The Garden in the Summer

 

                                                     Summer Top Jobs in the Garden

The heat is on and the garden is flourishing!  In the cool evening go out and take a look and see what needs attention.

Things to look for:

Fruit tipping the branches dangerously close to the ground- thin some of the developing fruit and prop the branches with 2x4's. When ripe, remove all fruit from trees.

Wilting- check the watering system and make sure all the drippers are dripping and sprinklers popping up.  Give extra hand watering to suffering plants and wash the foliage of the garden overall.

Deep water your broadleaf trees and fruit trees.  In the summer lay the hose under your trees along the drip line in 4-5 spots and let run in each spot slowly for 30-60 minutes. Do this from June though September 1-2 times a month so that the trees and large shrubs get some deep watering. Irrigation is mostly surface watering.

Thin patches in the lawn. Check the watering system for coverage. Does the lawn have dry spots after watering? Increase the coverage on the head (open small screw on the top of the sprinkler nozzle).
or add heads as needed.
Sometimes these dry patches are grubs eating the lawn roots or greedy trees soaking up all the water.
Grubs can be treated with pesticide- see nursery for info.
For tree roots add sand or topdressing to bring up the soil level over the roots and over seed with lawn seed.

Fertilize, please!  Apply a slow release fertilizer or regular fertilizer to planting areas and wash in well to avoid burning. Blooming and leaf color will increase with food. Follow manufacturers instructions carefully.
Use "weed and feed" for lawns to control weeds and feed the grass.
Fertilize plants and lawn every 6 weeks in the growing season with regular fertilizer or every 6 months for slow release.

Put out shallow bowls of water for birds, insects and garden inhabitants. Its dry around here.

Remove dead flower heads for a better repeat bloom.

Control weedy plants so they don't overtake the other plantings.

Enjoy the garden! Its the best this time of year.

Tinkering with Irrigation

The hot weather is upon us and I have been out tinkering with the irrigation.
I thought I would check for overspray, adjust heads and work on adding drippers to pots.

You can adjust radius on sprinkler heads (somewhat) using a small screwdriver to turn the little
srew on the top of the sprinkler head/nozzle. This will adjust the throw of the water farther out or reduce it down a bit. My heads were throwing a lot of water onto the paving so in an effort to save water and avoid hitting walking folk I adjusted them down. I will now check periodically and see if the adjustment resulted in some of the plants not getting watered.

If you have a drip hose in, it is easy to add drip emitters and drip feeder tubes for added pots or plants. Only a hole puncher and parts are needed so this is an easy fix. To add a new drip hose and drip feeder tubes a valve with filter and pressure regulator is needed or you can run drip off of a hose bib with a battery operated 1 station controller (Gardena makes these). The slow watering is great for narrow areas and pots. I really like soaker hose too and it can be run in the same way.

As the garden has grown in and areas have been changed I have a few spots with plants blocking heads and one spot where a head waters nothing at all. That one was easy to fix. Using a tall threaded riser I just dug down and unscrewed the existing head and riser and put in the new riser with a cap for now so it can be used in future if needed.

The head that was blocked by a plant needed to have the riser extended up with a pop-up or shrub head on top so it can spray over the offending shrub. Not too pretty but it works. If I am worried about aesthetics I either move the head over or use a high-pop (taller head).

Other checks I have been doing are to work on leaky heads, clogged heads or drippers and leaky valves. Some of these are easy fixes- tightening screw on areas of heads or valves, using seal tape on threaded areas, removing nozzles and cleaning them out, and replacing worn or broken parts. Replacing valves is a pain and I usually have one of my contractor buddies come over and help me do those. I hate working on valve manifolds. ugh.

Overall, this work will help to save water, avoid water damage to areas and increase the efficiency of the irrigation system. I usually work on the system once a year about now then make small checks during the growing season to check for breaks.

The good part is that you get sprayed by water sometimes to cool you down!