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Monthly To-Do
 This time of year a garden can start to get ratty-looking and fewer things are in flower. But even 15 or 20 minutes of weeding, cutting back, deadheading, mulching, and watering can make a huge difference.
Harvest early and often for the most tender, sweetest produce and to keep plants producing well. Tip: You can harvest tomatoes when they're about halfway red. Bring them indoors (away from insects) to finish ripening indoors on a countertop. They'll still have that great, full home-grown tomato flavor! Click here for a plant-by-plant breakdown on how to tell when produce is ready to harvest.
Annual flowers are at their peak now--a great reason to plant them in the first place. They're one of the few things that look fresh this time of year. Keep them well watered, deadheaded, and well fertilized (apply a granular or liquid all-purpose fertilizer according to package directions).
Deadhead flowers on annuals, perennials, and some shrubs. It keeps your garden more attractive and in many cases, it will encourage more flowers. Check out our videos on deadheading flowers by clicking here.
Weed, weed, weed! Get them now while they're small and prevent big problems later. Click here for tips on how to wipe out max weeds in minimum time.
After weeding, continue to finish off your work with a nice layer of wood bark mulch (never fresh wood chips.) It conserves moisture, prevents weed, and eventually breaks down and feeds the soil.
Go ahead and buy plants on clearance, but buy only those plants that look healthy. Avoid runty, dried out, or otherwise tired-looking plants. They're unlikely to rally.
Practice tough love in the garden. 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.
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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What's not to love about this prairie native? This planting in my garden blooms about now through late summer, when other perennials are fading. It has nifty purple-pink spikes up to 4 feet tall, if you're lucky, that last for weeks in the vase.
Traditional garden gloves can be a bit bulky, so instead I often use disposable gloves. They let me grab and pinch things better. And my nails look a lot cleaner at the end of the day, too!
Purslane likes hot weather and is taking off now in most Iowa gardens. Hoeing purslane merely propagates it--any little tiny bit left in the soil sprouts into a whole new plant. Pulling is better, but any fragment of root also grows into a new plant.