Gardening This Weekend: June 28, 2018
You’re probably not wanting to spend too many hours out in the heat working in your landscape and garden. I’ve taken the long list and pared it down to the most critical things to get done this weekend. Your plants are hoping you’ll scroll through them.
PLANT
• Crape myrtles while nurseries still have the best selections of colors and mature plant sizes.
• Annuals for color the balance of summer and through the fall. Best choices include copper plant, fire bush, purple fountaingrass, wax and Dragon Wing begonias, pentas, angelonias, sun-tolerant coleus, fanflowers, Cora periwinkles and moss rose. Buy plants that have been acclimated to full sun.
• Tomatoes and pumpkins for your fall vegetable gardens. (See related story this issue.) Stay with small and mid-sized varieties for best results. Don’t delay planting beyond first week of July or you’ll run out of time for a full harvest.
PRUNE
• Strongly growing shoots that extend beyond natural form of your shrubs. Avoid formal shearing – just remove the erratic twigs.
• Keep mowing lawn at recommended height. Raising mower does not improve summer durability.
• Spent flower stalks and seedheads from perennial gardens. However, do not prune crape myrtles to remove seedheads. It does not speed up second round of blooms.
FERTILIZE
• Bermuda lawns if it’s been more than 6 to 8 weeks since you last did. However, to minimize outbreaks of gray leaf spot do not apply nitrogen to St. Augustine in hot weather.
• Annual beds with high-nitrogen fertilizer to keep plants vigorous and performing to the maximum.
• Container gardens with water-soluble, high-nitrogen fertilizer weekly. Nutrients are leached out of soil with repeated waterings.
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Lacebugs turning leaves of pyracanthas, azaleas, boxwoods, Boston ivy and other shrubs and even trees tan. Look for black, waxy specks on backs of affected leaves. Contact insecticides work well, but you can also apply systemic insecticides for long-term prevention and control.
• Spot-treat (glyphosate-only herbicide) or hand-dig clumps of dallisgrass out of turf. There are no products to eliminate it in established lawns at consumer level. Make application of weedkiller spray directly to clumps. Avoid over-spray onto adjacent grass.
• Leafrollers tying leaves of redbuds, sweetgums, vinca groundcover, pyracanthas, cotoneasters and other landscape plants together. Systemic insecticide Imidacloprid gives best prevention, but it requires 2-3 weeks of lead time.