Keep Your Garden Growing

As the days start heating up, the needs of your garden begin changing. Proper maintenance and care is needed during these hot months to ensure lush gardens and abundant crops. Mark and Sue Adams have provided valuable gardening tips below to help you keep your garden growing.

Harvesting Herbs

• Cut from the tops and you’re actually “pinching them back” and encouraging bushier growth. Cilantro bolted? Cut it back!
• Don’t forget about gathering herbs for drying. Go to adamsfarms.com for information on drying and storing herbs.

In the vegetable garden

• Miss a day in the garden and you may find a giant zucchini! Veggies taste better when young and tender.
• Early July – you can still plant fall vegetables like broccoli and lettuce.
• Did you know that after the broccoli head is harvested, the plant continues to grow side shoots?
• Tomatoes – spray or dust with copper to prevent blight. Go to adamsfarms.com for tips on growing tomatoes

Flowers

• Keep those flowers coming – Deadheading and removing spent flowers encourages new blooms
• Baskets & containers looking tired and “leggy”? Treat them to a “salon day.” Give the plants a good trim – this will invigorate growth. Add fertilizer, and in a couple of weeks you’ll have lush plants with beautiful blooms.
• Annual and perennial flowers can be planted at any time to fill in blank spaces in the garden.
• Are the leaves of your petunias and million bells pale? Adding an iron supplement will green them up in a week.

Watering

• Water thoroughly. A light sprinkling will just tease the leaves. Check those containers. Hot weather dries them out quickly.
• Newly planted trees and shrubs need 1 to 2 thorough soakings per week and lawns need 1 to 1.1/2 inches of water a week.

Fertilizing

• Lightly fertilize long-season plants such as onions, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant.
• Containers – fast growing annual flowers are as hungry as teenage boys. Add a little more slow release fertilizer and supplement with liquid fertilizer about once a week while watering.
• Don’t forget the houseplants. Fertilizing ensures vigorous growth.

Spring Flowering Shrubs

• Finish pruning spring-flowering shrubs by mid July.

Weeding

• Weeds compete for water and soil nutrients.  Pull when the soil is damp and mulch, mulch, mulch!

Take a tour

• Summer is a great time to harvest new ideas. Take advantage of local garden tours, public gardens or parks to discover tips and tricks you can use in your own backyard garden. Here in the Hudson Valley we have Vanderbilt Gardens, Beatrix Farrand Garden at Bellefield, Kykuit, Montgomery Place, and Bannerman Island.