Summer fun in the garden!

It’s officially “play outdoors” season, a gardener’s favorite time of the year! As we move into those warmer months, we have a few tips to share:

Mulch up before it gets too hot! With temperatures climbing, late spring and early summer is a good time of year to add a light mulch to help your garden out – it will conserve water, and also help to protect your plants.

Get outside and plant summer loving veggies! Beans, corn, pumpkins, eggplant, cucumbers, melons and even some late tomatoes make for great summer veggie gardens. Since the weather is usually fairly mild until about mid July, you still have plenty of time to get a veggie garden up and going for this year.

While you can and should plant and prune in the summer time, it is important to pay attention to weather when you do. Never plant or transplant or prune when it’s exceptionally hot, and avoid working at the peak of the day if you can – too much heat and sun will stress out plants and since they can’t afford therapy, the results usually aren’t good.

Throw a little shade…in a good way! Some of your normally ‘full sun’ plants might need a little extra shade on the hottest of days. This can be easily achieved by installing a temporary ‘shade sail’, or, even easier, bringing a few market umbrellas to the sunniest of spots in the garden. This is only needed if plants look like they are easily wilting or burning, so it’s important to keep an eye on things once the weather really heats up.

This IS the time of year when it seems like every bug on the planet makes itself known. Some bugs are good bugs and you want them in your garden – ladybugs, for example! – but other bugs, not so much. We like to stay organic when it comes to pest control, and do a bit of preventative spraying of natural oil based products every few weeks to keep things in check.

Support your local wildlife! Birds, squirrels and all your other garden friends can benefit from some extra water in the summer time, so it’s a great time to add feeders or a birdbath. Just be sure any water feature gets changed regularly or is moving via a pump to keep our nightmare mosquitos at bay.

When it comes to mosquitos, as we are all painfully aware, there are limited options. There are people and animal safe pellets you can use anywhere you might have standing water that will help to stop larvae from growing. There are also certain plants that DO seem to repel them. Lavender, lemon balm, certain geraniums and rosemary seem to help to keep them at least somewhat away; it’s hard to cover every part of your yard this way, of course, but you could plant these aromatic and lovely specimens in pots near seating areas and other spots you frequent to try to minimize bites.

We are entering the season of ‘garden prime time’, so be sure you make time your days to get outside and play this season!