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Savoring Summer
Greetings! 
My friend Greg, who isn't a gardener, was puzzled. "So is gardening weeding?" he asked. (This is the man who watched me yank out creeping Charlie in full bloom and said, "Why are you pulling out all the flowers?") I explained that this time of year there certainly is a lot of weeding, but I've also been planting and watering and deadheading and doing general cleanup and pruning and mowing and... well, you gardening types get the picture. "It just seems so, so... perpetual," he said, trying to figure out the appeal of endless hours of bending over the dirt, in the weeds.
He's right. Gardening is never-ending. You're never truly "done." But I love the endlessness of it, the way a garden is always changing, always calling to me. It wouldn't be my passion if it were nothing more than a collection of silk plants that I hosed off from time to time. This time of year, my garden needs me less than in the spring. But even now, when I get to wake up in the morning and say to myself, "Today, I'm just going to garden," it's one of the best days I can have. Yours in endless gardening, 
Veronica Lorson Fowler
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Fabulous, Fresh Herbs
 I love having fresh herbs in the garden, dashing out for a moment while I'm cooking for some dill for the cucumber salad or some basil to chop and add to a tomato sauce. Nothing pumps up the flavor more than the addition of fresh herbs.
Herbs are easy to grow, too. Play around with them and try just a few. You'll become addicted to having your own living spice cabinet in your garden.
To help you use your herbs better, we've created a nifty little chart to print and tape to the inside of your kitchen cabinet. Click here and see! |
Make a Garden Road Trip
Now that gas prices have dropped a little, consider a garden road trip. Grab your kids, grab your sweetie, pack a picnic lunch and go! It's a great mini-get away.Central  Gardens of North Iowa
Check out our listing of Iowa gardens worth the trip. My new favorite Iowa garden, --which just opened a couple of years ago. Team your visit with a walk along pretty Clear Lake!
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Healthier Tomatoes
Co-worker Anna was distressed. Her newly planted tomatoes have gotten a blight. What could she do?
The sad fact is that you can't reverse most diseases on tomatoes, only prevent and slow them down. (Insect infestations are another matter.)
Click here for Five Simple Tips to Healthier Tomatoes to prevent tomatoes diseases before they show up.
 Meanwhile, make sure you're pinching the suckers off your tomatoes to prevent them from growing totally out of control. Click here for a Fine Gardening article that describes this. (Scroll down to the section on "Missouri pruning," which is another name for this useful trick.)
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Garden Quote
"Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language."
~British novelist Henry James |
Have Tough Garden Questions?
The Iowa State University Horticulture Extension Answer Line gives great, free advice! 515-294-3108
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Garden To-Do List
For a printer-friendly version of this list, click here.
 Weed, weed, weed! All this rain followed by warmer weather is perfect conditions for weeds to take off. After weeding, mulch to prevent weeds from returning.
Keep up with the mowing. All this rain makes grass grow fast, but as a rule of thumb, you shouldn't remove more than one-third of the leaf blade at a time or you stress the grass. And stressed grass gets diseases and weeds. Mow often for a healthier lawn.
As long as it's not super hot and/or dry, you can divide perennials that bloom in spring now, as needed or desired. Hold off on dividing those that bloom in late summer or fall. For them, it's too close to show time!
Deadhead flowers on annuals, perennials, and some shrubs. It keeps your garden more attractive and in many cases, it will encourage more flowers longer.
Fertilize containers every two or three weeks with a liquid fertilizer, such as Miracle-Gro. All that watering flushes out nutrients. Use a "bloom booster" type for flowering plants--it really makes a difference!
Continue to plant container-grown or balled-and-burlapped trees, shrubs, and roses now. However, avoid planting bare-root roses and other bare-root lants. This late in the season, they'll struggle.
Time to practice tough love. If a tree or shrub is still struggling with winter damage or overall sickness, with significant amounts of dead wood, it's almost certainly time to dig it up or cut it down.
Remove the browning foliage of tulips and daffodils once it pulls away easily. Until then, the plant is using it to rejuvenate for next year.
Harvest early and often for the most tender, sweetest produce and to keep plants producing well. Pick zucchini, for example, with the yellow flower still attached.
Most lettuce by now has started to bolt, that is, send up tall, elongated stalks. At this point, it turns bitter. Pull it up and pitch it on your compost heap.
Check out the bulb catalogs and on-line sources. Ordering now assures the type and quantity you want this fall, when supplies run low.
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Upcoming Garden Events
Sunday, July 10
Dancing Lady Gardens Event
Altoona
9:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. Shade gardens, sunny shrub borders, hundreds of blooming daylilies, prairie plants, and an ephemeral prairie pot-hole where the are many amphibians being raised. Interesting garden art throughout. $5.
For more upcoming Iowa garden events, click here.
Have a garden event or events that you'd like featured in The Iowa Gardener? Click here and send us your information. . |
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