North Mississippi Gardening Tips
July/August 2009
Flowers
Keep all faded flowers pinched off marigolds, zinnias, cosmos, salvia, and geraniums. Revive leggy petunias by cutting them back to a height of 6 to 8 inches. Then feed with a water soluble 20-20-20 according to the label directions. The petunias should be flowering again in two to three weeks. For a neat look and blooms all summer on cannas, remove each flower stalk as soon as all its blossoms are spent. Just cut it back to right above the uppermost leaf, and a new flower stalk will sprout below the cut. Keep your herbs mulched to preserve soil moisture, keep down weeds, and prevent rain from splashing soil onto the foliage. Continue regularly harvesting herbs for fresh use, as well as for drying, freezing, or vinegars. You can cut back basil as much as a third to half its height. Then to encourage new growth for fall harvest, feed with water soluble 20-20-20 according to the instructions on the label. Keep the flower stalks pinched out to encourage thick leafy growth. It’s time to stop pinching your chrysanthemums. Otherwise, you’ll remove flowerbuds, which begin setting in the short days of late summer and early fall. You can expect mums to begin flowering about eight weeks after their final pinch.
Vegetables
Blooms may drop from bush beans, peppers, and tomatoes during the heat of summer. When the weather is cooler, the plants will hold their blossoms again. In the meantime, reduce some of the effect of the heat by watering regularly and applying a 3-inch layer of mulch. Plan your fall garden now. If you don’t have enough seeds left over from the spring garden, place an order for beets, carrots, Chinese cabbage, collards, edible-pod peas, English peas, kale, kohlrabi, lettuce, radishes and spinach and Swiss chard. All can be directly sown in the garden.
Shrubs and Trees
Give your shrubs a summer feeding, applying 5-10-10 at the rate of 2 pounds per 100 square feet. Broadcast the fertilizer under the plant canopy and water it in. Wash or brush off any spilled fertilizer on the leaves, as it may burn them. Summer blossoms on roses can be somewhat spindly, but continue your regular fungicide sprays and you’ll be rewarded this fall with lots of large blooms. Cutting back on the need to water established plants is a goal of many homeowners who are trying to reduce water bills during this recession. Selecting shrubs that are tolerant of dry soil conditions is a major consideration for these homeowners when purchasing a new shrub for the landscape. The table below lists some shrubs that can take the dry conditions.
These shrubs, once established, can handle drought conditions and drop nary a leaf! These are the ones to purchase for those of us who do not like to water or for folks wanting to cut back on their water bills.
Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana)
Flowering quince (Chaenomeles speciosa)
Butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii)
Althea (Hibiscus syriacus)
Spireas (Spirea spp.)
Chokeberry (Aronia arbutifolia)
Forsythia (Forsythia x intermedia)
Cotoneasters (Cotoneaster spp.)
Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius)
Needle palm (Rhapidophyllum hystrix)
Yaupon hollies (Ilex vomitoria)
Glossy abelia (Abelia grandiflora)
Fruits
Prune your raspberries and blackberries each summer, after the fruit has been picked. Be careful as the canes can be very thorny. Since the canes that bore fruit this year will soon die, cut them off near the ground level. This allows vigorous new canes to develop for next year’s harvest. You’ll know when your apples are ready for harvest by the change in skin color and by their stems. When ripe, both red and yellow selections lose their greenish cast on the side facing the ground. However, the stems offer a more reliable sign of ripeness. On ripe apples, the stem will separate easily from the spur (short twig to which the fruit is attached) when you gently twist the fruit in an upward direction.
Lawn and groundcovers
Hot weather takes its toll on lawns. Your best defenses against damage are proper watering and mowing. Raise the cutting height of your lawnmower during the summer. The longer blades of grass will provide a little extra shade for the roots of the grass. Thick turf also acts as insulation, helping retain moisture. Keep common Bermuda at 2 to 2 ½ inches and the hybrids at 1 to 1 ½ inches. Let bluegrass grow to 2 inches tall and tall fescue to 3 inches. Avoid seeding or sprigging warm-season grasses in late summer or early fall because they may be killed by cold weather and are sure to develop a weed problem. If you have to plant now, sod as soon as possible in July or early August to get the plant settled before they go dormant with the first frost.
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.