants

It's summer and your plants are wilting, or new buds aren't forming, so what do you do? No worries, In today's 33rd installment of Gardening Tips and Tricks, I'm going to list 8 tips on summer garden maintenance to ensure your plants survive, better yet thrive in the summer heat.

1. Deadhead - Yes, it's a pain in the arse, but it's necessary for new buds and flowers. You can snip off dead flowers with your fingers or use snippers. Just pop the tops off petunias, roses, dianthus, daises, or any other dead flower that could benefit from deadheading. Reward is that in a few weeks, more buds will form with a flush of blooms shortly after.
2. Trim tired looking bushes and trees. If you see your bushes or trees looking a little sad, overgrown, or starting to droop, they may need a good trim to enable the sun and water to produce new growth instead of putting all their energy into those limbs and leaves. Trim the sides and tops of boxwoods to make them look neat and even or chop dead or overgrown branches.
3. Time to fertilize! By now, your plants need food to ensure a bounty of color the remainder of the season. Follow instructions and feed them in the morning or evening and water deeply. Take care to not get fertilizer on the plants. Sprinkle granules around the base of the plants or use water-soluble fertilizer attached to a hose and sprayed at the base.
4. Check your dripper hoses. You'd be surprised how many times I have went out and thought my hoses were doing their job, only to find some of the holes were plugged with dirt and weren't getting to my plants! Periodically check to ensure the water is free-flowing to your plants in the ground and in your containers.
5. Time to inspect for insects or diseases. Carefully check your stems, leaves, and flowers for brown or black spots, (signs of fungus or disease) or little, tiny black bugs (spider mites) or white bugs (aphids). If you see them, immediately spray them with insecticide and herbicide. (wear gloves while doing this.) These menaces can kill your whole plant and if you have several, they can jump to others and kill those too.
6. Pull young weeds. Yes, you should be doing this already, but some weeds don't start coming up until the heat comes on, so get them while they are little, so you aren't plagued by them later on. Try Green Gobbler, an organic 20% vinegar solution.
7. Start watering more. In temps of 90 degrees or more, plants will wither quite quickly if they are of a delicate variety, such as dahlias, roses, lantana, lilies, and daises. If in containers, water every day, sometimes twice, morning and evening, as they dry out quicker. In your landscape, water every other day, but water more deeply. If you have a smart meter, set it to soak and cycle. It will soak them, then stop, then soak them again a little later. This helps to prevent runoff.
8. Pull out tulip and daffodil stems if you haven't already. This year, I still have green stems in July and have had to wait to pull mine, but if yours are yellow and drooping to the ground, it's time to pull. You want the water to get to the growing plants. Plus, it looks neater when all the dying stems, leaves, or flowers are cut or pulled out.

These tips will give your garden a fresh start to summer and save you time and money.

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