Home Gardening

North Mississippi Gardening Tips
June, 2001

Notes

The long, hot days of summer arrive with this month. In most Southern gardens June provides the most abundant flowers. Along with this prolific growth and color come abundant garden chores to do. Go get a glass of lemonade, find a spot in the shade and read about all the chores that are piling up while you are "dilly-dallying."

For a lot of families June is vacation month. Here are a few tips to keep your yard and gardens looking good when you return from that jaunt to the beach or mountains.

1. Be nice and sweet to your neighbors. They can pick up your mail, feed the pets, water the plants, and watch your house. You may even get them to mow the yard for you in exchange for all the fresh veggies they want from your garden while you are gone.

2. Get everything in good shape before you leave. Mowing, trimming, weeding, watering and putting out fresh mulch to keep the soil from drying out are all important. Group all your potted plants together and put them in the shade. A well-kept yard won't tip off the hooligans and burglars that you're away and there won't be as much to do in the yard when you get back.

3. Harvest all you can from your vegetable garden. Weed, cultivate and stake anything that needs it. Tell your helpful neighbors to harvest what they want. This is twofold-it pleases your neighbors and frequent harvesting keeps your veggies productive.

4. It may be worth your while to invest in a battery-operated water timer to do some of the watering automatically while your away. These attach to a faucet and are relatively cheap- $15-25 depending on how fancy you get. All you do is program the timer and it will run on the day or days you wish. It can be set to run a drip system or on any common watering device such as a sprinkler or soaker hose.

Annual Flowers and Vines

Because of our long growing season, it is not too late to continue to seed summer annuals like zinnias, marigolds, cosmos, spider flower and others this month. There is plenty of time for these annuals to mature and produce flowers. Annual vines can also continue to be seeded this month. Remember to water these young plants during the dry, hot summer.

To keep annual plants looking neat and blooming well, remove spent blossoms and yellow foliage periodically. All the annuals listed above would benefit from this grooming. To fill those empty spaces in your borders purchase summer-flowering annual transplants in four-inch or quart pots from your favorite garden center. These may look small but will quickly fill the area. Good choices would be ageratum, coleus, geranium and salvia.

Aquatic Gardens

Be sure and check the bud atop the root of water lilies or lotus before you purchase. If it is broken or damaged the plant cannot grow. Lotus are particularly vulnerable.

Bulbs

By the middle of this month it is safe to remove the yellow and dying foliage of your spring flowering bulbs like tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths. Your patience in letting the foliage mature and die in it's own time will assure you of energy-packed bulbs that will reward you with strong, vigorous blooms next spring.

Container Gardens

The secret of succcessful containers lies in regular feeding and watering. Check containers daily and water them whenever the potting mix feels dry. During our hot summers, containers in full bloom may need watering twice a day. Hanging baskets pose the biggest problems. Being high up, you cannot always reach them easily to watet. When you do, they drip all over you, and if they dry out badly the water just bounces off the surface without soaking in. Fortunately, there are various products and devices to help with these problems. If you forget to feed regularly, use slow-release fertilizer pills, granules or sachets. If watering is a problem, try self-watering pots or add a water-retaining gel to the soil before planting. Some potting mixes now come with the water-retaining agent already mixed in. If you have several awkward baskets to water, it might be worth investing in a long-handled, hooked, watering attachment for your hose.

Fruit

June is harvest month for many of our home fruits. Your luscious tree fruit is also a free lunch for the thieving birds out there. It is really an insult to me when that annoying mockingbird goes from peach to peach taking one peck out of each. I don't care if he is our state bird-I want to wring his little pecking neck! I have tried everything-fake snakes, owls, flashing tape, that huge balloon with the big evil eye on it, rattling pie pans, nets, etc. None of these are surefire. The best long-term solution in my mind is to overplant and let the birds have a peck or two. I've taught my children to eat around the peck or I just cut it out. That way all God's critters (including me and my family) have plenty.

Blackberries are among the home fruits you will enjoy harvesting this month. Nobody makes blackberry cobbler like my mama. After the blackberry harvest remove old fruiting canes. They are going to die anyway and early removal makes room for the young canes that will bear next year's crop to grow more vigorously. Be sure to fertilize the young canes. It is also a good idea to prune the top of the developing canes back by several inches to encourage lateral branch development. This will increase the number of fruiting branches for a bountiful harvest next summer.

Slowly soak fruit trees and bushes if there has been no significant rain in a week. This is especially important for fruit plants that have been newly transplanted this winter or spring.

Groundcovers and Lawns

You can continue to seed warm-season grasses such as Bermuda and zoysia. Keep these summer grasses well fertilized with a high-nitrogen lawn fertilizer.

Be careful not to cut your fescue (cool-season) lawn too low during this hot month. While summer grasses respond to low cutting heights, the weakened fescue lawn cannot tolerate this during hot, dry weather. The best way to help your fescue lawn through this period is to keep it well watered and properly cut.

Perennial Flowers and Vines

The garden is full of perennial blooms now. Take the time to frequently cut a bouquet to bring inside and enjoy. It will lift your spirits. Coming home from work to a house "freshened up" with pretty flowers from the garden never fails to cheer me up.

The best time to cut flowers is in the early morning, but I have been known to go out at any time the mood strikes me and cut a few stems to take to work, give to a friend or just pop in a little glass and set by my kitchen sink. When cutting flowers it is a good idea to take a bucket of water with you to put the cut stems in while you wander all over your yard trying to make up your mind what to cut next.

To keep those blooms coming for many bouquets, don't forget to deadhead (removal of spent blossoms) your perennials. Cannas, stokesia, coreopsis, catmint are a few that will reward you with additional blooms if deadheaded.

Trees and Shrubs

June is the month to begin taking softwood cuttings. This type of cutting is taken from current season's growth. Softwood cuttings should be from new growth that is firm, mature and slightly brittle. To test the branch tip to see if it is at the right stage of growth bend it to about a 90-degree angle. If it snaps instead of bending, it is right for make a softwood cutting.

Plants that root easily from softwood cuttings include azalea, aucuba, crapemyrtle, boxwood, camellia, Chinese holly, English ivy, Japanese holly, photinia and privet. Go by your local Extension office and pick up a copy of Information Sheet 207, " Propagating Plants For the Home Landscape" for details on how to take cuttings.

Vegetables and Herbs

By this month we are harvesting irish potatoes, bulb onions, cabbage, broccoli and other early vegetables. By mid-month you early bird gardeners may be enjoying your first "mess" of green beans and plenty of fried green tomatoes-possibly a red tomato or two.

Don't worry if the first flowers fall off your yellow squash plants without producing squash. These are usually male flowers. You can tell the difference because male flowers have a green stem. The female flowers have a little squash at the base of the flower that develops after the flower is pollinated.

Don't forget to sidedress your vining crops like cucumbers, muskmelon, watermelon, pumpkins, gourds, and winter squash, when they first begin to "run." A general recommendation for sidedress applications of ammonium nitrate for vegetables is 1 pint of 34-0-0 (ammonium nitrate) per 100 feet of row or three and one-third tablespoons per 10 feet of row.

Lelia Scott Kelly, Ph.D., writes North Mississippi Gardening Tips monthly and is a Horticulture Specialist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service. Her office is in the North Mississippi Research & Extension Center, Verona.