The vegetable garden is planted and growing like gangbusters. I’ve been harvesting snow and snap peas for a few weeks and have had a couple of meals with them (yum!). The lettuce is in full bounty and I have more than I can eat at this point. I’ve reseeded lettuce for future growth in with the peppers and will reseed again when I harvest the whole heads from the lettuce patch. I plan to use a shade cloth over the lettuce to hopefully prevent bolting over the summer. This is the first time I’ve tried this and I’ll have to report back on whether it was successful or not. The pepper and eggplant are smaller than I’d like to see at this point in the year. I’m hoping that warmer weather will induce more growth! The herbs are flourishing (I have them in barrels plus basil planted among the tomatoes & peppers). A harvest of these is in order soon otherwise they will go to seed and no longer produce!
So what are the weekly garden tasks?
Neem application
About once a week I apply neem to all the specimens which have exhibited problems with pests or fungus. I have one garden where the slugs abound, so I always apply neem, weekly, to the hosta specimens in that garden and it works great. I also apply it to the Shasta daisies for the same reason. I get fungus on phlox, and something just loves to eat my butterfly bush, so I use it there as well. Last year my common purple clematis developed a fungus, so this year I apply the neem to it on a weekly basis. I also spray my oriental lilies every week to fight against the lily leaf beetle. So far I’ve only seen one! Early in the season I applied a neem drench to the whole area where the lilies would grow & I think this was one of the best defenses (it kills the bugs overwintering in the ground). And of course all roses appear to benefit from the weekly treatment.
In the vegetable garden I spray the lettuce (slugs, ugh!), green beans & peppers (who knows what munches on them?), and the tomatoes. Some people believe you should wait until there’s a problem before spraying neem. I’ve found that by then it’s too late and weekly prevention is worth it.
Copper Oxide treatment
My Carefree Beauty rosebush was attacked with a fungus which caused yellowing leaves. So I tried copper oxide with rotenone as a foliar spray in addition to the neem. Copper Oxide is an organic fungicide and the rotenone is an organic insecticide. This worked really well in controlling the fungus (the rose bush still has it but it’s controllable), and I’m finding that there are few Japanese beetles (though that could be because they haven’t yet hatched!). The garden phlox also gets a fungus with browning leaves from the bottom up, so I cleaned out the bottom leaves affected as much as I could, then applied the same copper oxide spray. It appears to have controlled the fungus – again it’s still there (sigh), but under control. I plan to use the same strategy on my tomato plants should the blight affect them.
Copper Oxide doesn’t need to be applied every week. About every 5-10 days depending on the problem, and after it rains. I’ve only applied it 2 or 3 times so far and that seems to have done the job.
Garlic spray
I’ve begun spraying the squash with garlic spray in the hope that the squash vine bora will not attack. You can buy garlic spray at your local garden center, usually or on-line This is the first time I’ve tried it, so the jury is still out on that!
Deadhead & Pinch back
What is deadheading? Well for those who don’t know, it’s the removal of spent flowers from specimens. Not only does it make the garden look neat, but those specimens which flower over a long period or repeat blooms, will flower more and for longer if they’re deadheaded. The reason for this is that the plant expends energy producing blooms, and when the blooms fade, it continues to do so (for seed production). If you remove the dead flower heads, the plant produces wants to produce more flowers (all in the name of seed production). I try and deadhead every week. Sometimes I do it more often depending on how much time I have and whether I need to find relief in my garden! I find it satisfying.
You also want to pinch back mums, asters, Montauk daisies, and sedum (like Autumn Joy). The reason to pinch these back is that they will grow more dense. The Montauk daisy will brown from the bottom up and get leggy if not pinched back. The sedum will flop over when it blooms in the fall if not pinched back. Asters & mums are full and less leggy when pinched back. So don’t be afraid to pinch!
As far as other late spring tasks are concerned, now is the time to put down the late spring fertilizer on the lawn (I used Organica kelp booster (step 2)). This is also the time to trim broad-leaf evergreens like azalea and rhododendron. You want to trim the soft tissue growth if you want to keep the size under control (not at all if you don’t care). Note that you want to cut back no more than 1/3 of the bush otherwise it may suffer. If you wait too long to trim, the bushes will set the buds for next years flowering; trimming them at that point will mean no flowers next year. Other bushes can be trimmed at this time as well. I haven’t yet trimmed my forsythia, I know, I know, I’m late on that one. But sometimes you can only do what you have time for!
So once all of that is done, and between the weekly tasks, you can relax and enjoy your garden! I know that I do 🙂
Happy Gardening!
Susan