On the Lookout -
- Thanks to the rain a lot of perennials are running two or more weeks early and growing with uncommon vigor. Now that the heat is upon us it will help to glance at your garden once a day to scan for upcoming problems.
- Don’t prune or sucker your tomatoes. The fruit need protection from the brutal Colorado sun. See comments on tomatoes elsewhere in this blog.
- Harvest your basil before it flowers. Once it flowers the flavor drops right off the edge of the table. Good pungent dried basil is miles ahead of lousy bolted basil. Replant some in the shade or take a pass until early August.
- Watch for tomato hornworms. These big green caterpillars can reduce a tomato plant to twigs in only a few days. Watch the tops of your plants. Once leaves start disappearing you’ll know they’re at work. You’ll find them resting in the top third of the plant at daybreak. Do with them what you will.
- Deadhead your annuals and perennnials. Som perennials like the Stella D’Oro daylily will rebloom. Once a plant sets seed it things that it’s job is done. Thwart that tendency by pinching off spent flower heads, making sure to get the base. For each pinching on annuals you’ll double the blooms, because two shoots will develop where only one flower was before. Deadhead your roses by working your way down the stalk to the first set of five leaves below the spent bloom and cutting at a 45-degree angle just above that point.
This entry was posted
on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 10:36 am and is filed under Uncategorized.
