Garden Tips for July

Planting

• Order seeds for cool season vegetables like broccoli, carrots, kale, and radishes.
• Spruce up doorstep or patio containers with water-wise succulents and trailing sedums.
  
  

Maintenance

• Check container plants daily.
• As temperatures rise, adjust your automatic irrigation system to water more often if allowed by your water district.
• Pinch the top pair of chrysanthemum shoots no longer than 5 inches to keep plants healthy.
• Cut canna stems to the ground as they finish flowering. New stems will continue to appear.
• Dig and divide overcrowded bulbs when the foliage dies off.
• Deadhead daylilies, roses, and other bloomers as they finish flowering.
• Fertilize roses.
• Cut back lavender after flowering to promote a second bloom.
• Prune wisteria to increase flowering next spring. Cut each shoot back to within 6 inches of main branches.
• Trim faded crape myrtle flowers for more fall bloom.
• Harvest vegetables promptly to encourage continued production.
• Cut spent berry canes to the ground; tie up and fertilize new canes.
• Monitor and deeply irrigate fruit and ornamental trees every other week to ensure root zone is constantly moist (soil should be moist to a depth of two feet).
• Prune deciduous fruit trees as soon as they are done producing to help keep trees smaller and fruit within arms’ reach.
  
  

Pest and disease control

• Pick up dropped fruit to prevent brown rot and reduce driedfruit beetles.
• Control codling moth to protect apple and pear fruit from this worm.
• Clean around trees.