Sanhedrin Nursery – Garden Blog

• Roses have more flowers all summer long than any other shrub. Plant them in a sunny location and feed monthly for continuous blooms.

• Cut back leggy annuals by half and feed to encourage a longer bloom season.

• Impatiens and begonias will give you instant color in shady areas and continue blooming right through the fall.

• Trim grapevines to allow more sun to reach the fruit and sweeten the grapes, if they are being shaded heavily by the foliage.

• Divide Oriental poppies and bearded iris now. Add some bonemeal in the bottom of the hole when you replant them.

Trees for Summertime Livin’

Trees are never appreciated more than in the summer when their welcome shade provides a cool escape from the brutal sun. Trees provide many benefits including beauty, wildlife habitat and increased property values. They can also save you money by reducing your cooling bill in the summer and your heating bill in the winter.

Shade trees act as evaporative coolers in the summer time. A column of warm air rises up through the tree causing a slight breeze at ground level. This gentle air movement makes the shade under trees much more pleasant than the shade from buildings.

In the summer, heat enters the house through the walls and the roof, but the most heat enters directly through the windows. Heat builds up during the day and homes become the most uncomfortable in the late afternoon. Walls shaded by trees are generally 15 degrees cooler than unshaded walls on a hot summer day.

In our climate, winter heating is a much greater expense than summer cooling. Winter sunlight through south-facing windows can be an important factor in heating. Branches and twigs of bare trees block 20 to 50 percent of the sunlight passing through them.

For energy conservation, and creature comfort, trees should be planted where they will give the most shade to the house in the summer and the least shade in the winter. Trees planted to the west or southwest of the house are more effective than those planted on the south side.

Planting trees that grow to 25 feet or more toward the west side of the house will shade western windows during June, July and August. This will reduce air conditioning needs and increase comfort in non-air conditioned homes. Since the sun is at a lower angle in the wintertime, these trees won’t block warm, midday sun coming from the south.

Maple trees are some of our best shade trees. They provide shade and beauty with a minimum of messiness. ‘October Glory’ red maple grows to a height of 40–50′, providing dense shade. In late fall, the dark green leaves burst into shades of orange and red.

Catalpa is a large tree with showy white flowers that attract hummingbirds, followed by long bean-like seed pods. The large, heart-shaped leaves provide considerable shade from the canopy that grows to 40 ft. tall and 20 ft. wide.

If you have a moist location, nothing is more beautiful than a graceful weeping willow. It is a very fast-growing tree and can block an unpleasant view in just a few years. The soft green, pendulous branches are very beautiful.

Chinese pistache is one of our toughest trees. Though irregular in form when young, they grow into magnificent, round-headed trees that have outstanding fall color. It makes a beautiful shade tree at 30 feet tall and wide.

Sycamores are large, elegant trees that are tolerant of heat, drought and poor soil. With large, maple-shaped leaves and attractive peeling bark, they are a mainstay of the urban landscape. The variety ‘Bloodgood’ is disease resistant and will provide lots of summer shade.
Consider your shade tree needs now to enhance your outdoor living areas.

• Check traps for codling moths and replace pheromones to continue catching damaging moths and reduce wormy apples.

• Roses need water and fertilizer to keep blooming well throughout the summer. Watch for pests and treat immediately to prevent infestations.

• Keep flowers and vegetables in peak condition by giving them a midsummer feeding with a fertilizer that is higher in phosphorus than in nitrogen.

• Dig gently to harvest potatoes, a few plants at a time, after foliage yellows and dries up.

• Set out starts of broccoli, Brussels sprouts and lettuce for a fall harvest. Spray weekly with BT to keep the cabbage worms at bay.

Premature Fruit Drop on Apple Trees

Fruits of all kinds must be harvested on time, at the proper stage of maturity in order to maintain their nutrients, quality and freshness. Apple trees can be somewhat tricky to determine when they are at their peak and ready to harvest.

Often, at this time of year, apple trees begin dropping fruit prematurely. There are several reasons for this occurrence. Apples infested with codling moths will have rotten areas within the developing fruit and they will often drop from the tree. 

It is important to remove the fallen fruit (even small apples) as soon as they fall so that the codling moth larvae are removed from the vicinity of the tree. Failure to do so allows the codling moths population to increase and overwinter to reinfect your fruit next year. Codling moths will have at least two generations per year, so be sure to replenish your traps with fresh pheromone attractant now.

Another cause of premature drop is a heavy fruit set. Apples that grow in clusters will “push off” each other close to harvest time. Early season thinning to reduce fruits to one or two per cluster will help prevent this type of drop.

Certain varieties are more prone to early drop that others. Gravenstein, Honeycrisp, Golden Delicious, Liberty and Red Delicious are the most prone to pre-harvest drop.

Watch for full-sized, healthy apples dropping to the ground. Healthy apples typically only begin falling when the fruit is ripe.

So how do you know if your apples are ripe and ready to pick? Apples ripen at various times depending on the variety. Gravensteins ripen in August but Granny Smiths won’t be ready until November. A given variety will ripen earlier or later in different climates. It is best to keep a record for your own trees as they will ripen at pretty much the same time each year.

If the season is right and the apples are full-sized, cut an apple open and check the color of the seeds. The seeds of apples generally turn dark brown when they are nearing maturity.

When an apple is ripe and ready to pick, you can lift it off the tree without pulling hard or twisting. Just lift the apple upward and it should come loose from the tree.

If you think the fruit is ripe, do a taste test. The fruit should be crisp, juicy and full flavored with the tartness of nearly ripe fruit gone.

Then it is time to harvest your fruit or to call the Gleaners to let them do it for you.

For storage apples, it’s best to pick the fruit a little early. The riper the apple is when it’s picked, the quicker it will go bad in storage.

Always handle apples carefully to avoid bruising them. Apples with even small bruises will not store well. Only perfect apples should be used for long-term storage. The others will be good for fresh eating, pies, cobblers and applesauce.

Enjoy your bountiful apple harvest this year.

• Start seeds of broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and other cool-season crops now. Transplant them to the garden next month and they will be producing for you this fall.

• Zinnias love the heat and will add a rainbow of color to your garden and the deer don’t like them.

• Roses need water and fertilizer to keep blooming through the summer. Watch for pests and diseases and treat as soon as you see trouble.

• Feed annual blooming plants and hanging baskets every two weeks for prolific bloom. Keep dead flowers pinched off.

• Dig and divide crowded spring-flowering bulbs and tubers including daffodils, scillas, muscari, and bearded iris.

Fragrance in the Garden

Nothing conjures up memories of the past the way a familiar scent can. Orange blossoms, jasmine, lavender, fragrant stock, gardenia – even the words seem to perfume the air. To bring back pleasant memories and create some new ones, choose a few plants to place near the door or by the walkway, or fill your garden with wonderful fragrances all season long.

The first plants that wake up our noses in the spring are narcissus, hyacinth and lily-of-the-valley. Not far behind is the sweet-scented daphne, followed by the intensely fragrant flowers of the lilacs.

Chinese wisteria blooms with a profusion of fragrant lavender flowers in long clusters. The evergreen clematis vine, with its powerfully fragrant white flowers, adds its sweet scent to the springtime air.

The white snowball bush is another sweet scent in the spring garden and so are the tiny flowers of Sarcococca. Mock orange (Philadelphus) is an old-fashioned favorite with its strongly scented showy white flowers in early summer. The large pompom flowers of peonies bloom in late spring. Place one in a vase in a room, and it will fill the room with its delicate fragrance.

The spring flower bed can be filled with the lovely scents of stock and sweet peas. A carpet of sweet alyssum in purple, rose and white will perfume the air from spring to fall.

Summer brings us lovely lavenders, butterfly bush, star jasmine, lilies, honeysuckle and, of course, roses. Varieties like ‘Fragrant Plum’, ‘Rock ‘n Roll’, ‘Fragrant Cloud’, and ‘Julia Child’ have all been developed for their strong fragrances. Gardenias bloom in early summer with their legendary sweet fragrance so loved for corsages.

Heliotrope has large violet flower heads with a strong vanilla fragrance in warm weather. It’s hard to find a more sugary fragrance than purple petunias, especially the variety ‘Sugar Daddy’.

The large, beautiful, white flowers of the Southern Magnolia tree bloom in the summer and their heavy fragrance and welcome shade make the perfect place to relax on a hot summer’s day.

Late summer bloomers with strong fragrance include the exotic and heady fragrance of tuberoses. Sweet Autumn Clematis blooms profusely with wonderfully scented tiny white flowers. The pink flowers of Naked Lady Amaryllis have a strong fragrance that wafts on the air.

Don’t overlook the herbs for their fragrant foliage. Rosemary can be grown as a shrub or a ground cover. Thyme has many varieties with scents ranging from lemon and lime to caraway. The mint family has a long list of fragrant varieties as do the basils: lemon, cinnamon, spicy globe and Thai basil. Many Salvias, or sages, have beautiful flowers and fragrant foliage. There are lots of other herbs that can help create an edible, fragrant garden.

Fragrance plays an important role in our enjoyment of the garden. Plant some memories in your garden with fragrant plants you’ll enjoy all season.