Sacramento Digs Gardening: Dig In: Garden checklist for week of July 7

Pick your tomatoes and other produce promptly -- it will encourage the plants

to keep producing. (Photos: Kathy Morrison)

Summer harvest time begins; enjoy mild weather

Enjoy a cool-down Sunday and Monday before high temperatures bounce back into the 90s. By Friday, Sacramento will see 98 degrees again – just in time for opening day at the State Fair.

According to the National Weather Service, dry and mostly sunny days are ahead. After a couple days in the mid-90s, afternoons will peak in the 80s for at least three days. (Tuesday’s forecast is for a high of only 83 degrees.) Then, the heat will come back on.

What else would you expect during the State Fair?

Meanwhile, check your garden often. It’s enjoying this weather, too.

* Harvest tomatoes, squash, peppers and eggplant. Prompt picking will help keep plants producing.

* Remove spent flowers from roses, daylilies and other bloomers as they finish flowering.

* Pinch off blooms from basil so the plant will grow more leaves.

* Cut back lavender after flowering to promote a second bloom.

* Feed vegetable plants bone meal or other fertilizers high in phosphate to stimulate more blooms and fruiting.

Zinnias add bright spots of color to the summer

garden.

* One good thing about hot days: Most lawns stop growing when temperatures top 95 degrees. Keep mower blades set on high.

* Take advantage of good planting weather. Transplant petunias, snapdragons, zinnias and marigolds.

* From seed, plant corn, beans, pumpkins, radishes, winter squash and sunflowers.

CHECKLIST FOR THE WEEK

Your weekly checklist of activities in the garden.

Keywords:

seeds tomatoes Sacramento garden chores lavender deadheading fertilizer weather State Fair gardening lawns vegetables heat summer annuals summer gardens

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Dig In: Garden Checklist

For week of Sept. 24:

This week our weather will be just right for fall gardening. What are you waiting for?

* Now is the time to plant for fall. The warm soil will get these veggies off to a fast start.

* Keep harvesting tomatoes, peppers, squash, melons and eggplant. Tomatoes may ripen faster off the vine and sitting on the kitchen counter.

* Compost annuals and vegetable crops that have finished producing.

* Cultivate and add compost to the soil to replenish its nutrients for fall and winter vegetables and flowers.

* Fertilize deciduous fruit trees.

* Plant onions, lettuce, peas, radishes, turnips, beets, carrots, bok choy, spinach and potatoes directly into the vegetable beds.

* Transplant cabbage, broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts and cauliflower as well as lettuce seedlings.

* Sow seeds of California poppies, clarkia and African daisies.

* Transplant cool-weather annuals such as pansies, violas, fairy primroses, calendulas, stocks and snapdragons.

* Divide and replant bulbs, rhizomes and perennials. That includes bearded iris; if they haven’t bloomed in three years, it’s time to dig them up and divide their rhizomes.

* Dig up and divide daylilies as they complete their bloom cycle.

* Divide and transplant peonies that have become overcrowded. Replant with “eyes” about an inch below the soil surface.

* Late September is ideal for sowing a new lawn or re-seeding bare spots.

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