North Mississippi Gardening Tips
July/August 2011
Flowers
The oppressing heat typical of July could give the impression that if we are suffering. Surely there aren’t any flowering plants that can prosper. That’s not true. North Mississippi gardeners do have choices of tough, annual plants for summer heat. Good annuals for sunny areas include lantana, evolvulus, scaevola, portulaca, purslane, zinnia, periwinkle, cosmos, celosia, cleome and melampodium. All of these are heat and drought tolerant once established. Zinnia, cosmos, marigold, cleome and sunflower seed can be sown this month for fall bloom.
If the brown tips of your bearded iris foliage really annoy you, you can cut it back. I know one particularly persnickety gardener who cuts the brown off and then trims the foliage into a point to make it look perfect. I also know another gardener who just runs his mower over the whole shooting match. Either approach is all right, because by this month irises are in a state of semi-dormancy and are not growing to any degree. That’s the reason this is the recommended time to dig and divide these spring bloomers.
Don’t pinch your dahlias after July 1st or you might disrupt the bloom. Keep the slugs and snails off the elephant ears and caladiums by using bait or putting out shallow pans of stale beer.
Fruit
If your fruit trees (apple, pear, peach, plum) refuse to bear, there must be a reason. First, how old is your tree? Most dwarf fruit trees will bear their first crop the second or third season after planting. Standard size trees take longer: apples and pears, from 3 to 5 years; peaches and nectarines, about 2 or 3 years; cherries and plums, from 3 to 5 years. Has your tree bloomed? If a tree is growing in partial shade, rich soil or has been heavily fertilized, it often develops excessive branch growth at the expense of fruit production. Excessive pruning may also be the problem. Was it subject to cold damage? If the tree was subjected to freezing temperatures during bloom, this could have damaged the blooms or developing fruit. Is a pollinator variety present? Some fruit varieties cannot set fruit by their own pollen. Talk to a knowledgeable nurseryman or your county Extension office to find out which fruit tree varieties require pollinators. Should this be the problem, planting a pollinator tree will correct the problem. Any spraying done while your tree is in bloom could harm the bees. No bees, no pollination, no fruit!
Did it bear too heavily last season? Some varieties get into the habit of biennial bearing—big crop one-year, very little the next. Proper thinning of the fruit usually corrects this problem.
Trees and Shrubs
Don’t forget to take care of those trees and shrubs you planted this spring. This is a very critical time for these plants. Hot, dry weather can be very stressful for newly planted shrubs and trees that haven’t yet developed adequate root systems. Water these plants thoroughly each week if there is no significant rainfall. Providing a weekly soaking is preferable over frequent light sprinklings because soaking the soil deeply encourages roots to develop at that depth and this, in turn, makes the plant better able to withstand drought. A mulch of pine needles, pine bark, raked leaves, or similar materials will help keep the soil cool and conserve moisture. However, do not let the mulch pack against the trunks of your trees. Large trees may require a small levee around them to retain water long enough to soak in.
Vegetable and Herbs
Come on now be honest. How many of you staggered your planting dates of beans, corn and other crops so your harvest would be spaced out and more manageable? I thought so. You are frantically picking, snapping, shucking, slicing, dicing, canning and filling that deep freeze to capacity or you soon will be.
Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we can’t keep up with the harvest. If we would do what the experts say and seed successive crops over a period of weeks rather than planting every vegetable seed on the same day, we could have a prolonged, more manageable harvest.
I remember asking my Aunt Katie Mae one summer how her mushmelon crop did (Its not pronounced muskmelon where I come from.). Her answer was, “Really fine. They all got ripe at the same time and they all rotted at the same time.” One vegetable that seems to get ahead of us is zucchini squash. I bet you have a zucchini in your garden right now that is approaching the size of a wrestler’s leg. Do try to act rationally next spring and resist the urge to plant everything on the same day. Then you can serve as an example to the rest of us as you calmly and systematically harvest your garden while the rest of us are busting a gut trying to keep up.
By late this month heat-loving okra plants might be getting too tall to comfortably harvest. Cut half of the plants at about knee height. Continue harvesting the other half until the cut ones begin to bear again, and then cut off the others. This allows you to continuously harvest okra until frost without having to replant or use a stepladder to harvest.
By the way, did you know that it is an old gardener’s tale that you have to harvest okra every day for it to keep producing pods? This is not true, because okra that is grown for seed production never has a pod cut off and it sets about the same number of pods as the ones with pods cut off every day. Aren’t you proud to hear that? Now you won’t feel so guilty letting your okra pods get a foot long. Besides, who likes to harvest that itchy stuff every day anyway?
Lelia Scott Kelly, Ph.D., writes North Mississippi Gardening Tips monthly and is the state consumer horticulture specialist for Mississippi State University Extension Service. Her office is at the North Mississippi Research and Extension Center in Verona.