Mid-Summer Gardening Tips

Gardening in the spring is exciting and new. But, as the summer heat kicks in and the rains subside, summer gardening must begin. Some of your flowers are probably looking weak. Your garden may be looking dry and famished. Weeds have taken hold and many blooms have already seeded and died.

Do not neglect your garden at this crucial time. Clear out the dead debris. Some flowers can be deadheaded at this time and show more blooms before summer is over. Cut back roses down to the first leaf to encourage new clusters to come in before fall. Slumping stalks and browning flowers can be removed to promote new growth. Seeding takes many valuable nutrients, so removing dying flowers can reserve these precious nutrients for new blooms.

Vegetables need to be picked as well. Even if you do not plan on eating a veggie that did not quite turn out right or that got destroyed by insects, pick it anyway. It will deprive the plant of nutrients and water and can even prevent the plant from producing more vegetables. Pick vegetables as soon as they are ripe to avoid stunting the production of what you have left.

Add a layer of compost or peat moss to give your garden a mid-summer boost. Remove any weeds that have sprouted before they get a chance to seed. You can avoid breaking off roots by heavily watering the garden before you weed. If you do not want to get muddy, then use a small spade to weed. Dig deep enough to remove as much of the weed as possible.

This is the time when many plants get ravaged by pests. Japanese beetles, rabbits, slugs, potato beetles and more can chew up a lot of your foliage. These pests can eat up your vegetables or at least make your plants unsightly.

Try some natural pest control before resorting to chemical pesticides. Beer traps are a popular way of controlling slugs. Human hair mixed into the top layer of soil will keep rabbits out and also compost well. Potato beetles can be deterred by planting jalapeno peppers or horseradish between your potatoes. You can also cover the ground around the potato plants with hay, or encourage spiders and ladybugs to live around potato plants.

If you have Japanese beetles, you may have to battle them for a few years to get rid of them. Spread milky spore, or bacillus papillae all over your yard. The grubs will ingest the bacterium and die. Over the next couple of years, more grubs will ingest the bacterium and help spread the milky spore. Traps and other methods can sometimes attract more Japanese beetles without trapping them.

After removing dead flowers and withering limbs, clearing out weeds and combating pests, make sure that you water your garden often. Use a hose reel to make watering your garden an easy chore that you will not dread, even in the summer heat.