Flower gardens are looking beautiful at this time of year and can continue to give enjoyment through the rest of the summer and into the fall. There are a few things you can do now to keep plants healthy and producing blooms.Many gardens are already planted, but now is a great time to expand them and add more color. There are dozens – no, hundreds – of beautiful perennial plants to choose from. What is your favorite color? Do you want it tall or short? Something that blooms in early summer or into the fall? Need plants for shade, plants for sun, foliage plants or flowering plants? These are some of the questions you’ll want think about before choosing your new perennials.
If you are looking for continuous blooms for the rest of the season, annuals are your best bet. Year-round garden
centers, like Wedel’s, have fresh shipments of larger sized annuals ready to plant to add bright color just about anywhere.
One of my favorite products to take with me into the garden when planting is Hi-Yield Ornamental Weed & Grass Stopper. Prepare the soil for your new plants, put them in, then sprinkle Ornamental Weed & Grass Stopper on the soil around them. This inexpensive product is worth its weight in gold because it prevents weed & grass seeds from germinating for the season. This will keep the time you need to weed gardens at a minimum.Another easy thing that will give you a lot of return on your time invested is to deadhead. What? That sounds terrible! Don’t worry – that just means to pinch or prune back any flowers that are done blooming. Annual and perennial flowers can benefit from this. If you prune off dead flowers, the plant won’t be spending its energy on producing seed heads. That will give it more energy to produce more flowers!
Just one more thing to add to the enjoyment of your flowers – give them regular meals. The meal I recommend is
Fertilome Blooming Soluble Plant Food. It’s the easiest way to feed because all you do is add it to your watering can when watering or put it into your hose-end sprayer when you are watering once every 10 days. (And speaking of water, be sure flowering plants get ½” of water twice a week!) Fertilome Blooming Plant Food is ideal for vegetable plants, annuals, perennials and plants in containers.So now you have it – the easiest things to do to keep gardens blooming. More time sitting back & enjoying your garden, less time working in it! I’m all for that!
Terrie Schwartz
