How to keep your garden healthy throughout summer

Published 10:25 am Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Keeping your garden looking good and healthy throughout the summer is an easy task if you know what to do.

Prune those plants as they start to grow into each other because aphids and white flies love those areas that get less circulation. Now most of them will simply wash off by hosing the upper and lower leaves about once a week. If they remain, use this formula:

• One tablespoon of baking soda and a 1/4 teaspoon of dishwashing detergent in one gallon of water to remove the pesky critters.

But don’t remove the ladybugs, because they love eating the aphids. You can actually buy them in packs of 100 and let them go wild in your garden.

Next, prune and dead head flowers after their first bloom, and remove all those spent and dead leaves.

Continue to pinch back all late-summer and fall perennials to keep them bushy and healthy and to stagger blooming times. Finish pruning all spring-blooming bushes such as azaleas, rhododendrons, lilacs by mid-summer so they can begin their new growth for next spring.

And don’t forget to weed, they’re begging to be pulled.

– On the House