WAYS TO PREP YOUR GARDEN FOR SUMMER
NO W ’ S the time to plant summer edibles. Fruit trees are developing, vegetable gardens are exploding, and ornamentals are putting on a beautiful show. After a winter of little rain, prepare your garden for a dry summer. Here are some chores, tasks and tips for making your garden even better this year:
VEGETABLE GARDENS
1. Plant summer edibles: tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkin, basil, squash, melons and more from seed or seedling.
2. Building and planting your first raised beds? Here’s how: tinyurl.com/ buildraisedbeds
3. Revitalize last year’s raised beds by layering on compost, worm castings and organic vegetable fertilizer.
4. No room for raised beds? A 15-gallon nursery can, a half whiskey barrel or a 5-gallon bucket with
holes drilled in the bottom can support one tomato plant, two eggplants, three basil plants, three cucumber plants or two pepper plants.
5. In the nursery, choose the smallest, healthiest seedlings before they make buds, flowers or fruits. These young plants will put down deep roots and grow lots of leafcovered branches to power flowering and fruiting.
TROUBLESHOOTING
6. Brown spots on the bottoms of squash and tomatoes are blossom end rot — the result of uneven watering. Adapt your watering so the soil stays evenly damp at all times. Straw mulch helps too.
7. White powdery film on leaf surfaces is powdery mildew, the result of poor air circulation and too much humidity. Selectively remove branches or leaves to increase airflow through your plants. Rinse leaves in the morning to wash away mildew spores. Do it early so leaves dry by the afternoon.
8. If seedlings get eaten to the nubs, look for snails or slugs, or look on the undersides of the leaves for green worms — at night. Once you identify the problem, find the most appropriate and least toxic treatment.
9. Do not use salt, oil, gasoline, Epsom salts or dish soap in your garden. These products are touted in some less reputable corners of the internet, but they cause serious damage to your plants and garden soil.
10. Pick fruits as they ripen — before critters get them. Pick up fallen fruits and set traps for rats.
11. Water deeply but only occasionally for figs, pomegranate and pineapple guava. No need to fertilize these water-wise fruits.
12. Continue watering and fertilizing citrus and avocado. Water under the entire canopy to wet surface roots and water a long time to wet deep roots.
13. Water bananas and other subtropical fruits. Mulch them thickly to conserve moisture in the soil.
14. Deadhead spent flowers on roses and spring perennials to squeeze another round or two of blooms from them before summer’s heat arrives. Always cut at a branching point. Never leave a stub.
REDUCE AND REUSE
15. We are heading back into drought. If you still have overhead spray irrigation, switch now to in-line drip, the most efficient and effective irrigation; it uses about half as much water as overhead spray.
16. Use a bucket in your shower and bath to collect water as it heats up. Use the water in your garden.
17. Cover the soil with a 3or 4-inch-thick layer of mulch, leaving a bare sunny spot for grounddwelling native bees. These bees are important pollinators in gardens and for native plants; they rarely sting.
18. Use rock mulch for succulents, wood-based mulch for nonsucculent ornamental plants and straw (not hay) on vegetable gardens.
19. The goal of irrigating is to wet roots, so water long enough to get water down to the root zone; with drip irrigation, that could take an hour or two. Stick your fingers down into the soil to be sure it is wet as deep as the roots go. Wait to water again until the soil dries out.
20. Since vegetables need much more water than ornamental plants, put them on separate irrigation zones. Stone fruits and apples go on their own zone. Citrus go on yet another zone.
21. Run irrigation before 6 a.m., before peak weekday water demands.
22. Do not use overhead spray in the evening or overnight. Wet leaves in the cool hours are susceptible to mold and mildew.
23. Fruit trees do really well on gray water, which is water from your washing machine, sink or bath. Do not use gray water on vegetables. See how at tinyurl.com/greyh20.