The Garden Gate

Garden tips for every month of the year!

June

Now that summer is truly here, our thoughts turn to flowers, green grass, and the joy of being outdoors. It seems that all of Mother Nature thinks that way too! That being the case, it is helpful to walk about and look at your lawn and gardens on a daily basis. Damage from insects seem to happen overnight, but if you are alert, use restraint and preventative measures, you can control them.

Our monthly gardening and planting calendar is as follows:

Flowers: Angelonia, begonias, bush daisy, butterfly plant, caladium, cat’s whiskers, celosia, coleus, coreopsis, Dahlberg daisy, ginger, goldenrod, impatiens, kalanchoe, lantana, lion’s ear, marigolds, melampodium, Mexican sunflower, moon flower, nierembergia, porterweed, pentas, periwinkle, Portulaca, purslane, salvia, showy primrose, shrimp plant, Stokes aster, sunflower, torenia, and zinnias.

Vegetables: Boniato, calabaza, chayote, cherry tomatoes, dasheen, malanga, okra, roselle, southern peas, Seminole pumpkin, sweet cassava, sweet potatoes, and yard-long beans.

Herbs: Anise, basil, bay laurel, chives, dill, ginger, marjoram, mint, oregano, sage, and thyme.

Bulbs: Achimenes, African iris, amaryllis, blackberry lily, caladiums, canna, crinum, crocosmia, day lily, eucharis lily, gladiolus, gloriosa lily, peacock ginger, society garlic, rain lily, and walking iris.

Did you know that over-watering and over-fertilizing your lawn can create a welcome mat for hungry bugs? Lawns that get daily watering might as well have a "Happy Hour" sign posted in the front yard. Watering each day, particularly for a short time, encourages a shallow root system since the roots do not have to grow as deep to obtain water. These shallow roots make a very attractive lunch for hungry bugs. Watering daily also encourages disease and less drought tolerance, particularly if you experience high humidity in the summer. Forcing grass to need daily watering will ensure that if your water is restricted due to drought, your lawn will be the first in the neighborhood to suffer.

Plant or grass damage can differ widely depending on the pest. Deciding what causes the problem will help you choose the best control. Spot or yellowing discoloration can be a sign of insects but the major sign to look for is chewing or speckled leaves which indicates insect troubles. Small green, black, orange, or pink insects called aphids, can cluster on new leaves, which will cause them to pucker and drop. On azalea leaves, look for tiny colored dots on the bottom that leave the tops speckled. This may be a sign of lacebugs or spider mites. Using a horticultural spray will get rid of aphids, lacebugs, and spider mites quickly. You may need to repeat application. Stunted rose buds or flowers are usually a sign of thrip, a silvery insect that is almost too tiny to see. A good to prevent these hungry insects from making snacks out of your roses is Bayer’s All-in-One, a combination of three systemics, fertilizer, insecticides, and fungicide in one product. Good for six weeks, this 9-14-9 analysis can be found at most garden centers.

For those vegetable garden areas which won’t be planted again until August, especially where disease prone vegetables such as tomatoes might be planted, consider using the sun to sterilize the soil for you. This works well during the hottest part of the year (July and August). It’s called "solar sterilization."

Process One: Pull up all vegetables trying to get out as many of their roots as possible.

• Rototill the area to be treated to 8-10 inches and irrigate.
• Place a clear (better than black) plastic sheet large enough to cover the area of the tilled spot and weigh it down at the edges. Seal it in place by watering over top of it to drive out most of the air under the sheet. You now have what amounts to a "solar water heater." The soil is dark colored and wet (so it will absorb heat) and the clear plastic allows the suns rays to penetrate to heat the wet soil high enough to kill most pathogens and many weed seeds to a depth of several inches (perhaps up to 4-5).

Leave this in place for 2-3 weeks and go to process two:

Process Two: Remove the plastic sheet.

• Rototill the treated soil and then form your beds.
• Cover again the area with plastic as before.

Leaving this in place for 2-3 weeks (or until you are ready to plant), you are now sterilizing the soil a little deeper (because you mixed it with upper layers treated with lower ones not), and because you don’t have to form the beds that would bring untreated soil to the surface, you have as much as 5-8 inches of fairly pathogen free soil, which allows small plants (seedlings) a practically sterile media to grow in. As a plant gets older, it begins to build tolerance/resistance to many soil pathogens, so that in fact you have "brought time" for the young vegetable to get stronger. Solar Sterilization - a good thing to do in Florida soils before the fall garden is planted!

When you are walking your gardens, run you hands over the top of your shrubs. Do little white fluttery insects rise up? If so, you may have whiteflies. They are very common in the summertime, especially with crape myrtles and citrus trees. The black sooty mold, which is left by the whiteflies, will wash off easily with a water hose. This is honeydew, which is excreted by the insect. It becomes moldy and prevents the leaves from receiving sunlight and oxygen, and will cause the plant to become stressed.

Are the leaves slimy, or can the stains be wiped off? This could be a sign of disease. Disease comes for many reasons such as poor air circulation, stress, over-watering, bad landscaping practices, and humidity. Using fungicides or pesticides as preventative measures is a waste of time and money. It is best to be aware of your lawn and shrubs, so that at the first sign of trouble, you will be able to catch it quickly with a recommended fungicide. Please don’t use homemade recipes. They are not evaluated for use in the landscape and you can harm your plants and soil even more than the disease or insects. Pick up all diseased leaves and branches and throw them away. Do not discard them into a compost pile, especially any roses with black spots. The spores for the fungus are airborne carried and can re-infect your bushes if you leave them on the ground under the plants. Also, if you plan on using a commercial or organic spray, read the instructions carefully. Adding more chemicals than necessary may do more harm than good. question. If you have a question regarding the safety of a chemical or directional use, contact your local Extension office or look at the back of the product for a toll-free number that you can call for assistance.

Remember if you use organic or chemical products, you also run the risk of hurting your beneficial bugs and butterflies. If you would like to have the beneficial insects to help you maintain a pest-free environment , patience is a virtue. Ladybugs will arrive in droves to eat your aphids if you can wait. There are also parasitic wasps that will attack caterpillars, given enough time to arrive on the scene. Praying mantises are very useful in the garden, as are earwigs. Earwigs are amazing, under-appreciated insects that can devouring mole crickets and eat up to fifty chinch bugs a night ! Be aware that if you see earwigs, it may be a sign that you have lawn-eating bugs too!

Tasks and reminders to complete this month include:

• Operate watering system manually and only as needed during the rainy season.
• Apply only iron to your lawn to re-green most of them. Do not fertilize your lawn again until September.
• Sharpen mower blades frequently.
• Hurricane season begins June1; check trees for weak ordering limbs and trunks.
• Keep you bedding plants growing well, fertilizing every 4-6 weeks with a 15-2-15 or 15-4-15 at the rate of 1-3 pounds per 100 square feet of bed.
• Feed vegetable plantings every 3-4 weeks with 15-0-15 fertilizer at the rate of ½ to 1 oz. per 10 foot of row.
• Pinch the tops of lanky shoots to cause branching.
• Give house plants a rest outdoors in the shade.

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