Summertime Gardening

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Summertime Gardening

The appearance of summer in the Southern Great Lakes Region is often sudden. One day, the temperatures will be in the balmy 60's, the next day, temperatures in the 80's will arrive and stay. The official onset of the Summer season is late June. However, some years Summer can arrive as soon as early May, or as late as the end of June. More often than not, the warm weather arrives and stays from the end of May onward.

With Summer, gardening starts to hit a steady rhythm. The frantic pace of the Spring gardening chores slows down, and the maintenance of yard and garden begins. To be sure, there will always be more vegetables to plant, a few more pots of flowers to set out, but by and large, the pace becomes much more mellow.

The hardest thing about Summer gardening is maintaining the discipline to keep pace with the gardens. Let a couple of weeks of weeding go by, and the neighborhood bullies, the weeds and the grasses, will take over.

It can be downright miserable to be pulling weeds when the temperature and humidity is high. Couple that with the lack of rain, and it is tempting to let things slide a bit. Fortunately, we are blessed with longer days, and can usually get in a few good hours before the hottest part of the day sets in or after the supper hour.

Mowing is less frequently needed, and now is a good time to set your mower up a few notches. That way, the hot sun won't scald the crowns of the grass plants. The lawn will actually benefit from sporting a longer "hairdo". As the season advances, the lawn will slow in growth and actually go into a semi-dormant state where it will start to become tannish-green in appearance. This is the time of year when many home owners break out the hoses and sprinklers for several hours of dousing day after day. This keeps the lawns green and out of dormancy, and keeps the people down at the water company in the green, too. Since it is natural for grass to go somewhat dormant with the onset of higher temperatures, it makes better sense to water deeply and more infrequently than shallowly and frequently. Let the goal be to keep the roots deeply watered and alive, and if the lawn isn't the greenest, so what? You and I aren't exactly running marathons, either, during the hottest part of the summer! We take it easy and rest. So, why shouldn't we let our lawns rest, too? Do yourself, your lawn, and your pocketbook a favor: Water properly.

Know what type of soil you have. Sandy soil requires more frequent watering. Clay soil is initially more resistant to accepting water than sandy soil, but once clay becomes moist, it doesn't need as frequent watering as does sandy soil. Rotate watering, that is, do a different site every day instead of the whole lawn at once. Do that one site deeply, and be sure to put at least an inch of water down, not running off the lawn, but down into the ground. Target another site another day and so on. Put soaker hoses down instead of sprinklers, and get the water down to where it counts, the roots. The last thing we need to do is to add more moisture to the air! Ideally,water early in the morning, before the hottest part of the day. If you won't be home, it really is a wise investment to put your hoses on a timer. If you must water at any other time, you can water later in the day, but stop a good two to three hours before sunset. However, this is still less than ideal because it can help promote the spread of disease. DO NOT water ANYTHING after dark, unless you want to deal with diseases and pests. Once again, if you have to work when it's a good time to water, buy some timers and set them up to run your sprinklers or hoses early in the day . The system will turn itself on and off. One final word about lawns: Look at the bright side of things: You won't have to mow as often!

As the tops of your spring bulbs die down, resist the temptation to clip them off or tie them back. The foliage needs to ripen fully in order to store food in the bulbs for the next year's flowers. Plant hostas, daylilies, or other perennials over the site of the flowering bulbs. Or plant some annuals. They will hide the dying foliage. Once the foliage of the bulbs pull out with a gentle tug, the leaves can be removed.

If you have sited your plants with enough air circulating around them, mildew should not be too much of a problem. Notice I said, "should not be too much of a problem". The fact is, no matter what, certain plants such as garden phlox, zinnias, and monardas, as well as roses will get some mildew, regardless of how mildew resistant a particular variety might be. Set up a spraying program to keep it under control, and use organic based treatments.

In late July to August, bearded iris can be divided. If you had few blooms this season, the clump will need to be divided and reset. Use a spading fork to gently lift the plants, and be careful not to break off the feeder roots. Cut the rhizomes apart with each division having 4 or 5 leaves, and discard the old central part of the rhizome. Dust the divisions with sulfur, and reset them into a prepared bed to which good compost and a good organic fertilizer has been applied, at about 1/2 the recommended rate. Trim the leaves back to about six inches, and that should do it. Space them properly apart, about a foot or two, and plant them shallowly. The roots coming from the rhizomes should be set into the soil, and the rhizomes should not have more than an inch of soil over them. It will not hurt the plant if the rhizomes are somewhat exposed.

Keep your flowers deadheaded, and plants such as delphinium can be cut back to encourage more flowers in the early Fall. Pinch your garden and cushion mums to prevent early blooming and to promote bushiness. Stop pinching them by July 10.

Keep on top of the insects that are enjoying your flowers and produce as much as you are. Use organic sprays. If you are going to put out Japanese Beetle traps, put them far away from your desirable plants. These traps attract even more beetles into an area. The last thing you want to do is to encourage more of them from thinking that your place is the insect equivalent of McDonald's!

Keep your container plants watered, and do so before the hottest part of the day. You might find that during the most severe heat waves that you will need to water plants twice daily, perhaps even more often.

Produce needs to be harvested regularly to maintain production. As production wanes, remove the plants and relegate them to the compost pile. Work in good compost in the old site. Add different crops, either plants or seeds, and be careful not to grow cole crops in the same place twice in a row.

Set up soaker hoses in your vegetable, perennial, and ornamental beds. Use the same principles of watering as you do for the lawn. Those late afternoon thunderstorms that we get do not often give us the water we need, even though it seems that way from the look of it when it downpours! Unless we get several days of slow, gentle rain, which is pretty rare in the Summer, or a major squall line comes through that dumps biblical amounts of rain on an area, you just can't count on Nature to provide enough rain.

If you are going on vacation, have a friend, neighbor, or relative look after your watering chores. Offer them free produce from your garden in return. If you can't find anyone to do this, gather your containers and hanging baskets and place them in a shady spot, closely grouped together, and loop soaker hoses around the tops of the containers. See the hoses on a timer. Water your yard well a few days before your trip, and water newly planted shrubs or trees deeply, at least for their weekly requirement of an inch to two inches a week.

Weed at least once a week. Better yet, divide the weeding chores by weeding early in the morning those areas that you watered the day before. Or, weed in the evening, after your watering is done. All that matters is keeping up with it.

Now, it sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. Most of summer gardening is maintenance gardening. And that takes up so little time if it is done consistently. You will have plently of time left to soak up some rays at the beach, or to take in a few rounds of golf. Maybe you will have enough time left to visit one of the arboretums or public gardens that are near your home. Or, maybe just sit on the gazebo or laze on the hammock, feeling the gentle breezes, the warmth of the sun. Or, maybe time to hear the cicadas and eat some ice cream while you admire the view of your gardens! Or, maybe...

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