Gardening Month by Month: July
The heat gives both plants and people a bit of a break, but there are still plenty of basic maintenance tasks to do.
- As the weather gets warmer, schedule your gardening for early morning and late afternoon when the air is cooler and the sun not so intense.
- Keep up with watering chores. While you’re at it, give your trees, shrubs, and perennials an occasional hosing down from top to bottom to wash off dust and pests.
- Keep new plantings well-watered.
- When annuals or perennials get leggy or scraggly, consider cutting them back by one-third or more. With some plants, this not only makes them look neater, but it also often encourages a fresh flush of growth and/or bloom.
- Fertilize any acid-loving plants and any that may be showing an iron deficiency; for example, young leaves may appear yellow-green with dark green leaves. Acid-loving plants include azaleas, gardenias blueberries, and camellias.
Fertilizing Plants — Fertilize containers. Constant watering flushes out nutrients.
Harvesting Vegetables – Keep up with the harvest from your vegetable garden. Be sure to pick small and often. Tiny filet green beans, for example, need picking daily. And be sure to remove rotting or diseased produce from the garden. They act as disease magnets.
- Fertilize tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants for best growth, especially in upcoming cooler months.
- Mow regularly, your best defense against weeds!
- If you have a garden journal, keep up with it. Most garden journals drop off as the season progresses, but it’s a useful tool 12 months of the year.
- Plant late-summer flowering annuals and perennials, as well as heat-loving tropical and sub-tropical plants.
Vegetable Production — Harvest veggies to keep them producing.
Gardening by the Moon for July
4th-6th Good for planting peas, beans, tomatoes, and other fall crops bearing aboveground. Sow grains and forage crops now. Plant flowers.
7th-8th Extra good days for cabbage, lettuce, cauliflower, mustard greens, and other leafy vegetables. Good for any above ground crop that can be planted now. Start seedbeds.
9th-10th Seeds planted now will do poorly and yield little.
11th-12th Favorable planting days: First day good for planting aboveground crops. Last day good for planting beets, carrots, salsify, Irish potatoes, and other root crops.
13th-14th Poor days for planting.
15th-16th Good days for planting beets, carrots, radishes, salsify, turnips, peanuts, and other root crops. Also good for planting melons, cucumbers, pumpkins, and other vine crops. Set strawberry plants. Good days for transplanting.
17th-18th A barren period. Second day good for killing plant pests.
19th-21st Root crops that can be planted now will yield well. Good days for transplanting.
22nd-23rd Poor days for planting, seeds tend to rot in the ground. Best days for killing plant pests and weeds.
24th-26th Favorable planting days: First two days most fruitful for root crops and transplanting. Last day good for corn, cotton, okra, beans, peppers, eggplant, and aboveground crops. All days good for planting seedbeds and flower gardens.
27th-31st A most barren period. Kill plant pests and do general farm work.
Happy Gardening and I’ll see you next month!
Remember…a weed is but an unloved flower!
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