Home Gardening

Central Mississippi Garden Calendar

June

Planning on a Vacation

Vacations in the middle of the summer can mean coming back to a colorless landscape. Getting water to your plants while you're gone will be essential. Here are a few tips. A day or two before the trip, bunch all outside container plants and hanging baskets together in a shaded spot or covered patio. Place the planters very close together to help them conserve moisture. Water thoroughly the day before you leave. It won't hurt for there to be water in the saucer reservoir, which is not normally recommended. Have a friend come by every couple of days to check on them and water if necessary. Water the landscape plants and lawn prior to leaving if the weather has been dry and no rain is expected.

Make sure that the flowerbeds have 3 inches of mulch to help conserve moisture. Mulch also keeps the soil temperature cooler and discourages weed growth. There are many different types of mulching material available: peanut or pecan hulls, newspaper, pine straw or bark, shredded hardwood, gravel or pebbles and even shredded rubber. In general, mulch should be 3 - 6 inches deep and readily available if you need to get more.

Flowers

Most of your annual and perennial flowerbed plantings should be done. Use the larger, 4-inch sized container plants to fill in the gaps. Don't overlook those empty plastic and clay containers in the back of the shed. Pull them out, clean them up and fill them up with colorful annuals for enjoyment on the patio. Pinch off spent blooms and prune back spindly plants to get more blooms or a tighter shaped plant. Apply a liquid or hose-on application of fertilizer to boost growth of slow performers. Regular fertilization of bedding and container plants is often necessary throughout the year. Remember to fertilizer in moderation because over doing it causes loads of new growth but few flowers.

Perennials are harder to get established when the weather gets hot. Buy only the healthiest, largest transplants (1 gallon or larger) with a good root system, but not pot bound. Disturb the roots as little as possible when transplanting and keep it well watered for a month. Do not try to split or transplant perennials growing in the ground until the weather cools down in mid-October. The next 3 months are very tough for plants. It will either be too wet or too dry. Helpful Hint: Plant in raised beds and cover soil with mulch. The raised beds help drain water away, preventing root rot and mulch helps retain moisture between watering.

Cut Flowers

Select blooms that are not fully opened for a longer indoor life. In the afternoon, cut the flower stem at a slant with a sharp knife or clippers. When cutting roses, clip the stem just above the second five-leaflet leaf from the bottom of the stem. This keeps the shrub blooming longer with large, fully shaped roses. Remove the leaves from the lower half of the stem then crush the end of the stems and place in warm water. Do not put the arrangement in direct sunlight. Re-cut the stems and change the water every two or three days.

Pest Control

Insects are out in full force. Caterpillars skeltonizing or chewing holes in leaves are easily controlled with Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), acephate (Orthene) or carbaryl Sevin). White flies are very difficult to control when populations are high. The adults are tiny and white in color. Mix some granular, systemic insecticide (Di-Syston) with the soil around the plant and then water. The plant absorbs the insecticide and any insect feeding on the plant will be poisoned. For a contact kill, spray the underside of the leaves with Orthene, Diazinon, Malathion or dimethoate (Cygon). Aphids suck the sap from plants and are easy to kill. The problem is that more individuals show up, requiring additional applications of insecticide. Treat the soil with Di-Syston and spray with Malathion or Orthene. Spider mites love dry, hot weather. For control, spray with dicofol (Kelthane), endosulfan (Thiodan), Malathion, Diazinon or Cygon. Snails, slugs and pill bugs do there damage under the cover of darkness. The best control is broadcasting metaldehyde bait and lightly watering it in at dusk. This method gets overnight results.

Bulbs

Pull out or cut off brown foliage from your spring bloomers (daffodil, hyacinth). Dig up and divide spring flowering bulbs every 3 or 4 years to prevent overcrowding and fewer blooms. Transplant actively growing bulbs in containers. Dry, unsprouted bulbs are probably not worth bothering with unless they are fall bloomers (spider lily, naked ladies). The natural result of flowering is for a seedpod to be produced. Remove the old flower stalks or seedpods as soon as possible. They are basically wasting the plants energy, unless of course you want to grow some from seed. Plants grown from seed take 3 years before they are old enough to bloom.

Fruit

Harvesting strawberries has finished and your patch needs some attention. Thin out the entire patch so that each plant has at least 6 inches of clear growing space surrounding it. Sprinkle fertilizer directly on the row of plants, when they are free of moisture (preventing burn) and then brush the fertilizer from the leaves with a soft bristled broom before watering. Cover the bare dirt areas with newspaper and then mulch with pine straw. This will keep down the weeds and conserve moisture.

Mississippi grown, fresh blueberries are hitting the market and very plentiful. Pick more than you can currently eat and freeze the rest in pint size bags. It's best not to wash the berries before freezing. Blueberry bushes make great landscape plants. They bloom in the spring, give fruit in early summer, make a nice green hedge throughout the summer and then the leaves turn maroon in the fall. Always plant more than one variety for improved pollination.

Thinning out the fruit on your apple or pear trees may be necessary this year. Some trees are really loaded. Two fruit per cluster is more than enough for all your fresh fruit and canning needs. Removing excess fruit by hand ensures that those remaining will be of good size, shape and color.

Lawns

Four types of grasses are commonly grown in Mississippi: bermudagrass, centipedegrass, St. Augustinegrass and zoyiagrass. Only bermudagrass types are used on ball fields and golf courses. It recovers the fastest from abuse. It can be seeded or sodded. In a yard situation, bermudagrass is limited to sunny areas. Centipedegrass and St. Augustinegrass are the most prevalent home lawn grasses. Zoyiagrass will generally be in only one or two lawns per town. In June, lawns may begin to show signs of disease or insect problems. All grasses are susceptible but the degree of damage depends mainly upon how quickly you react with corrective action, i.e. spraying, watering, liming, etc. Be on the look out for chinch bugs in St. Augustine lawn. Discolored, yellowish / brown spots that are in open sunlight several hours a day may be chinch bug damage. The chinch bug seldom attacks grass in the shade.

Trees and Shrubs

Finish trimming back spring flowering shrubs. Cuttings taken from ornamental plants may be rooted this month. This includes azalea, forsythia, althea, deutzia, mock orange, euonymus, camellia, hydrangea, jasmine, mahonia, pyracantha, sweet shrub and weigela. The cuttings should be 4 to 6 inches of the current years growth. For better rooting, dip the cutting in a rooting hormone before sticking in the media. June and early July is the time to prune evergreen trees and shrubs to maintain size and overall shape. Evergreen plant cuttings may also be propagated this month.

Check for split bark caused by late winter freezes. Cut back all damaged or dead branches. This will stimulate new bud growth. Inspect plants weekly for insects and keep diseases under control.

Donna Hamlin Beliech is the writer of Central Mississippi Garden Calendar monthly. She's a self described "dirty-handed gardener" and avid seed saver. She lives in Brandon and is the Area Extension Horticulturist for six counties in Central Mississippi.