Your garden is in full bloom; your mulching is done; you have caught up with all the weeds that seem to sprout when you turn your back; and everything is fed and looking great. It’s time to grab that good book, set up your hammock or chaise lounge and kick back and relax. HA! If you are like me, you have potted too many plants in containers and you can’t keep up with the feeding and watering; your hanging baskets need a drink every day, if not twice a day; there is powdery mildew starting on your beautiful perennial leaves; some kind of insect is nibbling on your potato vines; I could go on and on.

There is always something to do in the garden. Now is the best time to prune back those spring-flowering shrubs – forsythia, lilacs and the like. You want to cut out the old wood and shape them before they set the flower buds for next year. You should have removed all the dead yellowing leaves from your spring flowering bulbs. They have done their job of feeding the bulbs for next spring. The peonies are done blooming and should be deadheaded. Cut the stalk just below the spent flowers.

Deadheading is an important chore during the summer months: it helps produce more flowers, prevents self-seeding (so you don’t have seedlings to pull out), and helps prevent some fungal diseases common to our area. Cutting off spent flowers on roses and annuals makes the plants produce more blooms. Deadheading and cutting back early season blooming perennials (i.e. daisy, delphinium, and coreopsis) can force many varieties to have a second bloom later in the season. Cutting back annuals like petunias in mid-summer will force new branches and encourage more flowers. You can reduce the plant’s height or stem length by one-third or more and the plant will bloom again like crazy in a week or two. All your flowering plants will benefit from regular feeding – a bloom booster fertilizer once every 10 days or so will keep the flower show going.

I mentioned fungal disease in our gardens. Fungal issues can start in cool, moist conditions on plants particularly susceptible to fungal problems: roses, phlox, bee balm, lilacs and crabapples to name a few. Every year some of my bee balm gets the powdery mildew spots on its leaves. You can prevent the problem from getting out of hand by dividing and pruning the perennials so there is plenty of air circulation around the plants. There are also several products that can be applied to the leaves that help control the fungus. It remains to be seen if our drought conditions will help keep fungal diseases in check.

Early summer is also bargain hunting time at some of the big box stores. Unlike the local nurseries that can replant their inventory of perennials for next year’s sale, often times perennials get marked down for a quick sale. Many of the Asiatic lilies that are past bloom can be purchased cheap. Plant them in the ground with the green leaves attached and let them yellow and die back naturally. Next year they will be spectacular and the bulbs didn’t cost you an arm and a leg. The same goes for some of those ratty looking perennials. Cut them back, plant them, water and feed like you do the rest of your garden; next year they will look as spectacular as the pricey nursery plants.

So keep busy and happy gardening! Let’s make Menands the most beautiful, talked about village in the state. Be part of the “Grow Menands” movement. Planting flowers and sprucing up your landscape add to the “curb appeal” of the whole village.  It draws new homeowners and businesses to our great community, which benefits everyone.