Weekly Garden Tip

July 2, 2006

By Gene Joyner, Extension Agent
Palm Beach County Cooperative Extension Service

There’s no doubt in most people’s minds that summer has arrived in full force. If you step outside of your nice air conditioned home, it’s almost like walking into a blast furnace in the middle of the day with the high temperatures, high humidity and we often get frequent rainfall now which is something we didn’t have to contend with earlier in the season.

Because of the uncomfortable conditions outside people restrict their gardening activity to early morning or late afternoon when it’s quite a bit cooler and more pleasant for doing outside gardening. Make sure that you do spend some time in your landscape though and don’t lock yourself away in the air conditioning.

This time of year plants are growing rapidly, often needing light frequent pruning to keep them well shaped and it doesn’t take long to notice that weeds are on the increase everywhere in the landscape, primarily in flower beds and turfgrass areas. If you don’t make an attempt to manage these pests, pretty soon you won’t be able to see your good plants for the weedy jungle.

This is also a good time of year for adding new landscaping plants because we have a long growing season and they will have plenty of time to become well established. Local garden centers and nurseries have good inventories of all types of plants in a variety of sizes and price ranges.

If you like to garden and install plants yourself, simply go out pick up some of these bargains that are available and get them in at the next earliest opportunity. If you don’t like to do that type of activity or aren’t able to do it, then of course there are many landscape companies or landscape installers that will be happy to plant any type of landscape material that you wish them to.

We are in the middle of hurricane season so there’s always the possibility of tropical storms or hurricanes developing, but generally we’re fortunate in that the most serious portion of the season is September through October and until then we can feel relatively safe.
If you still have some trees that look like they may need some thinning out or reduction pruning, that should have been taken care of months ago so don’t put it off, get it done now before storms arrive.

If you’re landscape was badly beat up by last fall’s hurricane, make sure that you’re fertilizing lightly but frequently throughout this time of year to help speed their recovery. A good schedule for fertilization in the landscape would be every 3 to 4 months under normal conditions, but if you really want to push plants you can put fertilizer out every other month in small amounts.

Palm trees are still looking bad in many communities and these will take probably another year before they get back to a normal appearance. Make sure that they are left alone and except for regular fertilizing don’t do anything to further stress them.

If you have questions about landscape activities during the summer season and you’re not sure what you should be doing or how to do it, you can always get some helpful free advice from the Palm Beach County Extension office. You can also pick up free pamphlets on plant care at their office during normal business hours. For information or advice call 233-1750 in the north and central county area or 276-1260 in the south county area.