June--2008

Hey---We finally made it into June. Now everything should really get to growing. This is a great month---It starts warming up, you can start picking some of the fruits of your labor and you can plant anything that you want into the soil and not have to worry about mother nature, freezing you out. Everything this month starts taking off and it is real easy to let things get out of control.

Starting with your lawn---You need to watch the watering---with the temp warming up, it can dry out fairly quickly. Watering in the morn is the best time---if you can. If your lawn is fertilized, it will require less water to stay green, then a lawn that is not---You can water you lawn all day but if it has no nutrients it will never grow or get green.

Weeds can get out of hand but try to till them in or pull them by hand instead of using a weed killer. A few weeds won't hurt. It's the grasses that can hurt your garden--they can put a damper on strawberry beds and asparagus beds.

It's not to late to plant your vegi's. Most vegi's have a harvest time of less then 90 days, So check to see what the harvest time is on the vegi you want to plant and go for it. Some melons and such require over 100 days to harvest, so you might be cutting it close by planting it now. It really depends on what the weather will be in September and that is hard to tell. In the lower elevations it usually stays fairly warm until October.

Now is the time to dead head your Rhody's. When picking the dead flowers off, make sure you don't take off the new growth or new buds that are starting to form.

It's ok to prune your shrubs if need be. Just try not to prune when the temps get up in the mid 90's. The foliage underneath might get a little sunburn (boxwoods for one).

Also not a good idea to spray insecticides when the temps get in the 90's---can cause some damage.

So, this is a great gardening month--get out there and enjoy.