Sorry I missed this last night, but I was beat after spending much of the day outdoors and doing the first half of trimming on the weeping willow. Talk about a love / hate relationship 🙂

Hopefully your tomatoes have grown by leaps and bounds in the last week with the heat and some rain. Go out and check them. This week will be filled with Tuck/Train/Trim here. The plants have grown so much since last week’s session of tuck and trim the lower leaves. I did manage to get some trimmed heavily, but the high heat made me concerned about stressing the plants. So, this week I’ve trimmed 2 rows already and the rest will slowly get a good trim so that there’s less leafy growth using the plant’s energy, better light and airflow through the plant, and just to tidy them up to prevent rubbing during windy periods.

The peppers will get more compost under them this week to keep them growing at a good pace. The lower leaves will get pruned to prevent soil splashing, and they’ll get tidied up in their support cages.

Flowers like daisies, coneflowers, lilies, and yarrow are in need of a good deadheading to keep them tidy and have a new flush of blooms coming back faster. If you have daylilies, go out and remove the spent flowers (also called mush mummies). It’s a good idea to wear coated gloves for this because some of the flower’s color will stain your hands. If you have traditional roses, go check them for deadheading, too. A good rule of thumb for pruning of any kind of rose is to trim just in front of a leaflet with 3 or 5 leaflets. The more leaflets on the leaf, the healthier that tip will be, and the faster the plant can produce a new bloom.

Keep on top of the Japanese beetles and pick them into a bucket of water with dish soap, or use a pump sprayer if you have a lot of them in a large area (like the raspberry patch here).

Removing the larger, overgrown leaves on your cucumbers will help with good airflow and is the best prevention of powdery mildew. I know we think of this disease as a late summer problem, but when our humidity is definitely high enough and the plants may still be experiencing enough stress for us to see powdery mildew early.

If you’re growing fall squash, now may be a good time to add compost to the base of the plants to keep them topped up with nutrients to help with flower set in our high heat. Again, watch these for too much leaf cover and lack of airflow. Cucurbits (melons, squash, cucumbers) are really susceptible to powdery mildew, and the best ways to avoid it are to improve light and air or to purchase varieties with resistance to it.

My list of weekly maintenance starts with Weed, Seed, Tuck/Train/Trim and goes from there. This week, I’ll seed the last open bed with green beans, hoe the weeds and open up the soil in many of the beds, and add organic phosphorus to the current crop of beans that are giving beans. This will help the plants take in the phosphorus and be able to make another heavy set of flowers and beans faster.

Other seeds going in this week include sunflowers, ageratum, babybeats beets, golden carrots, and I’ll start some more zucchini and squash seeds in small pots.

Hope you’re having a great week so far and can get out and enjoy the relatively cooler days! Let me know if you’re having trouble with a plant, and I’ll be happy to help!

By Amy