Friends and foes in the garden

•Mid-July is a good time to evaluate the landscape for pluses and minuses, and a great time to shop for discounted plants to fill in empty spots.

•Replace any unsightly or barely alive annuals in the landscape or containers for continuous summer flowering.

•Plants like bee balm, salvias and petunias are sure hits with hummingbirds on their way back to southern locales for the winter; their colors of choice are red, orange or pink tubular flowers.

•Be sure to score or cut through heavily root-bound plant roots before planting, and water consistently to get established. If roots are left uncut, they may not establish in the soil, they will die quickly with wet roots.

•The daily stroll includes seeing more than blooms and harvesting fruits and vegetables — there are some interesting bugs out there, both good and bad.

•Plants that are being attacked by a pest release SOS-like chemical signals that tell beneficial insects to come and get it — to prey on the pest.

•Avoid using chemical sprays, which can upset the beneficial-pest biological balance, or end up killing both good and bad insects.

•Beneficial syrphid flies, also known as hover or flower flies, look like small wasps with a black-and-yellow- or white-striped abdomen. They hover like a hummingbird while sipping nectar from flowers. They do not sting. They are pollinators as adults, while their larvae (small brown or green tapered maggots) consume aphids, young cabbage worms and other softbodied insects. Attract them to your garden by having flowers in bloom all season. (Read more here: http://extension.colostate.edu/docs/ pubs/insect/05550.pdf )

•Beneficial orangeand-black painted lady butterflies are abundant this summer. They are often mistaken for monarch butterflies, which are much larger with darker orange and black markings. This is the most common butterfly grown for educational purposes in elementary schools, or released at weddings and memorial services. During the winter they mostly reside in northwestern Mexico; they return to America and all parts of Colorado in spring and summer. The spiny, brown turning to grey and yellow larvae feed on thistle, mallow, asters, veronica and hollyhock. Nectar sources for adults include cosmos, liatris, asters, zinnia and Joe Pye weed.

•The unsung beneficial insect heroes of our landscapes are spiders. They may cause alarm to phobics, and often there is an immediate urge to squish on sight. Don’t. Arachnids are on 24-7 duty feeding on insects like flies, mosquitoes and roly-polys. Spiders don’t fly, but masterfully use their hairy bodies, eight legs and six to eight eyes to hunt— either using brute force or their venom and silk to conquer their prey. About 600 species of spiders reside in Colorado, even at high elevations. Check out some common spiders and fun facts at dpo.st/spidersuperheroes.

•Blossom End Rot, or BER, on tomatoes is showing up on the firstripening tomatoes. The fruit bottoms turn leathery with sunken brown to black lesions. Factors that lead to BER include: calcium deficiency when fruit begins growing rapidly; extreme temperature fluctuations; waterlogged soils; or too much nitrogen. Pepper, squash, eggplant and watermelon are also prone to this condition. Remove affected fruits; maintain consistent watering and fertilization and mulch to keep soil moisture even.