June is a busy month in the flower and vegetable garden. It’s time to sow late cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, and celery to provide plants that may be set out in July for late fall use and winter storage.
Sowing the seed in soil mixed with peat moss is an excellent idea to encourage better root growth. Pour water into the drills before sowing. Use five sources to the inch; celery should be sown more thickly.
Keep up succession sowings of corn, beans, and radishes. Lettuce does not head well in hot weather. The new Salad Bowl leaf lettuce is said to maintain its juiciness in summer. Give it a try.
In vegetable garden operations, it is good practice to hill or draw the soil up around the base of stems of corn and beans, which could be beaten down in rain storms. Keep tomato plants tied to the supports and remove the laterals (shoots from the axil of the leaves) as they appear.
Don’t hesitate to encourage the growth of tomatoes by extra feeding if the growth slows up. The plants will become diseased and bug-ridden.
Warm Soil For Sowing
If vine crops have not already been planted, sow muskmelons, watermelons, squash, and cucumbers. These require fast growth for quality. This means a warm soil for sowing and quantities of available nutrients while the plants are growing.
If space for vegetables is limited, plant a miniature garden. Small corn is delicious; rows can be 2′ feet apart, with plants a foot apart in rows.
You might plant groups of corn among small vine crops such as Midget muskmelon, Midget watermelon, cucumber, or even among the early plants of squash, a bush type, not a vine.
To have cut flowers for August and September cutting, sow larkspur, cosmos, annual chrysanthemums, baby breath, giant zinnias, Phlox Drummond, and black-eyed yearly Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) if you want lovely pot plants for Christmas.
Purchase small 3″ inch pots of red salvia and set the plants where they will make good growth to provide September cuttings for rooting. Perennial seeds are best sown this month in the cold frame.
Dahlias, gladiolus, tritoma, tuberose, tigridia, gloriosa lily, and Peruvian daffodil, set out in warm soil, will start growing immediately. Please give them good but not overly rich soil. The miniature gladiolus is excellent and takes up less room than the large varieties.
Tritoma must be put in now; later plantings will not flower. This is also true of that other close relative of the gladiolus, acidanthera, now sold under various names, which is indeed very confusing.
Acidanthera is subject to the deadly thrip which attacks gladiolus. Use Pyrethrin, applied every three to fours days after the foliage is well up, should keep the thrips at a distance. Gladiolus seem to grow better planted at a 4″ inch depth.
Better Under The Surface
Tuberose bulbs (which should be new, not old ones) are better just under the surface. Tuberous begonias started into growth some time ago and can be planted out. You can also begin more tuberous begonias now for later flowers.
The highly concentrated, soluble fertilizers have changed the whole aspect of plant growth. Where we formerly used liquid manure, which was somewhat messy but rather practical, we now use rapid dissolving chemicals.
When these are used intelligently, the results have been extraordinary. Most of our soils are not unduly fertile. We also know that only a tiny part of the nutrients present in the soil is in a form that plant roots can absorb. Most plants need nutrients in quantity.
Liquid feeding supplies the immediate needs of the plant because the materials are instantly available. However, success with liquid fertilizers depends upon using weak concentrations. You can do damage with a robust solution.
This is the month when Crabgrass starts to germinate. It will show up first in thin or bare spots on the lawn. Seed these to clover and perennial ryegrass or ryegrass alone. This proliferates in hot weather where regular lawn grasses fail, and although it is coarse grass and not permanent, it will crowd out Crabgrass.
Unless the grass is very thick and heavy, raise the lawn mower’s blade to keep the grass height at about two inches, Crabgrass does not like shade. If you succeed in shading out some of the young seedlings, you will help prevent them from getting a foothold.
If the Japanese beetle is troublesome in your area, the grubs are now feeding on grass roots. Give the lawn a dose of Spinosad or Grubex for effective grub control.
Anthills are dispersed with Sevin or Diatomaceous Earth. If 1/8 teaspoonful per hill is washed in with water, you’ll end the ant nuisance.
Never cut down bulb foliage while it is green. Bulbs can only renew themselves through their leaves; deprived of them, they deteriorate.
Hardy bulbs such as daffodils which are to be lifted this year, should not be touched until the foliage turns yellow. The bulb growth is then complete. Don’t dry them in the sun after digging, for they will turn soft.
Dry them in a cool shady place_ When dry, store the bulbs in a cool cellar until autumn. Young plants of cosmos, annual sunflower, salvia, or zinnias, set among the daffodils, will take away the messy look of the leaves while they are maturing, and, by the time the foliage is yellow, the annuals will have made considerable growth.
Pruning
Conifers can be pruned this month to shape or make them denser. Shear, or cut the tips of pines and arborvitae. Don’t cut into the older growth. Hemlock and yew can be thickened by shearing the new young growth halfway back.
In many cases, the long pendant shoots of hemlock could be cut back even farther without damage.
Flowering shrubs would produce more flowers if pruned yearly. Cut back the older stems to force new flowering stems. Many shrubs are too tall anyway. Thin out the tops and let the sunlight through to the younger growth.
If some branches are ancient, cut them back hard to force new vigorous growth. Applying a complete fertilizer or dried cattle manure will improve shrub plantings, especially near the foundations of some homes where they rarely get a meal.
The 10-6-4 fertilizer, 4 pounds per 100′ square feet, is a good formula for shrubs and hedges.
Chrysanthemums
Tip cuttings of chrysanthemums, 3″ to 4″ inches long, taken any time this month and rooted in moist sand, will provide lovely flowering plants by fall.
Strawberries
Hay, straw, leaves or sawdust, or any other covering placed upon the soil around strawberries will prevent rot and help keep them from becoming. Muddy, if the fruit gets wet.
Go over the bed before the fruit ripens and remove all questionable berries that could spread disease to the other fruit. Don’t permit the plants to become dry. A strawberry is practically all water. Luck of water at this time will mean low fruit or none.
If you have set out plants of everbearing strawberry varieties that look vigorous, there is no reason why the first fruits should not be allowed to ripen.
It has been advocated that the first blossoms be removed and the fruiting delayed until late summer. When the first flowers were taken off in June in some localities, I found that there were few berries for late summer.
I plan to set out top-quality plants in soil well prepared with plenty of organic matter and grow them as single plants, keeping all runners removed and feeding every two weeks after the middle of May.
A mulch of sawdust around the plants in summer helps keep the roots cool and moist and is a natural plant saver.
The Early Crop
In regions where summers are hot, unmulched strawberries go to pieces, another reason for getting the early crop.
Bearded iris varieties will soon be finished blooming. Study some of the newer types if you intend to revise your planting. There are some gems among them. If you can afford it, don’t deprive yourself of the pleasure of seeing them in your garden.
Give some attention to the plants that have finished blooming and take steps to halt the iris borer before it starts. Once it progresses towards the rhizome (root), your chances of control diminish.
Indications of the borer are a sawtoothed effect on the young leaves near their base and a slimy covering. You can pry the enemy out with the point of a knife.
However, keep the spray going for a while. Spray sprays and dust are combinations of fungicide and insecticide to control diseases and the borer.
Roses
Potted roses are easier to obtain each year, so there is no excuse for bare patches in the rose planting. Usually, roses selected for potting are the better, more vigorous plants.
However, when you plant them, removing the flowers is advisable. No matter how carefully it is done, the transplanting is a check at this stage. Allowing the plants to expend their energy on a few flowers defeats the chances of a display of bloom for the rest of the summer.
Subsequent growth will be better with these flowers removed. Then a program of watering and liquid feeding will produce results in a short time.
Resist the urge to cut roses with long stems, at least from plants set out in spring or even last fall. Removal of foliage will bring on the disease through lowered resistance.
In the summer heat, it would be better to continue removing buds and preventing flowering. You’ll be repaid with better blooms and healthier plants in the fall. And they’ll last longer, too.
Pest Control
We cannot ignore the pests that damage or even kill plants. Destroy all plants that are infested; spraying will not give control. Burn all trash, infected leaves, sterns, and roots.
Sanitary measures of this kind will significantly eliminate infestation at its source. Besides, they’re much cheaper and sometimes more effective than sprays and dust.
44659 by P. J. Mckenna