Sanhedrin Nursery – Garden Blog

• Cover cherry trees with bird netting to protect your crop.

• Roses bloom all summer with their abundant flowers in so many different colors. Choose some now when you can see their lovely flowers.

• Feed rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias with an acid plant food to encourage lush growth. Pinch or prune to promote full, dense growth.

• Fertilize container plants every 10 to 14 days with a liquid fertilizer. Pinch off faded blossoms and they will keep blooming all summer for you.

• Red, white and blue petunias, verbena or combinations of these with lobelia, geraniums, impatiens and salvia will make a nice display for the Fourth of July.

Plant a Great Garden!

It’s not too late to plant a great garden. If the weather and circumstances have prevented you from getting your summer garden planted, take heart: there’s still time to do that.”¨ While it is true that fruiting plants like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants need to be set out now, many summer vegetables will grow even more quickly from seed planted in early summer when the soil has warmed up and is teeming with life. You’ll be surprised how fast seeds will germinate and explode with growth when planted now.

Plant seeds of beans to grow up a teepee; plant a hill of summer squash or cucumbers by poking half a dozen seeds in a circle; and plant a row of beets, radishes or carrots. Start a crop of salad greens in a spot with bright light but out of the full, hot sun. You’ll get a variety of lettuces and other tasty greens to spice up summer salads.

You can plant heat- and sun-loving herbs like basil, oregano, thyme and sage from seed but keep the seed beds well moistened as they germinate and begin to grow. Plant cilantro and parsley where they get shade from the hot sun. You can also set out starts of many kinds of herbs.Ӭ Even if you already have beans, squash, chard, carrots and basil in the ground, June is a fine time to start a second crop to have ready for a late summer harvest when the first crops of these staples have finished up.

In July you can start seeds for fall crops like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, and cabbage. Toward the end of summer, start seeds of spinach, Swiss chard, lettuces, radishes and Asian greens like pak choi.

You still have time to plant flowers, too! Petunias, marigolds, cosmos, impatiens, zinnias and dianthus are just beginning to bloom and will continue through the long hot days of summer. Alyssum, lobelia and moss rose are attractive border plants that bloom continuously up to frost. They all grow very quickly in warm weather, so there’s still plenty of time to fill up your flower beds and containers with colorful summer annuals.

June and July are also good times to start seeds or set out plants of perennials to bloom next spring. Most perennials need to establish themselves for a season before they are ready to bloom. By planting lupines, Shasta daisies, Iberis, blanket flowers and forget-me-nots this summer, you’ll be able to enjoy their lovely flowers next spring and summer.

Don’t be discouraged if you’re getting a late start this year. The ground is warm now and it’s time to plant a great garden!

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 18th, 2011 at 11:24 am and is filed under Garden Article, Willits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.