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Dig In: Garden checklist for week of July 3

Cooler than average weather offers garden opportunities

Yellow sunflowers against a blue sky
Sunflowers brighten up any landscape -- and attract bees, too. There's still time to plant some for summer color. (Photo: Kathy Morrison)

Steady onshore breezes get July off to a cool start. Compared to last week’s triple-digit heat, this cool-down feels wonderful.

But with wind comes fire danger; be extra cautious with anything that can cause a spark. That includes power tools, heavy equipment, barbecues and (of course) fireworks.

According to the National Weather Service, the Sacramento Valley will see high temperatures of “only” 79 to 85 degrees on Monday, July Fourth. The foothills will be 10 degrees cooler.

Normal for Independence Day in Sacramento: 92 degrees.

The forecast calls for several more days in the low to mid 80s before creeping back into the low 90s by Friday. Enjoy this mild summer weather – and get things done.

* Keep your vegetable garden watered, mulched and weeded. Water before 8 a.m. to reduce the chance of fungal infection and to conserve moisture.

* Water, then fertilize vegetables and blooming annuals, perennials and shrubs to give them a boost. Feeding flowering plants every other week will extend their bloom.

* Give tomatoes, squash, melons, peppers and eggplant some bone meal or other fertilizer high in phosphate to stimulate more blooms and fruiting.

* If your melons and squash aren't setting fruit, give the bees a hand. With a small, soft paintbrush, gather some pollen from male flowers, then brush it inside the female flowers, which have a tiny swelling at the base of their petals. (That's the embryo melon or squash.) Within days, that little swelling should start growing.

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

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

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

* It’s not too late to add a splash of color. Plant petunias, snapdragons, zinnias and marigolds.

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

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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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