Sacramento Digs Gardening Article
Your resource for Sacramento-area gardening news, tips and events

Articles Recipe Index Keyword Index Calendar Twitter Facebook Instagram About Us Contact Us

Mistakes gardeners are making now they'll pay for later this summer

Sacramento Digs Gardening
BY Kathy Morrison PUBLISHED MAY 21, 2020

It's difficult to pull plants you've grown from seed, but for these beans to thrive, they'll have to be thinned soon. (Photos: Kathy Morrison)

Gardeners can't rest because Mother Nature doesn't, either

May makes gardening seem easy. The plants are green and pretty, the flowers are sprouting and budding, the trees wave their fresh green leaves in the breeze. What a lovely month.

A mulch of newspaper and straw keeps the soil around

this tomato plant from drying out too quickly.

But the biggest mistake a gardener can make right now is to think that the garden, once planted, is done, "set," if you will.

Mother Nature works 24 hours a day, and humans don't. The garden is evolving every second. The humans have to be on their toes to keep up, especially in beautiful May.

Here are a few mistakes gardeners make now that they will regret later:

1. Not mulching. The heat's coming and those vegetable plants are going to be cooked (and the soil baked) without a good layer of leaves, straw, wood chips, shredded bark or whatever you've got. (I save newspaper all winter, then use that as the bottom layer, and pile straw on top.)

This garden would benefit from some mulch now, before the weather heats up.

2. Using hay as mulch instead of straw. There's a difference: Hay is green and full of seeds -- which will sprout in your well-watered garden and suck up the nutrients. Straw is yellow to gold and is hollow. It breaks down nicely later. ( Here's a great post from Debbie last year on mulch and other ways to keep tomatoes productive in heat.)

3. Not thinning sprouts. Awww, those little plants are so cute -- must I pull them out? The answer is yes, if you want to see a decent crop or keep your flowers from being too crowded to grow properly. Learn to be ruthless. Check the seed packet for advice on thinning. (A corollary to this is setting transplants too close together. Yes, that squash is going to overrun that pepper plant in a few weeks. Give them both some space.)

The zinnias are up! Now they should be thinned.

4. Not planting for pollinators. Any vegetable garden should include room for pollinator plants. The bees and other insects do the heavy lifting when it comes to creating the crops, especially tomatoes, squash and melons. Flowering herbs, zinnias, sunflowers and native plants such as salvia or buckwheat will attract pollinators, as well as hummingbirds. ( Here's a full post I wrote on enticing pollinators to the garden.)

5. Not checking the garden often enough. As noted, Mother Nature's a 24/7 worker. A gardener who doesn't "make the rounds" to observe the garden at least once a day is going to eventually find some rude surprises, from overgrown zucchini to collapsed alyssum, and everything in between. Master gardeners also tell me that many garden problems that clients bring them could have been caught and corrected much earlier in the plant's life. If only someone had noticed! So being a close observer of one's own garden is the best way to protect the plants, and the time already invested in them.

Note to newsletter subscribers: We're having issues again. With any luck, this one arrives on time, with Debbie's Wednesday post also attached.

Comments

0 comments have been posted.

GENERAL GARDENING

An article about gardening.

Keywords:

UCCE master gardeners Sacramento insects weather seedlings vegetable garden gardening integrated pest management vegetables mulch pollinators flowers

Newsletter Subscription

Sacramento Digs Gardening to your inbox.

Food in My Back Yard Series

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

Local News

Taste Spring! E-cookbook

Find our spring recipes here!

Thanks to Our Sponsor!

Sites We Like

Garden Checklist for week of May 11

Make the most of the lower temperatures early in the week. We’ll be back in the 80s by Thursday.

* 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. (You also can 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.

* Add mulch to the garden to maintain moisture. Mulch also cuts down on weeds. But don’t let it mound around the stems or trunks of trees or shrubs. Leave about a 6-inch-to-1-foot circle to avoid crown rot or other problems.

* Remember to weed! Pull those nasties before they set seed.

* Water early in the day and keep seedlings evenly moist.

Taste Summer! E-cookbook

Find our summer recipes here!

Taste Fall! E-cookbook

Find our fall recipes here!

Taste Winter! E-cookbook

Find our winter recipes here!