Last days of July seem normal before 'cool' start to August
These are Rugby tomatoes in three stages of ripening. Continue to harvest vegetables to keep the plants producing. Give plants a spray of water in the morning to raise humidity and ward off spider mites. Kathy Morrison
Climatologists say that this may be the hottest July ever recorded on Earth, with intense heat waves in Europe and across North America. In Sacramento, these final days of July will just seem normal – and maybe a little cool.
According to the National Weather Service, Sacramento can expect highs of 97 degrees on Sunday and Monday – average for those dates. Overnight lows will be on the cool side – dipping down to 60 degrees or lower each night. Coupled with breezy conditions, August will start with three consecutive days in the high 80s.
“Slight warming this weekend will bring localized Moderate Heat Risk into Monday,” tweeted the NWS Sacramento office on Saturday. “Temps will then cool back to near/slightly below normal by midweek.”
Make the most of this cooling trend and tackle garden chores.
* Harvest tomatoes, beans, squash, pepper and eggplants to prompt plants to keep producing. Give your plants a deep watering twice a week, more if planted in containers. Also, give them a boost with phosphate-rich fertilizer to help fruiting. (Always water before feeding.)
* Watch out for caterpillars and hornworms in the vegetable garden. They can strip a plant bare in one day. Pick them off plants by hand in early morning or late afternoon.
* Mulch can be your garden's best friend – it conserves moisture while blocking out weeds. But don't let mulch mound around stalks, stems or trunks. That can promote rot.
* Pick up after your fruit trees. Clean up debris and dropped fruit; this cuts down on insects and prevents the spread of brown rot. Then feed fruit trees with slow-release fertilizer for better production for next year.
* Feed citrus trees their last round of fertilizer for the year. This will give a boost to the fruit that's now forming.
* Pinch off dead flowers from perennials and annuals to lengthen their summer bloom.
* Cut off spent blooms from roses, then give them a boost of fertilizer. Roses will rebloom about six to eight weeks after deadheading.
* Indoors, start seedlings for fall vegetable planting, including bunching onion, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, radicchio and lettuce.
* Sow seeds of perennials in pots for fall planting including yarrow, coneflower and salvia.
* In the garden, direct seed beets, bush beans, carrots, leaf lettuce and turnips.
* Plant potatoes.
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Garden Checklist for week of Jan. 19
Dress warmly in layers – and get to work:
* Apply horticultural oil to fruit trees to control scale, mites and aphids. Oils need 24 hours of dry weather after application to be effective.
* This is also the time to spray a copper-based oil to peach and nectarine trees to fight leaf curl. The safest effective fungicides available for backyard trees are copper soap -- aka copper octanoate -- or copper ammonium, a fixed copper fungicide. Apply either of these copper products with 1% horticultural oil to increase effectiveness.
* Prune, prune, prune. Now is the time to cut back most deciduous trees and shrubs. The exceptions are spring-flowering shrubs such as lilacs.
* Now is the time to prune fruit trees. Clean up leaves and debris around the trees to prevent the spread of disease. (The exceptions are apricot and cherry trees, which are susceptible to a fungus that causes dieback if pruned now. Save those until summer.)
* Prune roses, even if they’re still trying to bloom. Strip off any remaining leaves, so the bush will be able to put out new growth in early spring.
* Clean up leaves and debris around your newly pruned roses and shrubs. Put down fresh mulch or bark to keep roots cozy.
* When forced bulbs sprout, move them to a cool, bright window. Give them a quarter turn each day so the stems will grow straight.
* Browse through seed catalogs and start making plans for spring and summer.
* Divide daylilies, Shasta daisies and other perennials.
* Cut back and divide chrysanthemums.
* Plant bare-root roses, trees and shrubs.
* Transplant pansies, violas, calendulas, English daisies, snapdragons and fairy primroses.
* In the vegetable garden, plant fava beans, head lettuce, mustard, onion sets, radicchio and radishes.
* Plant bare-root asparagus and root divisions of rhubarb.
* In the bulb department, plant callas, anemones, ranunculus and gladioli for bloom from late spring into summer.
* Plant blooming azaleas, camellias and rhododendrons. If you’re shopping for these beautiful landscape plants, you can now find them in full flower at local nurseries.
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