July ends in triple digits after slight cooldown Monday
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| Four o'clocks brighten the summer garden. Feeding flowering plants every other week extends their bloom. (Photo: Kathy Morrison) |
With or without the event, this is State Fair weather. According to the National Weather Service, Sacramento will see typical late July weather this week – some days over 100 degrees, others “just” in the 90s. In other words, it’s the kind of weather that what we usually experience during the State Fair, which was canceled this summer due to the pandemic.
After a triple-digit weekend, some cloud cover and light breeze will cool us off a little Monday and Tuesday, keeping high temperatures in the low 90s. Then it’s back to 102 on Wednesday and Thursday.
Concentrate on getting your garden chores done early, then try to stay cool.
* Keep your vegetable garden watered, mulched and weeded. Water before 8 a.m. to reduce the chance of fungal infection and to conserve moisture.
* After watering, fertilize vegetables and blooming annuals, perennials and shrubs to give them a boost. Feeding flowering plants every other week will extend their bloom.
* Feed vegetable plants bone meal or other fertilizers high in phosphate to stimulate more blooms and fruiting.
* Don’t let tomatoes wilt or dry out completely. Give tomatoes a deep watering two to three times a week.
* Keep an eye on zucchini. Harvest squash promptly.
* Remove spent flowers from roses and other shrubs as they finish flowering.
* Pinch off blooms from basil so the plant will grow more leaves.
* Remove spent leaves and stems from daylilies.
* Cut back lavender after flowering to promote a second bloom.
* From seed, plant corn, pumpkins, radishes, bush beans, winter squash and sunflowers.
* Indoors, start seedlings for fall vegetable planting, including bunching onion, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, radicchio and lettuce.
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Food in My Back Yard Series
May 13: Your plants can tell you more than any calendar can
May 6: Maintain soil moisture with mulch for garden success
April 29: What's (already) wrong with my tomato plants?
April 22: Should you stock up on fertilizer? (Yes!)
April 15: Grow culinary herbs in containers
April 8: When to plant summer vegetables
April 1: Don't be fooled by these garden myths
March 25: Fertilizer tips: How to 'feed' your vegetables for healthy growth
March 18: Time to give vegetable seedlings some more space
March 11: Ways to win the fight against weeds
March 4: Potatoes from the garden
Feb. 25: Plant a fruit tree now -- for later
Feb. 18: How to squeeze more food into less space
Feb. 11: When to plant? Consider staggering your transplants
Feb. 4: Starting in seed starting
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Garden Checklist for week of May 18
Get outside early in the morning while temperatures are still cool – and get to work!
* Plant, plant, plant! It’s prime planting season in the Sacramento area. Time to set out those tomato transplants along with peppers and eggplants. Pinch off any flowers on new transplants to make them concentrate on establishing roots instead of setting premature fruit.
* Direct-seed melons, cucumbers, summer squash, corn, radishes, pumpkins and annual herbs such as basil.
* Harvest cabbage, lettuce, peas and green onions.
* In the flower garden, direct-seed sunflowers, cosmos, salvia, zinnias, marigolds, celosia and asters. Transplant seedlings for many of the same flowers.
* Plant dahlia tubers.
* Transplant petunias, marigolds and perennial flowers such as astilbe, columbine, coneflowers, coreopsis, dahlias, rudbeckia and verbena.
* Keep an eye out for slugs, snails, earwigs and aphids that want to dine on tender new growth.
* Feed summer bloomers with a balanced fertilizer.
* For continued bloom, cut off spent flowers on roses as well as other flowering plants.
* Are birds picking your fruit off trees before it’s ripe? Try hanging strips of aluminum foil on tree branches. The shiny, dangling strips help deter birds from making themselves at home.
* As spring-flowering shrubs finish blooming, give them a little pruning to shape them, removing old and dead wood. Lightly trim azaleas, fuchsias and marguerites for bushier plants.
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