Tidewater Gardening: K. Marc Teff eau

TIDEWATER GARDENING

by K. Marc Teffeau, Ph.D.

June Transitions

June is a transition month in the landscape. Spring-flowing trees and shrubs have finished blooming. Daylilies are starting to flower in abundance, and many perennials are starting to bud and flower. The vegetable garden is also in a time of transition.

The early edible pod peas you planted in the garden should be ready for harvest, along with greens like lettuce and spinach. If you have not done so already, it is time to plant warm-season crops like peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, sweet corn and squash.

I always have a problem with squash vine borer in the zucchini, even though I spray with an organic repellent. To compensate for some damage, make additional squash plantings about three weeks apart through mid-July. This planting schedule works well if you have cole

crops like broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts in the vegetable garden. When you finish harvesting these plants and they start to bolt (flower), pull them out and replant with zucchini or yellow necked squash, or do a seeding of green snap or bush beans.

Do successive plantings of green beans every two weeks until the middle of July. This will give you a continued harvest before the first frost. To enhance the growth of green beans, coat them with a pea and bean bacteria inoculant. Beans are legumes and can “fix” atmospheric nitrogen from the air if rhizobium bacteria are present in the bean roots. Using an inoculant of rhizobium bacteria will increase yields, especially in soils where beans have not been grown before. Packages of bean and pea “inoculant” can be usually found where

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vegetable seeds are sold, or you can order it online from seed catalogs. Coat the bean seed with the inoculant before planting. Follow the directions on the package for best results.

When thinning the emerging bean seedlings to the recommended 3” spacing, watch for “snake heads,” seedlings that have lost one or both of their cotyledons and produce poor, weak sprouts. Also, watch for “bald heads,” seedlings that have the growth point damaged so severely that they cannot develop. Both types of seedlings will be weak and delayed in growth and should be removed.

If you have an asparagus bed, stop cutting the stalks in mid- or late June when the spears become thin. After the last cutting is made, fertilize by broadcasting a 10-1010 formula at the rate at 2 lbs. per 100 sq. ft. Allow the tops to grow during the summer to store food in the crowns (roots) for the crop next spring.

Vegetable crops need a steady supply of water and nutrients for the best production. For a very efficient, steady feeding of vegetables, sink a large can or bucket with many holes in its sides into the soil and fill it about two-thirds full of rotted manure or compost. Rain or occasional watering will keep a rich supply of nutrient seeping out to feed plants in a circle several feet wide.

This is also a great use for plastic milk jugs. Punch holes in the sides of a jug about 2 inches apart. Bury the jug, leaving the neck protruding from the soil. Fill jug with water (solutions of liquid fertilizer may be used to water and feed at the same time) and screw on the cap. The wa-

ter will seep out, providing a slow, deep irrigation for plants.

Sweet corn is wind pollinated. To ensure pollination of sweet corn, plant several rows together in a block, rather than in one long row. This practice will help reduce partially filled cobs. Sweet corn is also a heavy nitrogen feeder. Side-dress with 3 tablespoons of 10-10-10 per 10 feet of row when the corn plants are 12 to 18 inches high.

Tomato leaf diseases like early blight will start to show up in late June. To reduce early blight problems, do not water the tomato plant foliage, as the disease is spread by water. Early blight is a soil-borne fungus that infests the lower plant leaves by being splashed on the foliage by rainfall or irrigation. Place a thick layer of newspaper mulch under tomatoes to cut back on early blight infestation. Remove and trash any lower yellow and blight-infested leaves to prevent the disease from moving up the plant. At the end of the growing season, dispose of the newspaper mulch in the trash.

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Remember that the time of day when vegetables are harvested can make a difference in the taste and texture. For sweetness, pick peas and corn late in the day. That’s when they contain the most sugar, especially if the day was cool and sunny. Other vegetables, such as lettuce and cucumbers, are crisper and tastier if you harvest them early in the morning, before the day’s heat has a chance to wilt and shrivel them.

Yellow crook neck or straight neck squash tastes best when 4 to 7 inches long. Pick when pale yellow (rather than golden) and before skin hardens. Scalloped (patty pan) squash is best when grayish or greenish white (before it turns ivory white) and is still small, even silver dollar size.

Cucumbers have a noticeably short “vine storage time.” Under warm, humid conditions, fruits on the vine may remain in prime condition for less than 12 hours. For the best-tasting cukes, pick early and often. The fruits can be stored for up to two weeks at 45 to 50° and 95 percent relative humidity. Lower temperatures cause chilling damage, and higher temperatures encourage yellowing. Yellowing is also accelerated if cucumbers are stored with tomatoes or apples.

Remove cucumbers by turning fruits parallel to the vine and giving a quick snap. This prevents vine damage and results in a clean break. If you have trouble mastering this, take a sharp knife to the garden for harvesting. Cut or pull cucumbers, leaving a short stem on each fruit.

After they have finished flowering, German iris can be divided and replanted. Cut back the leaves about a third and divide the clumps into

single plants with one or two sections of healthy rhizome. Discard any diseased plants with mushy rhizomes. If disease has been a problem with your iris, it may be wise to try a new location for them. To control the iris borer, apply a systemic insecticide to the fans.

Dutch iris, sometimes call the “year-round iris” because of its availability as a cut flower, is also a great garden performer. Dutch irises are hybrids whose parentage can include many species. The garden-variety Dutch irises bloom much later than the earlier springflowering dwarf iris and add rich color to the “transition” garden. Reaching around two feet tall, they should now be showering wellplanned gardens with their blue, yellow, white, deep purple and now some two-color blossoms.

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ished blooming, leave the foliage in place; don’t cut it off. The leaves will gather sunlight and provide nourishment for next year’s show. Water as needed during active growth periods.

Dutch irises prefer not to be watered while dormant. At the end of the summer, the leaves will yellow and die back as the plant slips into dormancy. Foliage many be removed at this point. Your iris will rest for a few months before beginning the next growing cycle.

In the perennial bed, don’t forget to divide spring- and early summerflowering perennials such as lilies after their blooms fade. Instead of severing the clump in half, try jiggling the roots apart with two sharp spading forks. This takes more time but damages fewer roots than cutting the clump apart.

Delphiniums bloom this month. To encourage more flowers, feed the plants after bloom, cut back spent stalks to 1 foot and then remove stalks entirely when new growth is 6 inches or so tall. Unless you like leaning delphiniums, 89

be sure to stake them before they grow tall.

Lightly side dress perennials, including spring bulbs, with a 5-10-10 or 10-10-10 fertilizer, being careful to avoid placing the fertilizer in the center or crown of the plant. When the foliage of the spring-flowering bulbs yellows, you can cut it out and dispose of the spent foliage.

If you are growing chrysanthemums, June is the time to disbud the flowers if you want to secure large, beautiful blooms on straight, strong stems. To disbud, remove the small side buds that form in the angles of the leaves along the stems. This allows all food reserves to be used for one large flower rather than many smaller ones.

It is still not too late to divide the

chrysanthemum plants to produce more plants in the garden. Carefully lift the clumps and divide out the individual plants. Replant them in the landscape where you want to expand your planting. After transplanting, give the plants a watering with a liquid fertilizer at half strength to give them a little “kick” and get them over the transplanting shock. If they have gotten too tall, they can be cut back by about one half now to reduce their fall height.

When the early summer heat starts to take out the cool-season pansies, snapdragons and any ornamental cabbage and kale that might have overwintered, replace them with summer annuals, such as nicotiana, portulaca, zinnia, impatiens or celosia. Before planting, rework and enrich the soil with compost.

If you haven’t done it yet, remove all old flower heads from your rhododendrons and lilacs. The rhododendron flower heads are best broken out by hand. Do this now to increase growth and the develop-

ment of flower buds for next year.

I recommend pruning out the spent lilac flower heads rather than breaking them out. Prune off sprouts that are growing from the base of crape myrtles.

June is also when you can selectively prune or thin spring-flowering shrubs to get fuller plants. Do not prune these plants after the middle of July.

In the pest area, be on the lookout for the bagworm. This insect scourge of cedar trees and other narrow-leafed evergreens hatches out around the first of June. Each little “Christmas ornament” hanging on your cedar tree, if it had contained a female bagworm, now contains between 200 and 1,000 eggs ready to hatch when the temperatures are correct. Bagworms are best controlled as soon as they hatch: the older and bigger they get, the harder they are to control with insecticides.

The best “organic” control method for this pest is hand picking and destroying the bags before June 1. Treat the bags you can’t reach with an insecticide. Early in the hatch, spraying the plant with Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) is the best control. Sold under the trade names of Dipel, Bt or Biotrol, this naturally occurring bacterium is effective for caterpillars in the early stages of growth.

Keep an eye out for aphids and other insects on roses. Spray if necessary. Begin spraying to control blackspot at least twice a month. Removing and replacing last year’s mulch under roses in the spring will cut down greatly on black spot problems.

Happy Gardening!

Marc Teffeau retired as Director of Research and Regulatory Affairs at the American Nursery and Landscape Association in Washington, D.C. He now lives in Georgia with his wife, Linda.