WELL, HERE WE go! It’s June, the month summer begins. Actually, an old-timer here on the Peninsula told me early on with my arrival, “it rains on the 4th of July and then summer starts the next day.”
In reality, summer arrives in just two weeks (Tuesday, June 21, at 2:14 a.m.).
We should be prepared for the height of our growing season.
Here’s a new to-do list.
1. Slugs
Once just small little drops of slime, these eating machines have grown into ravenous young adults with only two purposes in mind: destroy your favorite flowers and reproduce into hundreds more.
Be diligent in looking for early warning signs — like a few leaves totally destroyed overnight or the glistening slime trails — and take action.
Do not react with poisons, however, because they can kill pets and other furry friends.
Beer, boots, pliers and a host of non-toxic things are extremely beneficial and recommended.
In other words, try to kill with a conscience.
2. Deadhead
For woody ornamentals: As your rhodies fade, the lilacs de-scent and wisteria loses its wonderment, be sure to cut away the old blooms.
This is preferable if you want healthy, good growing, aesthetically pleasing plants with double the blooms next year.
It is vital to do this immediately after plants are done blooming, not two or three months later.
3. Rehab the mower
Now that the grass is growing, let’s re-tune the mower.
Keep that blade sharp if you want green grass, because torn, shattered grass cut by a dull mower blade turns brown in the summer sun.
Keep the mower setting high, 3 to 3½ inches. Don’t cut your lawn too short.
Re-grease all fittings, spray lubricant on moving parts, clean out or replace filters and how about that black tar — I mean oil? Change it regularly.
4. Bad plant watch
Right now, today, look over the entire yard. If a plant looks sickly, diseased or poor, remove it and plant a new one.
Selection is still fairly good in most outlets, and replacements are not only easy to find but are available at comparable sizes.
5. Rose care
Important work to be done here. The next motto is, “cleanliness is next to Godliness.”
Your favorite diseases — black spot and rust — primarily move around your plants by leaping from diseased foliage to a new fresh smorgasbord of leaves nearby.
Clean up all dead and dying leaves on the ground and, most importantly, remove any and all poor, yellow, infected leaves on the plant.
Such leaf stripping is the best control for roses, so do it now before 80 percent or more of your plant is infected.
Only water the soil, which should be covered with mulch, especially with roses.
6. De-sucker
Oh, how suckers suck!
They consume the lifeblood, bloom, fruit and aesthetic value right out of your edible and ornamental fruit as well as many decorative shrubs.
Every few weeks, go out and inspect your susceptible plants.
Chances are you will find numerous fresh, tender little sprouts all over the branches. Take them off.
It’s best to do this while they are tender; they are easily rubbed off with your hand.
If you wait until later, it will take a pruner and an hour or two.
7. Re-veggie your garden
Just keep piling on seed or starters for an abundant harvest.
Sow radishes, greens, spinach, lettuce and beans every couple of weeks from now through August.
Start or plant new broccoli, cabbage, kale, beets, kohlrabi and cauliflower so your harvest doesn’t dry up too soon.
Right now should be your maximum point of planting, harvesting, tilling and tending.
8. Cultivate
This is the oldest time-honored trick of the trade.
Soil breathes, as do roots and the plethora of organisms living in the soils. Water, which is essential to all of this, must have free access to enter the soil.
One barrier is the crust on top of your growing medium created by gravity and moisture.
Cultivate lightly every few weeks to not only knock down weeds, but to let the water and air in.
9. Feed the Beast
All your plants are growing, producing leaves, buds and new growth, so keep the food coming.
All season long you should add a little lime here, some blood meal over there, a dash of compost to this and a foliar feed to that.
Realize that for most plants, the fertilizer of March and April is all but used up or leached away by now.
The nutrient applied today is readily available to the plant tomorrow.
10. Kill the other Beast
The weeds have not lost their resolve to take over your garden just because you wiped out 97 percent of them a few weeks ago.
In fact, bolstered by perfect germination conditions of late, a major invasion is already occurring.
The beginning of June is the perfect time to again cover the entire yard with a search and destroy mission.
But regardless of what you do … stay well all!
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Andrew May is a freelance writer and ornamental horticulturist who dreams of having Clallam and Jefferson counties nationally recognized as “Flower Peninsula USA.” Send him questions c/o Peninsula Daily News, P.O. Box 1330, Port Angeles, WA 98362, or email news@peninsuladailynews.com (subject line: Andrew May).
